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Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe
- gumby 3y agoAmazing if true!
- asveikau 3y agoInteresting seeing this website with a .ru domain. Haven't been following them, but seems like they're based in Latvia. I don't think they would live comfortably being physically in Russia, but also seems like the state could seize the domain.
- dralley 3y agoThey also have a mirrored .press domain
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- Klaster_1 3y agoThe Insider has been systematically repressed by the Putin's regime: * "Foreign agent" label in 2021. This means massive restrictions on income sources and a target of gradually increasing restrictions as years go by. * "Undesirable organization" in 2022. Donating to such organizations is a criminal offense. * Roman Dobrokhotov - the Insider founder - has been wanted in Russia since 2021.
- acdha 3y agoHow does that not translate into the .ru domain name being seized?
- Klaster_1 3y agoAs far as I'm aware, no ".ru" domains have been seized yet from media independent from the Russian government. Instead, they prefer to block website access - by law, every ISP has to install DPI-enabled hardware, which is used to censor the net.
- Glacia 3y agoWhy seize a domain when you can just block it country wide?
- gotts 3y agoseizing the domain would give them nothing. Insider has a well established brand, they can easily reopen it in any other domain. Also getting some private information during the registration process might be helpful for the state.
- fnord77 3y agoCan't wait for the HBO series
- dylan604 3y agoYou hope it's an HBO series and not a Netflix one. I'd be very happy if the producers of Chernobyl worked on it
- fnord77 2y agoI used "HBO" meaning generic streaming producer. I don't care who makes it.
- elie_douna 3y agoCraig Mazin who developed Chernobyl is also the showrunner for The Last of Us - season 2 is out next year. He'd be perfect for an East Germany based spy series with a tone similar to Chernobyl combined with The Lives of Others
- dylan604 3y agoThat scene in Chernobyl breaking down the explosion is one of my favorite scenes of all time. It's a subject matter that is very specific, they covered in enough detail to be legit, but glossed over enough to not loose the audience. Something that a producer would want in a TV show and an attorney presenting a case. Of course all of the underlying "In Soviet Russia..." type references of the State does no wrong while having it shoved in their face were priceless to me as well.
- tootie 3y agoThis was a collaboration with Bellingcat. The same organization that was featured in the Navalny documentary as having found the assassination squad and eliciting a confession.
- bufferoverflow 3y agoTheInsider is a very anti-russian website.
- BWStearns 3y agoI didn't know the GRU had an illegals program. I thought it was all SVR. Anyone know if that's a recent development?
- surfingdino 3y agoAll major intelligence agencies have them. Why GRU would be any different?
- BWStearns 3y agoGRU is nominally military intelligence and SVR inherited the KGB illegals program. These programs are really hard and have a ton of overhead supporting a relatively small number of actual officers. Having duplicate capabilities for it is a waste. Especially in this case where they're used for active crimes/violence. The GRU has never been shy about just going and murdering people on a tourist visa[0], why bother with all the extra overhead? Not all (or even most) intelligence agencies run illegals programs since they're crazy difficult, fragile, expensive, and arguably a waste of effort/resources. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/05/planes-trains-and-fake-names-the-trail-left-by-skripal-suspects https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/05/planes-train...
- surfingdino 3y agoAgencies need all types of spies, some laying low for years in case their networks get rolled up.
- mandevil 3y agoWhile it is probably a waste of resources, dictatorships are famous for having wasteful duplicated efforts: dictators need their people to constantly be competing with each other, and to split favor so that no one ever becomes strong enough to pose a threat to the Big Man himself. That is the whole reason for the GRU-KGB split in the first place!
- surfingdino 3y ago
- amarant 3y agoWow that story is like something straight out of spy-romanticising drama! Crazy that such undercover agents really exist! Also, I wonder what the pay is like? Or how it even works.. probably best to not leave a obvious money trail between state and spy..
- tharmas 3y agoI recommend "The Octopus Murders" on Netflix. The "spy world" is active in all kinds of activities. Many unsavory. All in the name of "the National Interest". Also the story of Gary Webb is quite interesting too.
- toofy 3y agoThe Octopus Murders was absolutely fantastic.
- dboreham 3y agoAgreed. See also Epstein. Very spook-connected dude.
- FabHK 3y agoAnd Jan Marsalek, of fake German payment startup Wirecard.
