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Skripal Suspect Boshirov Identified as GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga

273 points by abhi3 8y ago

krn 8y ago
The Web of Death[1] by Buzzfeed lists all the people related to Russia who died in unexpected circumstances on the UK's soil in the last 15 years, together with their personal stories and connections. [1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/from-russia-with-blood-14-suspected-hits-on-british-soil#11278400 https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/from-russia-with-blood-1...
- neonate 8y ago
  Western media present this material as if "Russia" means the Russian government means Putin. But there is a large presence of Russian oligarchs and organized criminals in the UK, who do the things those types of people do. It doesn't make sense that all of it is being planned by the Russian state, let alone Putin personally.
  - microcolonel 8y ago
    I suspect that will only get worse with the torrent of "but muh Russian collusion"-type political speech which seems to come up every time people feel like blaming somebody else for their decision not to vote.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    There's no meaningful distinction between Russian government, Russian oligarchs, and Russian organized crime at this point.
    - neonate 8y ago
      That's not only false, but obviously false, since it's an extreme oversimplification of a situation with many players, competing interests, and so on. You won't find any serious scholar taking that naive a view, though plenty of journalists do. The question is where this fantasy of an evil monolith with a spidery mastermind comes from.
      - lambdadmitry 8y ago
        That's a direct outcome of the "vertical of power" concept. As soon as you position yourself as a strongman father of the nation, you also invite the blame. Can't have your cake and eat it, too.
      - int_19h 8y ago
        I didn't say it's a monolith, or there's a spidery mastermind. Rather, it's a sort of a swamp where ugly things move around all the time - today he is a mob leader, tomorrow he's an elected member of the parliament (real world example from my hometown) etc. The problem is that they keep their social connections as they move around, so in the end you end up with this weird network of "friends and colleagues" where, say, a high-ranked police official visits a funeral of his old and dear parliamentarian friend, back from the day when they were both mobsters.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- travmatt 8y ago
  I’d be interested in seeing one with the profiles of those Russians who died in America under suspicious circumstances.
  - krn 8y ago
    Mikhail Lesin, Putin's press minister from 1999 to 2004, was found dead in his hotel room in Washington, DC in 2015[1]: > The US government ruled Mikhail Lesin’s death an accident, but multiple intelligence and law enforcement officials suspect it was a Russian hit. > Vladimir Putin’s former media czar was murdered in Washington, DC, on the eve of a planned meeting with the US Justice Department, according to two FBI agents whose assertions cast new doubts on the US government’s official explanation of his death. > Mikhail Lesin’s battered body was discovered in his Dupont Circle hotel room on the morning of Nov. 5, 2015, with blunt-force injuries to the head, neck, and torso. After an almost yearlong "comprehensive investigation," a federal prosecutor announced last October that Lesin died alone in his room due to a series of drunken falls “after days of excessive consumption of alcohol.” His death was ruled an "accident," and prosecutors closed the case. > “Lesin was beaten to death,” one of the FBI agents said. “I would implore you to say as much. There seems to be an effort here to cover up that fact for reasons I can't get into.” > He continued: “What I can tell you is that there isn’t a single person inside the bureau who believes this guy got drunk, fell down, and died. Everyone thinks he was whacked and that Putin or the Kremlin were behind it.” [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/putins-media-czar-was-murdered-just-before-meeting-feds https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/putins-med...
    - travmatt 8y ago
      Also Sergei Krivov. I believe most of the other people implicated as sources in Steele’s famous dossier also died shortly after it was made public, but I believe most happened outside of the United States.
andr 8y ago
This is impressive journalistic work. If you are a fan of such type of open-source intelligence, I highly recommend the Arms Control Wonk podcast and blog, who have done amazing investigations into North Korean missile development (https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/ https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/). Yet, with so many obvious giveaways, I find it hard to believe Russia ever wanted to get away with the Skripal poisoning. From using a very exotic Russian-made poison to the absurd Salisbury Cathedral story, it looks like a provocation or trolling. Of course, the Russian government will officially deny any involvement, but they are doing it with an obvious wink.
- GW150914 8y ago
