Con una mossa rara, la Francia identifica pubblicamente l’unità di intelligence russa che l’ha presa di mira: il controspionaggio francese descrive dettagliatamente le violazioni e nomina l’unità militare, la sua città (vicino a San Pietroburgo) e il fulcro delle sue operazioni

Emails from executives of the Ministry of the Armed Forces, the network of the French embassy in Moscow, a justice server: in a report published on July 13, the French services detail the compromises attributed to the Russian FSB since the 2010s. They go even further and name the military unit responsible for spying on France, its number, its city, even the orientation of its antennas.

Ministries, diplomacy, defense, justice: French services document two decades of compromises attributed to the 16th Center of the Russian FSB.

France officially accuses Russia of operations against it. In a report published on July 13, CERT-FR documents the targeting and compromise of French entities by a unit called Turla, operated by the 16th Center of the Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB. The document is co-signed by ANSSI, the Cyber Defense Command, the DGA, the DGSE and the DGSI.

It accompanies two formal declarations of attribution delivered on the same day, one by the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs on behalf of France, the other by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union. In other words, Paris and Brussels designate Moscow by name. The level of detail delivered to the public is unusual.

Unit 61240, near St. Petersburg
The 16th FSB Center, also known as military unit 71330, has eleven centers spread across Russian territory. The report lists them one by one, along with their locations.

Among them, military unit 61240, near Krasnoye Selo, southwest of Saint Petersburg, is identified as responsible for targeting France, both in electromagnetic intelligence and in computer attacks. It maintains close ties with Russian companies such as AO ST or NPP Gamma.

The document goes even further: it indicates that the orientation of the antennas installed on these sites makes it possible to deduce the distribution of targeting. Pskov, Krasnoye Selo and Zelenogradsk point to Europe and the United States. Shkotovo and Khabarovsk target Asia.

Active on a global scale since at least 2004, the Turla unit has targeted France since the 2010s, according to CERT-FR. The documented list of victims is dizzying.

In 2014, ministerial entities were compromised. Since at least 2017, email accounts of Ministry of the Armed Forces executives have been hacked, and worse, the report specifies that the threat remains active against the ministry and the entities under its supervision.

In 2018, the French Embassy network in Moscow was compromised, with network scanning and data exfiltration. In 2019, a SharePoint vulnerability allowed entry into a justice sector server, potentially exposing information from several thousand accounts.

The malicious codes used, including Kazuar still in service in 2026, target Windows and its Outlook and Exchange messaging systems, but also Linux and macOS. No environment is spared.

Shoulda handed ukraine the list taped to some cruise missiles first.

France should give Ukraine all data and resources they want to use against ruzzia, they are doing everyone’s job.

It’s likely that this public information sharing is to show some of France’s strength as I would expect Ukraine have been given as much data as possible to target all of these locations

So… can we finally acknowledge that Russia is waging war against the EU and do something about it?