- bitcharmer 3y agoThere's a theory circulating that Epstein's network was essentially CIA's honeypot for wealthy and powerful people. I mean, that would be an insanely high value asset if true. And knowing this organization's track record I would not be surprised if this were true.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoNah not CIA. Mossad. Given the number of US businessmen or presidents hanging out at the island it almost certainly not the Americans. Epstein's homegirl, Ghislaine, had some pretty strong ties to them through her father. She was probably his handler and/or gopher. Her dad, Robert Maxwell, born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch, had some pretty strong ties to Israeli intelligence. Also worth noting he had strong ties to everyone else, including the KGB and UK intelligence, too. But at his funeral Israeli heads of state mentioned "he did more for Israel than could ever be told", and that was thought to be related to Israel acquiring what is believed to be a nuclear weapons program. He famously sued the hell out of anyone in the UK who alluded to those relationships -- libel and slander laws are different in ole Blighty -- and it took an MP going on the record in the House of Commons, which is always recorded and is always public record, to expose his questionable ties. He also famously died of highly suspicious circumstances on his boat out in the middle of nowhere. That said, look into the history of Donald Barr, the father of Bob Barr, and a good friend/mentor of Epstein's. Raised Jewish but converted to Catholicism, served in the OSS, and had a lot of interesting ties to interesting people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Barr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Barr
- rramadass 3y agoInteresting story; but as with all matters of this kind it is hard to know what is fact, what is fiction, what is disinformation/misinformation and what is propaganda. Folks interested in spy-craft would love the classic Deception : The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA by Edward Jay Epstein. This book provides insight into how deception is at the root of all disinformation/misinformation/propaganda/etc. which can be extrapolated to what is happening today in the larger media industry - https://archive.org/details/Deception-TheInvisibleWarBetweenTheKGBAndTheCIA https://archive.org/details/Deception-TheInvisibleWarBetween...
- cynicalsecurity 3y ago[flagged]
- rramadass 3y ago[flagged]
- CamperBob2 3y agoI think you missed their point, which was that misinformation isn't about getting you to believe wrong things, but about getting you to believe nothing at all.
- acdha 3y agoA little skepticism is healthy for an unfamiliar source but don’t let your cynicism turn into a blindfold. This is in keeping with decades of precedent and describes official actions by the Czech government which can be verified, and it’s unclear to me what benefit Russia would have from drawing attention to their sabotage operations so you might want to start with a working theory there.
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- qaq 3y agowell the warehouse being blown up is a fact in the interest of what country is not really a secret This has very little propaganda value for either side
- aaronbrethorst 3y agoThis is my semi annual plug for all of you to watch the fantastic and somehow forgotten FX network TV show, The Americans, A spy drama set in Washington DC in the 1980s about KGB “illegals” posing as travel agents. It’s way better than any basic cable TV show had any right to be. Plus, all seasons are streaming on Hulu, so you don’t have to worry about whether the story will be completed. https://www.hulu.com/series/the-americans-6deba130-65fb-4816-acb1-aea5eb940f0f?dl=false https://www.hulu.com/series/the-americans-6deba130-65fb-4816...
- euroderf 3y agoLoosely based on an actual case.
- legitster 3y ago> It’s way better than any basic cable TV show had any right to be Don't do FX like that. They had a juggernaut lineup of great shows at the time (which is why The Americans kind of got pushed to a backburner).
- buzzy_hacker 3y agoOne of the best TV shows of all time, I second your recommendation. Rare show that gets better with each season.
- croisillon 3y agoi don't know about that, the last 1 or to some extent the last 2 seasons were a bit lazy
- yeahwhatever10 3y agoThe Americans is pretty banal and follows the basic script you would expect. It's good background noise if you want 80s nostalgia though.
- skipants 3y agoI'm with you. I don't really agree with all the praise it gets. I liked it at first but it really seemed to run into the "manufactured drama" trap that a lot of TV shows run into when they try and keep it going. It really ruined my suspense of disbelief.
- tucnak 3y ago> Elena was also deeply involved with her husband’s enterprise and intimately aware of Imex’s operations. In many ways, she seemed to be supervising and directing Nikolay’s activities in direct coordination with Andrey Averyanov, the head of Unit 29155. She communicated with Gen. Andrey Averyanov via email; his Gmail address, registered from a Russian IP address, is vitazi31@gmail.com. (“Vitazi” in Russian means “knights.”) So what's the working hypothesis these days, either American SIGINT works, or it doesn't? Update my priors in a moment... What is it, 50/50 either true or false? Well, you know what they say; the Americans truly are on the game!