  I forget the word, but there is a Russian word that sums this up. It’s about saying things thst are over-the-top to accentuate reality. In the same way that Stephen Colbert pretended to be a kind of hyper-Bill O’Reilly as a way of pointing out the ridiculousness and hypocrisy of some aspects of the Republicans in the US. It also applies to someone with a record of torturing and killing pets who is accused of murder, grinning and saying, “Everyone knows I would not hurt a fly.” A couple of Russians saying that they found the wintry weather in the UK challenging? Well...
  - vtail 8y ago
    The Russian word you are looking for might be "фарс", very similar meaning to "farce".
  - DenisM 8y ago
    Probably "Эпатаж". There is no good translation, not even for the wikipedia article itself. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%AD%D0%BF%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B6 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%AD%D0%BF%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0...
  - cuboidGoat 8y ago
    Sounds similar in meaning to the Yiddish word 'chutzpah', which was once defined by Leo Rosten as; "that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan"
yummybear 8y ago
Amazing work, but I'm genuinely surprised that you can uncover top spy identities, just using publicly, and leaked, material available over the internet.
- throwaway23785 8y ago
  I wouldn't call "In our source’s words" or "from two separate sources with access to [passport] databases" as public material on the Internet. In fact, it very much reads as a classical parallel construction [1], e.g. some secret service identified the suspect through their work (anything from double agents to court-ordered wiretapping to illegal wiretapping) and back-fed details to some independent organization to create a train-of-thought from it and publish it. Especially since the public group photo is marked "[we] do not claim" and the truly exposing details come from secret databases from secret "sources". That is not public or verifiable information. We had things like that here (here being a former eastern-bloc non-USSR country, where people are extra cautious of manipulations because being spoon fed with propaganda for 40 years) exposed fairly recently trough leaked wiretapping files. It was in all combinations. A journalist begging secret operatives to give her anything saying she would publish that immediately. Operatives feeding true information to unwitting journalists. And so on... 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
- ethbro 8y ago
  It's difficult to rewrite the digital past, and every undercover officer was a civilian at some previous point. Essentially it's a defense in depth game. You can sever links between cover identities and real identities, but you can't erase real identities with history as easily. Pierce the obsfuscated link, browse through someone's normal digital life. Starts to make plastic surgery look downright cheap.
- Muromec 8y ago
  Or maybe it's just bellingcat constructing parallel evidence for already known fact.
- pixelperfect 8y ago
  Especially when they grew up in a tiny town with population 300 before attending a nearby military academy. This guy's background was very obscure.
rdtsc 8y ago
Outstanding work. Now it is interesting to go back and look at the PR campaign and all the disinformation pushed to deflect and cover it up. The RT channel's interview with the "gay Russian tourists" was precious. https://www.rt.com/news/438356-rt-petrov-boshirov-full-interview/ https://www.rt.com/news/438356-rt-petrov-boshirov-full-inter... > You know, let’s not breach anyone’s privacy. We came to you for protection, but this is turning into some kind of an interrogation. You are going too far. We came to you for protection. You’re not interrogating us. And you can almost see through the logic - "Hmm, the West sympathizes with gays so why don't we insinuate you are gay and then they'll feel sorry for you and forget about you being GRU agents assassinating people".
- obmelvin 8y ago
  As I read (forget the source) the purpose of insinuating they were gay had to do with convincing Russians they weren't military officers. Because apparently in Russian society it is unthinkable that a military officer would be gay, so if they convince Russian citizens they are gay that also convinces them that they can't be GRU officers.
  - rdtsc 8y ago
    Interesting, yeah I can see it. I bet they thought it would work from both angles. Westerners will feel sorry for exposing the gay tourists and Russians will feel convinced they can't be GRU officers.
    - trhway 8y ago
