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Recently, an international team of journalists not only proved that the Russian secret service had poisoned Alexei Navalny, the leading figure in the Russian opposition in the summer of 2020, but also showed exactly who did the dirty work. Were the exposed officers paralyzed or unscrupulous? The research process is as exciting as the end result itself.
Was poisoned by your team Alexei Navalny?
The CNN reporter asked. Clarissa ward at the front door of a ruined apartment in Moscow Oleg Tajakinnak. The man, according to an investigation by CNN, Spiegel, Insider and Bellingcat, participated in a Russian intelligence operation aimed at rooting out Navalny with a neurotoxin named rookies. Vladimir Putin most important political opponent. Navalny, with a good chance only thanks to his luck, survived the attack and plans to return to Russia. Tajakin did not answer the question and closed the door.
At first glance, it may seem very strange that journalists can disguise a crime of this type with a few months of work, since normally these attacks are carried out in the greatest secrecy by agents. However, Bellingcat explained in detail in an article how we managed to roll up practically the entire network, but before we get into that, let’s summarize what happened:
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On August 20, 2020, Navalny was taken to the hospital in an unconscious state with signs of poisoning after the plane carrying him made a forced landing in Omsk. The plane would have flown from Novosibirsk to Tomsk.
- His assistants are concerned about Navalny, who is in a coma, and are fighting for the man to be transported to Germany and continue to be treated there.
- Russian doctors say Navalny’s malaise was caused by diabetes or blood pressure problems, but in early September the German government announced that traces of novices had been found in the politician’s organization. This was later confirmed by three independent laboratories and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
- The politician’s staff collects all the furniture from the Omsk hotel room, and novices are also found in a significant part of the objects.
- Navalny’s condition improves steadily during his hospital treatment in Germany, he can get out of bed in mid-September and give an interview in early October.
The most important clue to the attack on Navalny is the novices themselves, as he is clearly linked to the KGB’s successor organization, the FSB. On the one hand, because they developed it, and on the other hand, because in 2018, it was this neurotoxin that was used to try to kill him in Salisbury, United Kingdom. Sergei scriptal, former agent of the Russian military secret service, GRU. Skripal and his daughter, Julia survived the attack, but an English woman died in it. After half a year of investigation, the culprits were identified, two GRU agents using pseudonyms who explained in an absurd video that they were innocent and that they were only in Salisbury to see the famous cathedral.
There is something that Putin cannot forgive
Sergei Skripal received just a few tens of millions of guilders to pass on Russian secrets to the British, but in Vladimir Putin’s eyes, this was a serious betrayal. And the Russian secret service will not forget it.
Data treasure mine
Bellingcat, who has extensive experience in similar revelations, was also involved in the re-enactment of the Skripal case. how the details were revealed.
“Most of the information we use for the research is not available in Western countries, but it is available in Russia for free or for some money,” they write, and is probably one of the key points of the research. In 2019 Andrej zaharov a Russian journalist was able to obtain his own passport data on the Russian internet black market for about 23 euros, which revealed when and where he traveled, but could also have obtained the data from wild strangers in the same way. For about 110 euros he bought the mobile phone data of him and one of his relatives, when and with whom they had called, and even found out where they were at the time of each call.
According to Bellingcat, certain sensitive information is retrieved from databases by low-ranking bank, telephone or police employees. In other cases, due to security vulnerabilities in Russian email providers and social networking sites like Vkontakte, sensitive data could fall into the wrong hands.
The mysterious passengers
All of this background information will help us understand how Alexei Navalny, shortly after he announced that he would run in the Russian presidential election three years ago, was found to receive a lot of attention from the FSB. In 2017, as well as in 2019 and 2020, members of a task force dealing with poisonings continually followed him to different parts of Russia, sitting on the same plane thirty times.
Journalists also identified the three men who traveled to Novosibirsk and then Tomsk in August 2020 with the unsuspecting Navalny.
Alexei Alexandrov, Ivan Osipov and Vlagyimir Panyajevet was supervised by at least five other FSBs, some of whom went to Omsk after Navalny was taken to the local hospital while they kept in touch by phone.