- thriftwy 3y agoSeems implause that a Russian speaker will drop a soft spot in the word витязи. I would definitely search for somebody who is named VITaly and whose last name starts with AZI.
- thriftwy 3y ago[flagged]
- kvgr 3y agoDo you mean blow up ammunition before invasion? Not enough?
- thriftwy 3y agoIt's one of a stockpiles in a small country (out of many) which doesn't even border Ukraine, and the one who had a lot of economic integration going on with Russia. That also predated the axtual war 10 years. A Russian would say to you that if it's indeed a GRU op, they should do an internal investigation and shoot behind the garden shed the ones who devised / permitted it, after making effort to find out whether they were working for the other side, or just dumb on their own. Or perhaps the whole GRU is defunct. Many Russians would not reject this idea outright.
- benterix 3y ago> A Russian would say to you that if it's indeed a GRU op, they should do an internal investigation and shoot behind the garden shed the ones who devised / permitted it, after making effort to find out whether they were working for the other side, or just dumb on their own. A naive Russian, I would say. Let's take a simple example: > In 2009 the Šapošnikovs purchased a sprawling villa on the picturesque Aegean peninsula of Halkidiki, Greece. The price, as recorded in the notarial deed of purchase obtained by The Insider, was 275,292 euros, or $300,000 at the time. Elena would later tell investigators that she had funded the investment “with money from my parents” – a tall order for the septuagenarian couple living in Kyiv on pensions of under $300 per month. I don't believe that the people who approved such money transfers were small fish in the GRU.
- SXX 3y agoWhile I have no doubt about the story and these guys being GRU spies... These numbers are laughtably small. You can't imagine amount of corruption in Russia. Any high-ranking policeman in a mid-sized city will own few villas like that. GRU agent who can smuggle anything and everything might easily have millions of dollars under their pillow.
- timthelion 3y agoWhat I don't understand is why the attack on the Czech Republic was not seen as an attack by Russia on NATO.
- baybal2 3y ago[dead]
- Waterluvian 3y agoNATO countries have been consistently looking the other way or downplaying Russian aggression because nobody actually wants to have to get into the sty and get dirty wrestling the pig to the ground. I don't even think it's based on any realistic concerns of nuclear or conventional escalation... incumbents just don't want to be the ones in power when war happens. I think many aggressors have learned to capitalize on this weakness.
- Georgelemental 3y agoBecause NATO is not raring for nuclear armadeggon?
- epistasis 3y agoIf responding to this would mean nuclear armageddon, then what is Russia doing by attacking NATO in this way? Rolling over beacuse somebody is a nuclear power only seems to come up when Russia is in the chat. If China or Israel attacks someone, nobody says "we can't respond to it because it would start a nuclear war." What is it about Russia that makes Russia so irresponsible? And if it is, isn't it time to completely eliminate all economic ties with Russia, and pressure every other country in the world to do the same, until Russia decides to be a responsible country with their nuclear weapons.
- vkou 3y ago> If responding to this would mean nuclear armageddon, then what is Russia doing by attacking NATO in this way? Doing low-stakes trial runs of its capability for sabotage in a future conflict. The reason it can do this against NATO is because NATO has non-war means to tit-for-tat punish Russia for this sort of behaviour. Those means are called sanctions, and there could always be more of them. NATO does not do much of the converse, because Russia has very few non-war ways to punish NATO. NATO would really not like Russia's tit-for-tat response, which is why it prefers to fight arms-length proxy wars, instead.
- captn3m0 3y ago> In both cases, she used sophisticated tradecraft that sought to leave no trace in databases accessible to European authorities. For instance, she booked her trips and bought her plane tickets using her Czech passport, registering only that nationality with the Greek airline. But upon crossing the Russian border, Šapošnikova used her secret Russian passport, thus bypassing the need to obtain a Russian visa issued to her as a Czech citizen and eliding the digital footprint associated with the relevant application. Wouldn't the Greek airline (and Greek exit immigration control) check for a valid Russian visa for a Czech passport? They had to put the exit stamp on _something_? Or did she use the Russian passport, but then wouldn't that get scanned into the system?