      >Russians will feel convinced they can't be GRU officers Russian internet has a field day(or a month already really) of jokes that the GRU officers, which all are undoubtedly, in the Russian mythos, true patriots and heterosexual macho made in the image of the Putin himself, would carry out every order for the Motherland - to kill a traitor, to die for the Motherland, and even to truly practice homosexuality, all in the name of Motherland on the orders of "the comrade General". The guys in the interview are obviously very bad at impersonating gays, and that follows pretty much the same outrageous "signature" style (the Russian saying is "sewn together using white thread" as it is very noticeable on any garments except white) as using "Novichok" and polonium (or assassinating major opposition leader right in front of the Putin's office windows) - all that is to make sure that there are no doubts about who really did it while of course officially denying any responsibility. Just like the signature killings by Mafia (which the Russian government in its nature really is) - everybody has to clearly understand who did it without the perpetrators and their bosses explicitly claiming it. To the "the_grue" below - sorry, man, no offense, you just don't understand what you're talking about. Most probably you're just not a Russian. Edit: you added that you speak Russian. Being a Russian and speak Russian are 2 very different things. That ridicule you see on the Internet is real, no doubts. What you don't get is that it doesn't make Putin ridiculous [deep] in the eyes of the populace and that it wasn't a failure [deep] in the eyes of that populace - and that is the main tragedy of Russia.
baybal2 8y ago
Key quote: >In our source’s words, an operation of this sort would have typically required a lower-ranked, “field operative” with a military rank of “no higher than captain.” The source further surmised that to send a highly decorated colonel back to a field job would be highly extraordinary, and would imply that “the job was ordered at the highest level.” That speaks for itself
- gandhium 8y ago
  Well, the fact that Russia arranged "we're just two guys (wink, wink) observing church spires" TV conference for them, shows that they're not just low-level thugs.
myth_drannon 8y ago
Just yesterday there was BBC investigation of killings in Cameroon based only on what is available on the Internet and now this. Amazing!
Muromec 8y ago
That's especially funny that real passport data of high ranked security officer is available in leaked data and you can bribe you way into FSB's database of identity forms to get up to date info as well. It's not same kind of investigation based on open info that bellingcat have done before.
- lightgreen 8y ago
  You don’t have to bribe FSB directly to buy databases. You simply search among numerous online forums in .ru for a contact in Telegram, ask for a small sample, negotiate a price (100-10000 USD depending on database), pay for it with BTC, and obtain it via Telegram. There was nothing FSB specific in the databases obtained by bellingcat, just regular citizen data.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
alexkearns 8y ago
I think a bit skepticism is due here. Their "proof" that Chepiga and Boshirov are the same person rests almost solely on a supposed strong resemblance between a photo of Chepiga taken in 2003 and photos of Boshirov from 2009 and 2018. I have stared at the photos for a long time and I am not sure they are the same person. Chepiga's eyebrows and bottoms of ears look different. I am not saying that they are not the same person but neither am I convinced they are.
- clubm8 8y ago
  What specific skills/training do you have that make you more qualified than a trained government analyst to make such a determination?
  - alexkearns 8y ago
    I don't see any reference in the article to a trained government analyst having confirmed the resemblance. And where do I claim to be more qualified than anyone in this?
- EliRivers 8y ago
  Without commenting on the likenesses of the two photos, I do note that a person's ears do change shape, becoming longer throughout their lifetime.
  - alexkearns 8y ago
    That's certainly true. Boshirov's photos also show a mole above his right eye. This is missing in the Chepiga photo. But that does not prove they are not the same person as a mole or mark could potentially have appeared later in life. What's your opinion on the likeness, btw?
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  I hear you. Healthy skepticism here is important. I want to also suggest that the longer you stare at faces, the worse you'll be at drawing any conclusions. It's really hard to say yes or no...it's just not solid enough evidence to be conclusive. Maybe it's plenty to take this hypothesis and drill really deep for more.
steve19 8y ago
So was bellingcat fed this information from a western Intelligence organization and then they parallel constructed it? Seems likely.
- iron0013 8y ago
  I'd like to know why you think it's likely, considering that it's a strong claim for you to make.
- tenfold 8y ago
  Is that you, Putin?
- int_19h 8y ago
  Even if they did, so what? This is not a court of law.
andy_ppp 8y ago
We need to admit the Cold War is back. Is anyone else as terrified as I am of the assault on reason from all sides right now?
- lightgreen 8y ago
  No Cold War is not back. Modern Russia is very weak compared to USSR.
  - jnbiche 8y ago
    Putin's Russia is weak but more bold and reckless than the USSR.
altmind 8y ago
There's an article [in russian] on how easy you can get a government, mobile phone, bank database reports on anybody, you can get list of all bank accounts, history of border crossings, history of mobile phone locations, personal phone numbers, equity ownership, debts and credits online, for tens of $: https://habr.com/post/423947/ https://habr.com/post/423947/ The passport data in the investigation is nothing too special. When total control goes side-by-side with corruption, thats the result.
