Thread by @inteltakes

#Russian "robot-dog" story is getting better and better. Meet Alexey Aristov (left) and Alexandr Atamanov (right), the team behind the new Russian marvel of technology. Long 🧵 #ARMY2022 #Russia #OSINT @JimmySecUK @d0tslash @N_Waters89 @AricToler

Alexey is a typical "new Russian" businessman with lavish life on Instagram (aleksei.aristov). He claim to be financial lawyer from St. Petersburg. Wife is an Instagram influencer with more than 700k followers (ananovaa). Gosh... the ban on Instagram must have been painful...

His partner has a similar profile. Alexandr (insta: aatamanov) is an entrepreneur fascinated by #drones. Owner of @HoversurfClub. Initial digging was done in July by @AbderRaoufAmir in this thread.

Company "Intelligent Machines" which "created" M-81 - an armed bionic robot dog, is owned by Alexey. Registered in April 2022 with a share capital of approx. 160 USD. Also, the company's office address is far from Instagram-worthy.

Looks like the relationship with Unitree Go1 started in February 2022 at @TechnoparkSk. Since then Alexandr was busy upgrading his creation with weapons.

Test runs were done frequently around Alexey's house in the posh Lahta neighborhood in St. Petersburg. That included promo shot for #ARMY2022 forum banner.👌 #opsec .

The first "promotional" video was launched on 31.07.

Worth noting that M-81 (or rather @UnitreeRobotics Go1) does not have thermal vision capacity. POV shots were probably done with Alexy's private FLIR camera that he use to play innocent games with his kids. Hence the same timer in the upper-left corner.

Besides thermal vision, M-81 also lacks @flipper_zero counter systems as shown by @d0tslash. Is it too early to send flippers to #Ukraine army?

To sum up - rich boys are playing with cool toys and banking on the ignorance of Russian society and the lack of tech knowledge in the Russian military. Good PR stunt, nothing else.