Igor Sergun is a famous domestic military leader. He headed the General Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. In 2016 he received the title of Hero of Russia. He rose to the rank of colonel general. In early 2016, he died under mysterious circumstances.
Officer Biography
Igor Sergun was born in 1957. He was born in Podolsk near Moscow. He entered the Soviet army in 1973. In the same part, he began to receive education.
First, the biography of Igor Dmitrievich Sergun was the Suvorov School, then the Higher Command School, which bore the name of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR, which was based in Moscow.
The hero of our article also graduated from two military academies of the Soviet army and the Russian General Staff.
Career path
Igor Sergun appeared in military intelligence in 1984. In the Main Intelligence Directorate, he served in various positions; his career advancement was facilitated by the knowledge of several foreign languages at once.
In 1998, Igor Sergun served in Tirana, had honorary state awards.
At the very end of 2011, he was appointed head of the main department of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces. And in the summer of next year he received the rank of lieutenant general. In February 2016, President Vladimir Putin approved a decree appointing Igor Dmitrievich Sergun Colonel General.
Job evaluation
A sufficiently high appreciation of the work of the hero of our article was given by the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Sergey Shoigu. According to him, the military intelligence system, when Sergun headed it, began to work most efficiently, timely revealing dangerous threats and challenges to the country's security.
In particular, the head of the GRU Igor Sergun personally participated in the development and implementation of the operation to hold a referendum in Crimea, after which the peninsula became part of the Russian Federation. This is one of the most resonant operations of the Russian leadership in recent years, since the inclusion of Crimea into Russia still does not support either the Ukraine to which it belonged or the majority of world powers, although this happened in the spring of 2014. This led to the fact that Colonel General Igor Sergun was included in the sanctions lists of the United States of America, Australia, Canada and Ukraine as one of the key characters that contributed to undermining the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
In the middle of summer 2015, Sergun, together with the best specialists of the Main Intelligence Directorate, began developing the Russian military air operation in Syria.
It is known that the last time the hero of our article appeared in public in Moscow at an international conference that was dedicated to the situation in Afghanistan. General Igor Sergun made a detailed report in which he analyzed in detail the recruitment activity of the Islamic State terrorist organization banned in Russia, and also made a forecast about its goals and the development of the situation in Afghanistan.
According to some media reports, at the end of 2015, Sergun unofficially visited the Syrian capital Damascus on behalf of President Vladimir Putin. He met with the president of a state in which a civil war has been waged for many years to transfer an official proposal from the Russian president to resign. The authoritative English edition of the Financial Times (referring to unnamed senior NATO intelligence officials) reported that Bashar Assad refused the offer. Sergun’s visit was unsuccessful.
The opinion of foreign experts
Foreign experts, emphasizing the importance of Sergun’s work, always noted that he very subtly felt what his immediate leadership in the Kremlin wanted from him, acted exactly following their instructions.
Thanks to these abilities, in the opinion of most experts, the hero of our article managed to gain authority in the eyes of the authorities, to establish the work of the Main Intelligence Directorate, to strengthen the position of this department after it had been in disgrace for many years.
At the same time, analyzing the work of Sergun, Western experts came to the conclusion that the prospects for Russian intelligence services look deplorable, while their leaders are encouraged solely for sensible reports and for guessing the wishes of their direct leadership.
Mysterious death
The death of Sergun became known on January 3, 2016. According to official Russian sources, he suddenly died in his 59th year of life when he was in the Moscow Region in the Moskvich holiday home, which is located in the department of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. The reason for the sudden death of an officer was an extensive heart attack.
Western media and researchers have a different version. For example, a private analytical intelligence company from the United States, referring to its own anonymous sources, claimed that Sergun actually died on January 1, 2016 in Lebanon.
This information was officially denied by the press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov. Vladimir Putin himself brought condolences to the families and friends of Sergun. Colonel General was buried in Moscow at the Troekurovsky cemetery.
Posthumous Award
A few months after his death, it became known that Sergun was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation. Thus, President Vladimir Putin noted his successful service in Syria, as well as his reorganization of the Main Intelligence Directorate from 2011 to 2015.
Sergun was also credited with the high results of the activities of the military intelligence service in collecting and searching for operational information on secret military equipment, the latest weapons developed in other countries.
The hero of our article was a candidate of military sciences, a member of the editorial board of the authoritative journal Military Thought.
Personal life
Sergun was married, raised two daughters. In 1990, Elena was born, and ten years earlier, Olga.
It is known that Olga Sergun in 2003 received a diploma from a graduate of the Moscow Academy of Law with a degree in Law. After that, she held various positions in the Moscow Department of Land Resources. For example, from 2013 to 2015, she was Deputy Head of the Legal Support Department, specializing in land relations.
In 2015, she received the post of Director General of the State Unitary Enterprise Center for Financial and Legal Support, which worked under the auspices of the Presidential Administration.
In the summer of 2016, Olga Sergun became deputy manager of the President of Russia.