gonmf 8y ago
This is interesting as an investigative work, but what of it? Are we to believe only Russia conducts extra-judicial assassinations of people of interest? And do we expect the governments responsible to come out and admit it? To me this circus around this particular assassination just appears to stem from having to justify sanctions against Russia by the UK. But then again, I don't expect a country to come out and admit that they'll sanction a country just to weaken it's economy and provoke social instability until they get a more favorable government.
- GW150914 8y ago
  To me this circus around this particular assassination just appears to stem from having to justify sanctions against Russia by the UK. I’m not going to touch the majority of the bait you’re laying out and instead merely note that the “circus” was probably more a result of the extensive and expensive decontamination required over a large area. Oh yes, and the civilian who died and her partner who was affected. That kind of thing tends to make people pretty upset, no need for sprawling conspiracies of the state required. Personally it didn’t seem like much of a circus unless... did you see the decontamination tents and get a little confused?
  - gonmf 8y ago
    Are you upset about the droning of civilians with very little oversight? Are you upset about the kidnapping of civilians into cargo ships to act as prisons without jurisdiction? This attack killed four people, let's say there have been 20 times as many, so 80 deaths overall. do you believe the CIA, Mossad, Iran secret services, China secret services, didn't kill more?
    - GW150914 8y ago
      You seem very dedicated to making this a case of “everyone is bad, so no one is bad.” I’ll repeat that old saw, two wrongs don’t make a right. The injustices and acts of violence committed by America against others don’t justify, excuse, or mitigate similar acts by Russia. Now, can we get back to the topic at hand without these diversions? You were claiming that the “circus” of the UK being outraged by the use of a chemical weapon to attempt to murder two people on their soil, and the incidental killing of a third and injury of a fourth (both civilians) was a “circus” I think. I’m still interested to your non-diversionary response to my take on why that would legitimately anger not just the government of the UK, but anger and terrify its people.
jayalpha 8y ago
I have never heard of bellingcat.com The work seems impressive but I think it should be taken with caution. Who is behind this website that he can access Russian databases via "contacts"? Passport databases contain pictures? (I have no idea) "Bellingcat has contacted confidentially a former Russian military officer of similar rank as Colonel Chepig" How do you find such people? Soldiers should be a dime a dozen, GRU colonels should be hard to find. "Bellingcat and the Insider have obtained “Petrov”‘s and “Boshirov”s border crossing data for a number of countries in Europe and Asia, for the period of validity of their international passports (mid-2016 through today). " Wow. Man, if the "social network research skills" of Eliott Higgins are for real, I have a few other cases he could dig in. EDIT: I think I was right being skeptical. As mentioned here, while looking similar, the persons shown in the pics seem not to be identical to me. Can someone confirm this with software? I would be especially interested in the normalized distance between the eyes. Besides this, he has put a picture online that he obtained illegally and he is violating EU privacy law.
Bendingo 8y ago
More unsubstantiated claims from Bellingcat. Remember that video he "found on youtube" that showed a Russian BUK driving through the streets on East Ukraine ? Well, it turns out it was composited from a video of the street, overlaid with an image of the BUK carrier. [1] Higgins is a fraud and a liar. It's amazing that HN (which I'd always considered a forum for serious, thoughtful and intelligent people) would give credence to anything this guy says. [1] https://sputniknews.com/russia/201809171068089638-russia-boeing-mh-17/ https://sputniknews.com/russia/201809171068089638-russia-boe... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/09/17/world/europe/ap-eu-russia-mh17.html https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/09/17/world/europe/ap-... [3] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh17-russia-13258734 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/malaysia-airlines-f...
- meowface 8y ago
  Could you elaborate and provide some evidence? The sources you linked don't seem to be related to the claims you're making.
  - gandhium 8y ago
    I think he's relating to infamous briefing, where Russian DoD presented quite a lot of fakes trying to shift the blame to Ukraine. One of the fakes were exactly that claim - that the video with Russian Buk was a fake.
snarfybarfy 8y ago
In these games of high level 'politics' I always assume nobody in the public really knows anything. Any claims produced by anyone involved are just claims and not facts that can be verified by me or any of those so called journalists. I personally would trust neither Putin nor Trump with my lunchbox.