- mmsc 3y agoThe airline only needs to be physically shown a passport which will get the person into the destination: they don’t record it. So you book with the Czech passport, go through border control with the Czech passport, then show the airline staff the Russian passport.
- mrighele 3y agoI may be wrong, but every time you do a check-in you are giving your information and they record it, and you have to show the same document at boarding time. This doesn't mean that it must be the same document that you used to enter or exit the country though, although depending on the destination the airline may require proof that you can enter the destination country, like a visa or a passport, because having a passenger refused entry may be an hassle for them. You can use a document to exit the departure country, another for the airline (with the caveat above) and another one for the destination, even with different names on them.
- mmsc 3y agoYou would should both to the airline staff. "This is my ID I used, and this is my ID which allows me entry so you(the airline) won't have to bring me all the way back to my arrival point." Airline staff will not record this second form of ID: it's only to show the staff for a moment.
- imwillofficial 3y agoLike a real life episode of The Americans
- imwillofficial 3y agoI have no idea why this comment is getting trashed
- mmsc 3y ago> In both cases, she used sophisticated tradecraft that sought to leave no trace in databases accessible to European authorities. For instance, she booked her trips and bought her plane tickets using her Czech passport, registering only that nationality with the Greek airline. But upon crossing the Russian border, Šapošnikova used her secret Russian passport, thus bypassing the need to obtain a Russian visa issued to her as a Czech citizen and eliding the digital footprint associated with the relevant application. “ sophisticated tradecraft “ lol what? It’s generally illegal in most countries to use another country’s passport within the country your passport is from. You can’t have a German and Argentinian passport and enter Germany with the German passport and leave with the Argentinian one. Nor can you leave Germany with just the Argentinian one. You can go to other Schengen countries, but you can't leave the Schengen region ("since is your entrance stamp?")
- chatmasta 3y agoMany (most?) countries do not require you to show any passport when exiting the country. (But if you’re traveling by air, then the next country you enter will likely share your passport details with the country you just departed.)
- ivan_gammel 3y agoCan you give an example? Sounds strange to me. Even within Schengen area there can be temporary border checks and you usually need to identify yourself when leaving it.
- askonomm 3y agoIn-shengen border controls are extremely easy to bypass, and if you travel a lot you know exactly where they are (especially since it is quite rare). Baltic countries have no checks at all at the borders, so you can go Sweden to Finland, Finland to Estonia, Estonia all the way down to Poland without any checks at all, easy. I know there's often a check at the France / Spain border, but I also know they only check busses and rarely any cars, so you can just either drive through with a rental car or just walk over (I once got my ID stolen and could not get over with a bus, so I hitchhicked / walked from Nice to Barcelona).
- syngrog66 3y agoRussian website, yikes
- Krasnol 3y ago> On 23 July 2021 Russia's Ministry of Justice added The Insider to its list [ru] of "foreign mass media performing the functions of a foreign agent".[66][67] On 14 December 2021 a court in Moscow ordered the outlet to pay 1 million rubles.[68] On 15 July 2022, the publication was banned in Russia alongside Bellingcat. Following this restriction, any Russian citizen who aids Bellingcat or The Insider may face criminal prosecution; they would also be restricted from citing their publications. The office of the Prosecutor-General of Russia said that they were banned due to "posing a threat to the security of the Russian Federation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Insider_(website) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Insider_(website)
- int_19h 3y agoI do wonder how they managed to retain that domain name. Most news orgs that were banned in Russia moved to other TLDs.
- Krasnol 3y agoYes, I thought that too but since we're on the Cold War level again, it might be a trick and the article a glorification of Russian agents...on the other hand, they work with Bellingcat and if those guys don't think it's fishy...at least I wouldn't dare to question their resources.
- edm0nd 3y agoThe website is banned sitewide on reddit. If you post any URL of it, it gets auto blocked and wont successfully submit.
