By Peter Polack

Peter Polack

The recent coordinated sabotage of French railway communication systems on the cusp of the opening of the Olympic Games by persons as yet unknown saw the arrest of a far left activist and later, a Russian.

This unfortunate occurrence befell the premier world sports event that saw the Russian Federation and their many frustrated athletes excluded.

While pundits search for a connection between Russia and the destruction of French railway equipment perhaps the answer lies in a historical perspective of railway sabotage in France by Russian connected individuals.

In March 1977 the French Security Service broke up a network of Soviet GRU spies in Paris led by Yugoslavian French citizen Serge Fabiew who had been recruited by Soviet Embassy Counselor and GRU officer named Ivan Pavlovich Kudryavtsev. Kudryavtsev had promised to pay off Fabiew’s business debts in exchange for assistance in recruiting and maintaining agents. Fabiew secretly went to Moscow in 1964 to become a GRU contract agent and receive Soviet citizenship.

The spy network operated for fourteen years passing French and NATO defense secrets. The investigation led to the arrest of four French agents including Fabiew and one Italian. Four were charged with communicating with the agents of a foreign power:

Giovanni Ferrero    Fiat employee aviation specialist with a Fiat subsidiary in France

Raymond Dissard   factory foreman

Marc Lefebvre        engineer C.I.I.‐Honeywell‐Bull  provided plans of advanced electronic

                                  systems.

Roger Laval            retired air traffic controller of the French civil aviation authority

   supplied plans of airports

Fabiew’s contact prior to arrest was Grigory Petrovich Myagkov who had a great interest in French communication, transport networks, railways and control systems for possible sabotage targets. At the time, Myagkov was an official with a United Nations  agency called the International Labor Organization which he used as cover for his Russian spy agency or GRU activities while based in Geneva.

Myagkov was expelled from France in March 1977 and from Switzerland in June 1978 for his exposure by the defection to the United Kingdom of KGB Captain Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun also known as Victor Suvorov with his family from the Soviet mission United Nations in Geneva.

The information that Myagkov received from his agents was French aircraft construction, layout and security systems for civil or military air bases as well as weapon testing centers.

The police found incriminating evidence during searches of the homes of the arrested persons such as miniature radio components and contact instructions.

Those charged were convicted in 1978 and received the following sentences of imprisonment:

Serge Fabiew          20 years

Marc Lefebvre       15 years

Giovanni Ferrero     8 years

Raymond Dissard    2 years

Laval was diagnosed with dementia and faced no further punishment.

The Soviet Ambassador stationed in France 1973-83 was Stepan Vasilyevich Chervonenko who was a former Soviet Ambassador to China 1959-65 and Soviet Ambassador Czechoslovakia 1965-73. During his tenure there were twenty Russian related espionage incidents in France.

Nearly fifty years later history may be repeating itself.

Biography

Peter Polack is the author of The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013),Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2018).He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013) and his latest book entitled Soviet Spies Worldwide: Country by Country, 1940–1988 will be published by McFarland in 2024.