273 points by abhi3 8y ago

krn 8y ago

The Web of Death[1] by Buzzfeed lists all the people related to Russia who died in unexpected circumstances on the UK's soil in the last 15 years, together with their personal stories and connections. [1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/from-russia-with-blood-14-suspected-hits-on-british-soil#11278400 https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/from-russia-with-blood-1...

neonate 8y ago
Western media present this material as if "Russia" means the Russian government means Putin. But there is a large presence of Russian oligarchs and organized criminals in the UK, who do the things those types of people do. It doesn't make sense that all of it is being planned by the Russian state, let alone Putin personally.
- microcolonel 8y ago
  I suspect that will only get worse with the torrent of "but muh Russian collusion"-type political speech which seems to come up every time people feel like blaming somebody else for their decision not to vote.
- int_19h 8y ago
  There's no meaningful distinction between Russian government, Russian oligarchs, and Russian organized crime at this point.
  - neonate 8y ago
    That's not only false, but obviously false, since it's an extreme oversimplification of a situation with many players, competing interests, and so on. You won't find any serious scholar taking that naive a view, though plenty of journalists do. The question is where this fantasy of an evil monolith with a spidery mastermind comes from.
    - lambdadmitry 8y ago
      That's a direct outcome of the "vertical of power" concept. As soon as you position yourself as a strongman father of the nation, you also invite the blame. Can't have your cake and eat it, too.
    - int_19h 8y ago
      I didn't say it's a monolith, or there's a spidery mastermind. Rather, it's a sort of a swamp where ugly things move around all the time - today he is a mob leader, tomorrow he's an elected member of the parliament (real world example from my hometown) etc. The problem is that they keep their social connections as they move around, so in the end you end up with this weird network of "friends and colleagues" where, say, a high-ranked police official visits a funeral of his old and dear parliamentarian friend, back from the day when they were both mobsters.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
travmatt 8y ago
I’d be interested in seeing one with the profiles of those Russians who died in America under suspicious circumstances.
- krn 8y ago
  Mikhail Lesin, Putin's press minister from 1999 to 2004, was found dead in his hotel room in Washington, DC in 2015[1]: > The US government ruled Mikhail Lesin’s death an accident, but multiple intelligence and law enforcement officials suspect it was a Russian hit. > Vladimir Putin’s former media czar was murdered in Washington, DC, on the eve of a planned meeting with the US Justice Department, according to two FBI agents whose assertions cast new doubts on the US government’s official explanation of his death. > Mikhail Lesin’s battered body was discovered in his Dupont Circle hotel room on the morning of Nov. 5, 2015, with blunt-force injuries to the head, neck, and torso. After an almost yearlong "comprehensive investigation," a federal prosecutor announced last October that Lesin died alone in his room due to a series of drunken falls “after days of excessive consumption of alcohol.” His death was ruled an "accident," and prosecutors closed the case. > “Lesin was beaten to death,” one of the FBI agents said. “I would implore you to say as much. There seems to be an effort here to cover up that fact for reasons I can't get into.” > He continued: “What I can tell you is that there isn’t a single person inside the bureau who believes this guy got drunk, fell down, and died. Everyone thinks he was whacked and that Putin or the Kremlin were behind it.” [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/putins-media-czar-was-murdered-just-before-meeting-feds https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/putins-med...
  - travmatt 8y ago
    Also Sergei Krivov. I believe most of the other people implicated as sources in Steele’s famous dossier also died shortly after it was made public, but I believe most happened outside of the United States.

andr 8y ago

This is impressive journalistic work. If you are a fan of such type of open-source intelligence, I highly recommend the Arms Control Wonk podcast and blog, who have done amazing investigations into North Korean missile development (https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/ https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/). Yet, with so many obvious giveaways, I find it hard to believe Russia ever wanted to get away with the Skripal poisoning. From using a very exotic Russian-made poison to the absurd Salisbury Cathedral story, it looks like a provocation or trolling. Of course, the Russian government will officially deny any involvement, but they are doing it with an obvious wink.