- trallnag 3y ago.ru domains are awesome, they give owners a lot of freedom when it comes to hosted content
- cryptonector 3y ago> Travel and border crossing data, recently made available thanks to an avalanche of terabytes leaked from Russian government databases, showed that Elena Šapošnikova is in possession of a secret Russian passport. Critically, her nine-digit passport number is part of a numerical range reserved exclusively for members of Unit 29155, differing from those of her colleagues only by its last two digits. Šapošnikova’s is 646518955. That is very sloppy of Russia. Why even bother doing something so dumb? > Šapošnikova used this passport to travel between Greece and Russia on at least two occasions, once in December 2015 and the second time in December 2017. In both cases, she used sophisticated tradecraft that sought to leave no trace in databases accessible to European authorities. For instance, she booked her trips and bought her plane tickets using her Czech passport, registering only that nationality with the Greek airline. But upon crossing the Russian border, Šapošnikova used her secret Russian passport, thus bypassing the need to obtain a Russian visa issued to her as a Czech citizen and eliding the digital footprint associated with the relevant application. How does "bypassing the need to obtain a Russian visa" "elide the digital footprint associated with the relevant application"? Why would the Czech government learn of a visa application to Russia? The airline most likely would want to know that Šapošnikova had a visa, so they would have looked, and Šapošnikova would have shown them her Russian passport, which the airline probably would have reported to Czech authorities (I imagine that's what happens normally). So this is just more sloppiness, or at least TFA reaches the wrong conclusion about the point of not Šapošnikova not applying for a visa. Perhaps she should have applied for a visa so as not to have to reveal her Russian passport to the airline, or she should have had a different Russian passport to show the airline. In any case, having a block of passport numbers for a super-secret ops team is just beyond dumb. It's so dumb that I'm not sure I believe it -- I might sooner believe that such evidence was planted than that such evidence is real, but maybe the Russians just don't have enough Soviet-era intelligence clue left and haven't developed enough post-Soviet intelligence capabilities.
- eastbound 3y agoYes: “Great, you’re our spy now. Keep it secret. Also, please always carry on you this piece of Russian evidence with serial numbers adjacent to all our other moles, because otherwise our own border patrol may reject you on entry with your Czech passport, I decided.” So they’re telling us that Russia is that bad at spying. But the first commercial supersonic jet was the Tupolev 144, not the Concord.
- What2159 3y agoLet's focus on the real enemy TikTok. </sarcasm> Why isn't there more focus on Russia. Not saying China isn't spying but that why the CIA gets billions. Russia is actively blowing shit up.
- _HMCB_ 3y agoWhere is the wife? Apparently the husband died.
- Employee6645 3y agoGreece
- gmerc 3y agoChristo, Michael and Bellingcat have done more to make Europe safe than most intelligence services on the continent. In fact many of those have shown to be compromised by the Russians from the right extremism side - Maassen in Germany, The Wirecard dude in Austria, etc.
- jojobas 3y agoIt's not much safer now that a bunch of disposable Russians have been exposed. Russian businessmen moved to the EU and the US by the thousand per year. We won't know who of them are "businessmen" and nobody is even pretending to check.
- anovikov 3y agoWell it's a lot better than not letting them leave. Staying in and paying taxes there supports Putin; plus if they knew they are stuck in and can't move to the civilised world, they'd have to develop some sense of belonging with Russia. EU is making everything possible to suck out everyone with half the brain from Russia and this is a good thing. A lot of new immigration programs that appear to be specifically tailored to be convenient for Russians, appeared since the war began. So the logic is to: - make tourism/travel harder by limiting visas and having people fly through far away stopovers (Dubai, Istanbul, or Belgrade for those who can afford $2K economy ticket) - make immigration easier - make any cross-border business harder - no SWIFT, no way to get in Russian IT-related money and most of the money overall even if transfer happens through 3rd world, etc. This way people leave, realise they can't live in 2 countries and have to pick, then realise they can't do cross border business nearly as conveniently as they hoped, so concentrate on local or US market, then realise how much easier it is vs doing business in Russia (all they need to do that is a magic kick to initially force them to), and never look back. Granted, few of them believe in democracy or even opposed to Putin. Mostly they see Europe as "safe place with a system which is easy to game", but that's OK. Their children will integrate and will be different. After all, save for American expats and Hong Kong refugees (who go to UK anyway), these are by far the best kind of immigrants Europe can hope for.
- 3y ago
- lyu07282 3y ago> In March, The Insider, along with its investigative partners 60 Minutes and Der Spiegel, uncovered evidence implicating Unit 29155 in directed energy attacks thought to be the cause of Havana Syndrome "Evidence" is such a strong word to use for what that investigation revealed, but I suppose it goes a long way of revealing the nature of articles like that
- whimsicalism 3y agoThere have been a number of recent high-level apprehensions of Russian and, particularly, Chinese spies in the EU. I wonder if there has been a major break for Western intel agencies recently