In late 2022, Russia established a top-secret unit of elite intelligence agents with a sweeping mandate to carry out assassinations, abductions, and sabotage abroad. But according to a new investigation by The Insider, one officer has exposed the entire group by using Google Translate.
Known internally as Center 795, this unit was established by a Russian General Staff order in December 2022 as part of an effort to expand intelligence operations following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to The Insider’s sources, it was designed to function as a “shadow army” and given full autonomy, allowing the unit to bypass the Defense Ministry’s cumbersome and ineffective bureaucracy.
Despite reporting directly to General Staff Chief Valery Gerasimov, the unit was embedded inside the Kalashnikov Concern, a privately held Russian arms manufacturer. In addition to providing the unit with cover, the company provided its operational base: an administrative building in the Patriot Park military-industrial complex outside Moscow.
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According to The Insider’s sources, Center 795’s “ideological architect and principal backer” is billionaire arms dealer Andrei Bokarev, who co-owned the controlling stake in Kalashnikov until 2018.
The Center recruited the most experienced agents from multiple branches of the Russian security services. It allegedly fields around 500 officers in total, under the leadership of Denis Fisenko, a 52-year-old veteran of the FSB special forces Alfa Group. The “rigorous” selection process weeded out roughly a third of candidates for failing to prove themselves “in a unique way.” As The Insider writes,
Center 795 was granted the authority to poach officers from various other units of the army, the GRU, the FSB, Rosgvardia (Russia’s National Guard), and even the FSO, the Kremlin’s elite protection force — not necessarily with the consent of the relevant agency. Center 795 thus enjoys a comparatively higher status within the internal hierarchy of the Russian special services.
According to leaked tax records, those selected received compensation “unparalleled in the Russian army,” with department heads earning around $7,800 a month and Fisenko raking in roughly $500,000 a year.