GW150914 8y ago
I forget the word, but there is a Russian word that sums this up. It’s about saying things thst are over-the-top to accentuate reality. In the same way that Stephen Colbert pretended to be a kind of hyper-Bill O’Reilly as a way of pointing out the ridiculousness and hypocrisy of some aspects of the Republicans in the US. It also applies to someone with a record of torturing and killing pets who is accused of murder, grinning and saying, “Everyone knows I would not hurt a fly.” A couple of Russians saying that they found the wintry weather in the UK challenging? Well...
- vtail 8y ago
  The Russian word you are looking for might be "фарс", very similar meaning to "farce".
- DenisM 8y ago
  Probably "Эпатаж". There is no good translation, not even for the wikipedia article itself. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%AD%D0%BF%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B6 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%AD%D0%BF%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0...
- cuboidGoat 8y ago
  Sounds similar in meaning to the Yiddish word 'chutzpah', which was once defined by Leo Rosten as; "that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan"

yummybear 8y ago

Amazing work, but I'm genuinely surprised that you can uncover top spy identities, just using publicly, and leaked, material available over the internet.

throwaway23785 8y ago
I wouldn't call "In our source’s words" or "from two separate sources with access to [passport] databases" as public material on the Internet. In fact, it very much reads as a classical parallel construction [1], e.g. some secret service identified the suspect through their work (anything from double agents to court-ordered wiretapping to illegal wiretapping) and back-fed details to some independent organization to create a train-of-thought from it and publish it. Especially since the public group photo is marked "[we] do not claim" and the truly exposing details come from secret databases from secret "sources". That is not public or verifiable information. We had things like that here (here being a former eastern-bloc non-USSR country, where people are extra cautious of manipulations because being spoon fed with propaganda for 40 years) exposed fairly recently trough leaked wiretapping files. It was in all combinations. A journalist begging secret operatives to give her anything saying she would publish that immediately. Operatives feeding true information to unwitting journalists. And so on... 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
ethbro 8y ago
It's difficult to rewrite the digital past, and every undercover officer was a civilian at some previous point. Essentially it's a defense in depth game. You can sever links between cover identities and real identities, but you can't erase real identities with history as easily. Pierce the obsfuscated link, browse through someone's normal digital life. Starts to make plastic surgery look downright cheap.
Muromec 8y ago
Or maybe it's just bellingcat constructing parallel evidence for already known fact.
pixelperfect 8y ago
Especially when they grew up in a tiny town with population 300 before attending a nearby military academy. This guy's background was very obscure.

rdtsc 8y ago

Outstanding work. Now it is interesting to go back and look at the PR campaign and all the disinformation pushed to deflect and cover it up. The RT channel's interview with the "gay Russian tourists" was precious. https://www.rt.com/news/438356-rt-petrov-boshirov-full-interview/ https://www.rt.com/news/438356-rt-petrov-boshirov-full-inter... > You know, let’s not breach anyone’s privacy. We came to you for protection, but this is turning into some kind of an interrogation. You are going too far. We came to you for protection. You’re not interrogating us. And you can almost see through the logic - "Hmm, the West sympathizes with gays so why don't we insinuate you are gay and then they'll feel sorry for you and forget about you being GRU agents assassinating people".

obmelvin 8y ago
As I read (forget the source) the purpose of insinuating they were gay had to do with convincing Russians they weren't military officers. Because apparently in Russian society it is unthinkable that a military officer would be gay, so if they convince Russian citizens they are gay that also convinces them that they can't be GRU officers.
- rdtsc 8y ago
  Interesting, yeah I can see it. I bet they thought it would work from both angles. Westerners will feel sorry for exposing the gay tourists and Russians will feel convinced they can't be GRU officers.
  - trhway 8y ago
    >Russians will feel convinced they can't be GRU officers Russian internet has a field day(or a month already really) of jokes that the GRU officers, which all are undoubtedly, in the Russian mythos, true patriots and heterosexual macho made in the image of the Putin himself, would carry out every order for the Motherland - to kill a traitor, to die for the Motherland, and even to truly practice homosexuality, all in the name of Motherland on the orders of "the comrade General". The guys in the interview are obviously very bad at impersonating gays, and that follows pretty much the same outrageous "signature" style (the Russian saying is "sewn together using white thread" as it is very noticeable on any garments except white) as using "Novichok" and polonium (or assassinating major opposition leader right in front of the Putin's office windows) - all that is to make sure that there are no doubts about who really did it while of course officially denying any responsibility. Just like the signature killings by Mafia (which the Russian government in its nature really is) - everybody has to clearly understand who did it without the perpetrators and their bosses explicitly claiming it. To the "the_grue" below - sorry, man, no offense, you just don't understand what you're talking about. Most probably you're just not a Russian. Edit: you added that you speak Russian. Being a Russian and speak Russian are 2 very different things. That ridicule you see on the Internet is real, no doubts. What you don't get is that it doesn't make Putin ridiculous [deep] in the eyes of the populace and that it wasn't a failure [deep] in the eyes of that populace - and that is the main tragedy of Russia.