The journalists used the list of passenger flights to uncover the perpetrators. The Bellingcat team has accessed dozens of leaked databases in recent years, so if new information emerges, they can compare it to previous data. In addition, it was pointed out, the databases that circulate on the Internet cannot be modified later, so the possibility of manipulation is minimal. The research hypothesis was that the operatives would not travel with Navalny in a plane, but with an earlier or later one. Navalny flew from Moscow to Novosibirsk on August 14, from there he would have traveled to Tomsk and then returned to Moscow on August 20. However, he did not reach Tomsk due to his discomfort, the plane made a forced landing in Omsk.
These agents, two of whom traveled under disguised identities, are Alexey Alexandrov (40), Ivan Osipov (44), both doctors, and Vladimir Panyaev (40). pic.twitter.com/z1ANoK6JK3
– Bellingcat (@bellingcat) December 14, 2020
Investigators found a man on the passenger lists, Alexei Frolov, which flew from the Russian capital to Novosibirsk on August 13 and originally flew back from Tomsk to Moscow on August 21. This could even be a coincidence, but on the one hand the number of passengers fell drastically due to the coronavirus epidemic, and on the other hand Frolov did not board the flight to Tomsk on the 21st. Another clue is that two other men were listed as passengers on Frolov’s plane ticket, suggesting that they had bought their ticket at the same time. The two, Frolov and Ivan Spiridonov There were no hits in their name, no tax identification number, no home address, but they traveled under that name in Russia for years.
However, there was an impact on the third man. With the GetContact application, you can look up the name of a phone number in the phonebook of other mobile users, and in someone the man was entered in such a way that
FSB Vladimir Alexandrovich Panyayev.
Of course, this is not yet clear evidence of a secret service relationship, but subsequent research has shown that Panyayev or Frolov, or a Alexei Alexandrov together with a man named Navalny on several occasions he was right where Navalny, whether in Astrakhan or Chelyabinsk. Then the journalists tried to locate Alexandrov and came to the following: he was born on June 16, 1981, while the supposed Frolov was born on June 16, 1980; Alexandrov’s wife’s maiden name is Frolova; “Frolov” and Alexandrov have been in the same city with Navalny on several occasions. That is, Bellingcat concludes that Frolov is a pseudonym for Alexandrov.
And some more clues:
- Alexandrov was in constant contact with someone on a Moscow phone number a few days before the poisoning, who Mihail svec registered in your name. Svec’s car was registered at 116 Trubeckaja út, where, however, it is not a residential building, but the FSB Special Deployment Center.
- The pseudo-Frolov was logged several times a few days after the poisoning from another Moscow phone number, which was also used to pay a parking fee. Both the phone number and the car license plate can be traced back to a single person, Stanislav Valentinovich Maksakov to the Colonel, whose official address is the Center for Military Scientific Research of the Ministry of Defense, and who previously worked in the laboratory where the novices were developed.
- Finally we come to Oleg Tajakin, who was visited by a CNN reporter, who flew under the pseudonym Tarasov in 2014 with Alexandrov, and in 2015, who received military chemical training. Konstantin with Kudryavtsev (pseudonym Sokolov), who previously also worked in the laboratory that developed the rookies. Tajakin and Kudryachev work at the FSB Criminal Institute.
All that matters is theft
Alexei Navalny produced a 50-minute explanatory video on the investigation, which can also be viewed with English subtitles. Among other things, he also says that shortly before he was poisoned, on a short vacation, his wife fell ill and was ill for a day. The cause is still unknown to this day, but it is suspected that there may have been mild rookie poisoning in the background, especially since Navalny had previously experienced similar discomfort on a flight. So August was probably not the first attempt to oust a politician, but it didn’t work this time either.
Given the above research, the question inevitably arises: how is it possible to detect the activities of the Russian secret service using databases available to anyone? Would they be so unscrupulous? Or are they so clumsy? Bellingcat, for example, discovered a pattern in the way FSB agents developed their alter ego: the first name remained, the month and day of birth also remained, only one year was added or subtracted, and the last name was the wife. or agent’s girlfriend (maiden name).
According to Navalny, it’s about everything breaking down in Russia during Putin’s twenty years, from healthcare to space exploration to the FSB, and this affects the functioning of the entire system:
Everything in the country has already collapsed and the leaders are only looking at how they could steal.
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