BREAKING: One of the 3 GRU officers wanted by Bulgaria under an Interpol Red Notice over the attempted murder of Emilian Gebrev was a Russian diplomat posted to Geneva.
A Bellingcat joint investigation with @the_ins_ru and @ta_media
bellingcat.com/news/2020/02/2…
A Bellingcat joint investigation with @the_ins_ru and @ta_media
bellingcat.com/news/2020/02/2…
@the_ins_ru @TA_MEDIA Last year we disclosed the link of members of the clandestine GRU overseas team to the 2015 poisoning of a Bulgarian arms manufacturer and his son with an unidentified organophosphate. Subsequently, 3 of the suspects ID'd by us were indicted by Bulgaria. bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…
@the_ins_ru @TA_MEDIA Previously we had not named the real identity of one of these indicted GRU officers, Georgy Gorshkov. Now we can confirm this is in fact Egor Gordienko. Following the unsuccessful Bulgarian operation, he was posted to serve as 3rd Secretary at the Russian WTO Mission in Geneva. 
@the_ins_ru @TA_MEDIA Gordienko was posted to Geneva in January 2017. He was accredited to the WTO and planned to stay in Switzerland until the end of 2020. However, he was recalled in October 2018, right after we and @the_ins_ru disclosed the existence of the clandestine GRU team he was part of.
@the_ins_ru @TA_MEDIA During his posting to the WTO, we tracked a large constellation of GRU officers come and go from Geneva. The largest concurrent gathering was around Christmas 2017, when a total of 6 undercover spies arrived, and kept changing their return flights, possibly waiting for someone.
@the_ins_ru @TA_MEDIA We are not sure what Gordienko’s main tasks were while in Geneva. However, we established he was in regular contact with Denis Sergeev, Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, the 3 GRU officers suspected of the Novichok poisonings of Sergey and Yulia Skripal.
@the_ins_ru @TA_MEDIA We also know that 10 days before the Skripals poisoning, another member of the GRU clandestine team - Nikolay Ezhov (cover name: Kononikhin) - visited Geneva, and stayed there until the day before the spire-hunters left Moscow for London.
@the_ins_ru @TA_MEDIA We are going to continue our investigation into Gordienko's function in Switzerland, and in particular his potential role in the preparations for the Salisbury poisoning operation.
@the_ins_ru @TA_MEDIA We discovered that in 2014 Gordienko was gifted an apartment in the same building where Alexander Mishkin received an apartment at the same time. Dr. Mishkin received his apartment as a bonus next to his Hero of Russia award, so it would be logical Gordienko also got the award.
@the_ins_ru @TA_MEDIA During his stay in Geneva, Egor Gordienko appears to have kept in top Spetsnaz shape by signing up to public marathons. He and his family ran the popular Geneva Antigel run in January 2018, and were signed up for the December run.
@the_ins_ru @TA_MEDIA Our attempts to get the Russian mission in Geneva to explain Gordienko's function led to a surprising answer. The spokesperson for the mission told us they had no info of such a diplomat ever existing. This in turn led to some funny questions by our Swiss investigator partner
@the_ins_ru @TA_MEDIA You can read coverage of this story in Russian here