baybal2 8y ago

Key quote: >In our source’s words, an operation of this sort would have typically required a lower-ranked, “field operative” with a military rank of “no higher than captain.” The source further surmised that to send a highly decorated colonel back to a field job would be highly extraordinary, and would imply that “the job was ordered at the highest level.” That speaks for itself

gandhium 8y ago
Well, the fact that Russia arranged "we're just two guys (wink, wink) observing church spires" TV conference for them, shows that they're not just low-level thugs.

myth_drannon 8y ago

Just yesterday there was BBC investigation of killings in Cameroon based only on what is available on the Internet and now this. Amazing!

Muromec 8y ago

That's especially funny that real passport data of high ranked security officer is available in leaked data and you can bribe you way into FSB's database of identity forms to get up to date info as well. It's not same kind of investigation based on open info that bellingcat have done before.

lightgreen 8y ago
You don’t have to bribe FSB directly to buy databases. You simply search among numerous online forums in .ru for a contact in Telegram, ask for a small sample, negotiate a price (100-10000 USD depending on database), pay for it with BTC, and obtain it via Telegram. There was nothing FSB specific in the databases obtained by bellingcat, just regular citizen data.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

alexkearns 8y ago

I think a bit skepticism is due here. Their "proof" that Chepiga and Boshirov are the same person rests almost solely on a supposed strong resemblance between a photo of Chepiga taken in 2003 and photos of Boshirov from 2009 and 2018. I have stared at the photos for a long time and I am not sure they are the same person. Chepiga's eyebrows and bottoms of ears look different. I am not saying that they are not the same person but neither am I convinced they are.

clubm8 8y ago
What specific skills/training do you have that make you more qualified than a trained government analyst to make such a determination?
- alexkearns 8y ago
  I don't see any reference in the article to a trained government analyst having confirmed the resemblance. And where do I claim to be more qualified than anyone in this?
EliRivers 8y ago
Without commenting on the likenesses of the two photos, I do note that a person's ears do change shape, becoming longer throughout their lifetime.
- alexkearns 8y ago
  That's certainly true. Boshirov's photos also show a mole above his right eye. This is missing in the Chepiga photo. But that does not prove they are not the same person as a mole or mark could potentially have appeared later in life. What's your opinion on the likeness, btw?
Waterluvian 8y ago
I hear you. Healthy skepticism here is important. I want to also suggest that the longer you stare at faces, the worse you'll be at drawing any conclusions. It's really hard to say yes or no...it's just not solid enough evidence to be conclusive. Maybe it's plenty to take this hypothesis and drill really deep for more.

steve19 8y ago

So was bellingcat fed this information from a western Intelligence organization and then they parallel constructed it? Seems likely.

iron0013 8y ago
I'd like to know why you think it's likely, considering that it's a strong claim for you to make.
tenfold 8y ago
Is that you, Putin?
int_19h 8y ago
Even if they did, so what? This is not a court of law.

andy_ppp 8y ago

We need to admit the Cold War is back. Is anyone else as terrified as I am of the assault on reason from all sides right now?

lightgreen 8y ago
No Cold War is not back. Modern Russia is very weak compared to USSR.
- jnbiche 8y ago
  Putin's Russia is weak but more bold and reckless than the USSR.

altmind 8y ago

There's an article [in russian] on how easy you can get a government, mobile phone, bank database reports on anybody, you can get list of all bank accounts, history of border crossings, history of mobile phone locations, personal phone numbers, equity ownership, debts and credits online, for tens of $: https://habr.com/post/423947/ https://habr.com/post/423947/ The passport data in the investigation is nothing too special. When total control goes side-by-side with corruption, thats the result.

gonmf 8y ago

This is interesting as an investigative work, but what of it? Are we to believe only Russia conducts extra-judicial assassinations of people of interest? And do we expect the governments responsible to come out and admit it? To me this circus around this particular assassination just appears to stem from having to justify sanctions against Russia by the UK. But then again, I don't expect a country to come out and admit that they'll sanction a country just to weaken it's economy and provoke social instability until they get a more favorable government.

