BREAKING: New details from the 2015 attempt by Russia's military intelligence to kill Bulgarian citizens with a Novichok-like substance allowed us to make a play-by-play reconstruction of an actual GRU poisoning operation.
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Previously we had identified 8 officers from the GRU’s elite "clandestine overseas operations" unit who traveled under fake identities to Bulgaria in early 2015 during a time when three Bulgarian citizens were poisoned with an unidentifiable substance. bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…
In 2015, the poisonings had remained unresolved. A privately-commissioned analysis at an OPCW-certified lab in Finland had found traces of an unknown substance from the organophoshate family. The world didn't yet know that Novichok was back. 
Two of the victims: A Bulgarian arms manufacturer and his son - had experienced poisoning symptoms twice in 2015. One of the GRU spies present in Bulgaria during both poisonings was Denis Sergeev, a GRU Maj. General who happened to be in the UK during the 2018 Skripal poisonings
Following @Bellingcat's reporting, Bulgarian prosecutors indicted - and issued Interpol arrest warrants - for three of the total of 8 GRU officers whom we had previously identified as visiting Bulgaria near the time of the poisonings.
Last week, Bulgaria's prosecution service suspended its investigation, citing lack of responses to its requests for international cooperation from third countries. We obtained a copy of the suspension document and discovered new interesting facts as well as unexplained omissions.
Bulgarian investigators reconstructed a preparatory visit by the GRU trio in February 2015, when they set up base within an earshot of their targets - near Emilian Gebrev's offices in Sofia - and tailed him and logged his movements for more than a week.
The same trio, pretending to travel independently of one another (but on near-consecutive-numbered passports) came back for the "hit" two months later, on 23 April. They had booked return flights to Moscow on 30 April
However, they all left two days earlier - just hours after a mysterious figure wearing a, well, stupid hat was recorded by security cameras walking around the victims cars and clearly doing something to them.
Here is a collation of footage from different security cameras in the underground garage used by Gebrev's company, showing the movements of the figure with the stupid hat within the 4 minutes he spent inside.
The figure - whom we suspect is Col. Sergeev ("Sergey Fedotov") - appears to apply poison to door handles to cars used by Emilian Gebrev and his production manager. He appears to target specifically the passenger-side door of the car driving by Gebrev's chauffeur.
As Gebrev gets into the car just a few minutes later, he experiences the most pronounced poisoning symptoms - and falls into a coma just a few hours later. His production manager touches his car's door 2 days later, and predictably experiences a milder version of the poisoning.
Gebrev's son doesn't seem to have been targeted by the GRU team - but he falls victim to his efforts to discover what poisoned his father. 2 days after Emilian slips into a coma, his son uses a borrowed "chemical sniffer" device to inspect his dad's car. He also gets exposed.
Clearly, the trio's attempt at poisoning Gebrev and his production manager failed. But they didn't give up. They came back for a second try: although in a different configuration. This time they brought a GRU colleague with medical training: Danil Kapralov
Like his predecessor - "Sergey Pavlov", he requested a "room with a view" at the Hill Hotel - the "view" being to the entrance of Gebrev's office building.
This time, the trio - led again by Denis Sergeev - was in for a surprise. After getting out of hospital, Gebrev and his son moved to their seaside home, some 4 hours away from Sofia. This required some unexpected sight-seeing: the trio ranked up over 1000 km on their rented cars.
It is not certain where and how they caught up with the Gebrevs (they insisted on getting cheaper car models with no GPS systems), but it appears they did. On 28 May Gebrev Sr. felt the onset of the well-known symptoms, and his son drove him straight back to hospital.
Probably convinced they had been successful on the second try, the trio hurried to leave the country asap. On 29 May Sergeev and Gordienko ("Gorshkov") rushed with their car to neighbouring Serbia, and Kapralov left from Sofia to Moscow. They never came back.
Read our full report, which includes a critique of the work of Bulgarian investigators, as well as of the seeming lack of cooperation from international partners. The report is particularly relevant in the context of the @Navalny case. bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…
