Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

This is the most astonishing story you'll read in the 21st century. Navalny--having been poisoned by the FSB--gets on the phone, calls the FSB--on their landline--and tells them he's "Maxim Ustinov, an aide to [Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolai] Patrushev.”

https://twitter.com/robert_zubrin/status/1341024146537345033

There is no such person. Doesn't matter. He gets through to Konstantin Kudryavtsev, an FSB guy who graduated from the Military Biological-Chemical Academy then worked in the biowar Institute of the Ministry of Defense.

He rips Kudryavtsev a new asshole.

"How come Navalny's still ALIVE, you sack of--"

Kudryavtsev stammers something about it maybe not being a good idea to talk about this on an open line ...

(Btw, @bellingcat, this MUST be made into a movie. Write the screenplay tonight. Navalny can play himself.)

Navalny tells this idiot forget it: the boss is PISSED. The boss--who doesn't exist, mind you--needs every team member’s personal assessment of the operation, and furthermore, Gen. VLADIMIR BOGDONOV himself (director of FSB’s "Special Technology" Department), authorized the call.

That's all it took. This terrified idiot promptly spent the next 49 minutes confessing every detail of Navalny's attempted murder *to Navalny* on an open line. (Presumingly the @bellingcat crew just stood there with their jaws agape and said,

"Impossible. They can't be this dumb. They just can't be. *These* are the uber-geniuses who just pulled off cyber Pearl Harbor and destroyed liberal democracy in the United States for decades, if not forever? How could they possibly be so gullible, so stupid ...

so completely lacking in basic tradecraft; they just fell for a *prank,* for God's sake--a Navalny prank!--they are absolute idiots!

"Which means ... then ... yeah, that means ... "

Presumably all fell silent and felt a bit sheepish upon realizing what that means. It couldn't be clearer, though.

We are even stupider than *these* motherfuckers.