GW150914 8y ago
To me this circus around this particular assassination just appears to stem from having to justify sanctions against Russia by the UK. I’m not going to touch the majority of the bait you’re laying out and instead merely note that the “circus” was probably more a result of the extensive and expensive decontamination required over a large area. Oh yes, and the civilian who died and her partner who was affected. That kind of thing tends to make people pretty upset, no need for sprawling conspiracies of the state required. Personally it didn’t seem like much of a circus unless... did you see the decontamination tents and get a little confused?
- gonmf 8y ago
  Are you upset about the droning of civilians with very little oversight? Are you upset about the kidnapping of civilians into cargo ships to act as prisons without jurisdiction? This attack killed four people, let's say there have been 20 times as many, so 80 deaths overall. do you believe the CIA, Mossad, Iran secret services, China secret services, didn't kill more?
  - GW150914 8y ago
    You seem very dedicated to making this a case of “everyone is bad, so no one is bad.” I’ll repeat that old saw, two wrongs don’t make a right. The injustices and acts of violence committed by America against others don’t justify, excuse, or mitigate similar acts by Russia. Now, can we get back to the topic at hand without these diversions? You were claiming that the “circus” of the UK being outraged by the use of a chemical weapon to attempt to murder two people on their soil, and the incidental killing of a third and injury of a fourth (both civilians) was a “circus” I think. I’m still interested to your non-diversionary response to my take on why that would legitimately anger not just the government of the UK, but anger and terrify its people.

jayalpha 8y ago

I have never heard of bellingcat.com The work seems impressive but I think it should be taken with caution. Who is behind this website that he can access Russian databases via "contacts"? Passport databases contain pictures? (I have no idea) "Bellingcat has contacted confidentially a former Russian military officer of similar rank as Colonel Chepig" How do you find such people? Soldiers should be a dime a dozen, GRU colonels should be hard to find. "Bellingcat and the Insider have obtained “Petrov”‘s and “Boshirov”s border crossing data for a number of countries in Europe and Asia, for the period of validity of their international passports (mid-2016 through today). " Wow. Man, if the "social network research skills" of Eliott Higgins are for real, I have a few other cases he could dig in. EDIT: I think I was right being skeptical. As mentioned here, while looking similar, the persons shown in the pics seem not to be identical to me. Can someone confirm this with software? I would be especially interested in the normalized distance between the eyes. Besides this, he has put a picture online that he obtained illegally and he is violating EU privacy law.

Bendingo 8y ago

More unsubstantiated claims from Bellingcat. Remember that video he "found on youtube" that showed a Russian BUK driving through the streets on East Ukraine ? Well, it turns out it was composited from a video of the street, overlaid with an image of the BUK carrier. [1] Higgins is a fraud and a liar. It's amazing that HN (which I'd always considered a forum for serious, thoughtful and intelligent people) would give credence to anything this guy says. [1] https://sputniknews.com/russia/201809171068089638-russia-boeing-mh-17/ https://sputniknews.com/russia/201809171068089638-russia-boe... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/09/17/world/europe/ap-eu-russia-mh17.html https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/09/17/world/europe/ap-... [3] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh17-russia-13258734 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/malaysia-airlines-f...

meowface 8y ago
Could you elaborate and provide some evidence? The sources you linked don't seem to be related to the claims you're making.
- gandhium 8y ago
  I think he's relating to infamous briefing, where Russian DoD presented quite a lot of fakes trying to shift the blame to Ukraine. One of the fakes were exactly that claim - that the video with Russian Buk was a fake.

snarfybarfy 8y ago

In these games of high level 'politics' I always assume nobody in the public really knows anything. Any claims produced by anyone involved are just claims and not facts that can be verified by me or any of those so called journalists. I personally would trust neither Putin nor Trump with my lunchbox.