The U.S. Justice Department charged six Russians with hacking charges last week, accusing them of working for the GRU. Turns out, three of these hackers registered their car to the same imaginary apartment in Moscow... along with 46 other people.
bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…
Vehicle registration databases for the Moscow oblast leak regularly, making it easy to check residential data. If you search for three of these hackers, you see that they "live" at Svobody 21, apartment V (В in Russian). The problem: this apartment doesn't exist.
Svobody 21 is the address of military unit 74455 -- the GRU hacking unit involved in a number of high-profiled cyberattacks, including against the OPCW, Macron campaign, and others. 49 Russians registered their vehicles to apartments В and ВЧ (short for "military unit").
The demographics for these 49 people is about what you'd expect for a bunch of GRU hackers: 38 men, 11 women, and all born between 1978 and 1998. Average age -- 32 years old.
This isn't some super-crowded communal apartment -- it's common for Russian soldiers and intel officers to register their vehicles to their workplace. We saw the same thing with 305 (!) people registering their addresses to other known GRU addresses: bellingcat.com/news/2018/10/0…
Other than the three hackers indicted last week, none of the other (46) people who registered their vehicles to a non-existent apartment housed in the same building as a GRU hacking unit have been named in any public record we can find as GRU officers or hackers.
One of the other six hackers -- Yury Andrienko -- didn't register to Svobody 21. Instead, he picked Khoroshevskoe 76B... the headquarters of the GRU. One of the Skripal poisoners, Alexander Mishkin, also listed this as his home address.
bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…

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More from @bellingcat

23 Oct
We've published a new, major investigation (along with @the_ins_ru, @derspiegel, and @SvobodaRadio) into the cooperation between the GRU's military unit 29155 and two research centers to develop and deploy chemical weapons -- including Novichok.
bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…
We've acquired the phone logs for a number of officers with the GRU's unit 29155, including Andrei Averyanov. A number that kept popping up on these logs was that of Sergey Chepur -- a 50-year old military doctor and expert in extreme toxicology.
Sergey Chepur is the director of the St. Petersburg State Institute for Experimental Military Medicine of the Min. of Defense. Phone logs show that he would make a number of calls to GRU officers right before a number of key operations, including the poisoning of Sergey Skripal. Image
Read 9 tweets
23 Oct
In a joint investigation with @LHreports @derspiegel @ARDde @tv_asahi_news and research and reporting by @EmmanFre, we have uncovered evidence that the European border force @Frontex is complicit in illegal “pushback” operations in the Aegean.

bellingcat.com/news/2020/10/2…
Pushbacks are when refugees and migrants are forced back over a border without consideration of individual circumstances & without possibility to apply for asylum or appeal.

We have previously written about one such pushback in detail.

bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…
We spent months collecting data on @Frontex assets, where they were based & where they travelled.

We overlaid that with a database of reported pushbacks we gathered from @alarm_phone, Consolidated Rescue Group and Monitoring Rescue Cell.
Read 12 tweets
18 Oct
Anatoly Shariy (@anatoliisharii) responded to our investigation. He maintains that he had received the Bezler files from an anonymous source & stated “I don't care about the source, I gave a more complete record than the one that was published by the SBU”
bellingcat.com/news/2020/10/1…
Shariy also wrote that he received the full recording of the Geranin conversation, but left out the part about the shelling of Rozivka because he believed it was “insignificant”.
He subsequently shared a video of him playing the full recording on his computer which revealed that his file was the same size and carried the same filename as the one that Bezler emailed to a high ranking GRU official and to a Russian lawyer from the law firm Ivanyan & Partners
Read 4 tweets
17 Oct
In our new MH17 article, we revisit the recordings with Russian DNR commander Igor Bezler that previously linked him to the MH17 downing. We examined new unpublished intercepts, Bezler’s unpublished testimony, and new information introduced at the trial.
bellingcat.com/news/2020/10/1…
The Dutch prosecution had revealed new details about the so-called “birdie conversation” in which Bezler subordinate Stelmakh informs Bezler that it was observed how a birdie (a plane) flew in his direction shortly before the MH17 downing. MH17 flew on a similar path.
It turns out that birdie conversation was recorded just short of two minutes before the MH17 downing, which has cast doubt on the theory that it concerned MH17 or contributed to the downing–reasons why Bezler has not been indicted.
Read 9 tweets
16 Oct
We've just published a new long-form investigation by @kooleksiy detailing how American religious conservative groups have attempted to restrict the expansion of rights for the LGBT community in Ukraine: bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…
Our findings suggest that Steve Weber, longtime head of the Ukrainian branch of the US Christian Broadcasting Network, initiated the creation of a “pro-family” umbrella organisation whose members run nationwide anti-LGBT campaigns and oppose anti-discriminatory changes to laws.
Public records in Ukraine link Steve Weber to American veteran pastor turned lobbyist Dale Armstrong who in 2018 was involved in an effort to oust US Ambassador Yovanovitch.
buzzfeednews.com/article/christ…
Read 6 tweets
13 Oct
Earlier this month, we worked with @LHreports, @SkyNews and @Guardian to show that US police had used UK-made anti-riot gear to harm journalists and forcefully subdue protesters at #BLM protests.

This is how we did it. bellingcat.com/uncategorized/…
@LHreports @SkyNews @guardian Over the summer, the UK government stated that it reviewed potential uses of British-made anti-riot equipment at BLM protests in the US.
@LHreports @SkyNews @guardian This review found “no evidence” that UK exported equipment was used. However, it left open the “possibility” UK products could have been in the hands of US police given the wide number of end users for such products in the country
Read 9 tweets

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