Jesus, Ukraine just killed Gen. Maj. Vitaly Gerassimov, chief of staff of the 41 Army. At Kharkiv.
Russia, if you're listening: delete your army.
(not to be confused with Gen. Valery Gerassimov, of the often misconstrued Gerassimov Doctrine)
Claimed by Ukrainian military intelligence. Confirmed a Russian source,
This is not the worst part. In the phone call in which the FSB officer assigned to the 41st Army reports the death to his boss in Tula, he says they've lost all secure communications. Thus the phone call using a local sim card. Thus the intercept.
His boss, who makes a looong pause when he hears the news of Gerassimov's death (before swearing), is Dmitry Shevchenko, a senior FSB officer from Tula. We identified him by searching for his phone (published by Ukrainian military Intel) in open source lookup apps.
In the call, you hear the Ukraine-based FSB officer ask his boss if he can talk via the secure Era system. The boss says Era is not working.
Era is a super expensive cryptophone system that @mod_russia introduced in 2021 with great fanfare. It guaranteed work "in all conditions"
The idiots tried to use the Era cryptophones in Kharkiv, after destroying many 3g cell towers and also replacing others with stingrays. Era needs 3g/4g to communicate.
The Russian army is equipped with secure phones that can't work in areas where the Russian army operates.
In closing, here's the origin of the greatest military opsec failure of all time.
First, Putin signed the so-called @bellingcat law, prohibiting soldiers from posting on social media.
Then he told the military to not use foreign phones as they are "insecure".
The rest is history.
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How a drunken boast by an FSB agent lead to the failure of a secret mission with "serious consequences" for the Olympics: In English here: theins.press/en/politics/27…
In addressing the Havana Syndrome controversy, I'd stick to the old golden triangle for crime investigations: who had the Motive, Means and Opportunity - and if a suspect is found, does s/he have an Alibi (short thread)
In his February 2012 "election" platform essay, Putin wrote:
That same year, Putin created a military R&D program that was tasked with developing "directed energy weapons", among other "futuristic" weapons. This was clearly Putin's pet project.
Our friends at @agents_media used recently hacked Russian airline booking data to prove what Polish authorities have claimed all along: that "Pablo Gonzales", aka Pavel Rubtsov, is in fact a GRU operative. They found joint flight bookings between him and GRU officer Sergey Turbin
What I can add is that Sergey Turbin is not just any GRU operative (as seen from his address registration at the GRU academy); he belongs to GRU's 5th Department, i.e. the one running the illegals program. His phone number appears in call records of members of the 5th department.
In particular, he made dozens of phone calls to Andrey Ilchenko, a top-ranking GRU general who oversees the illegals program - and who also supervised the so-called "Bonanza Media" project and ran a discreditation campaign against @Bellingcat
Russian telegram channels show (graphic) video of wreckage of plane on which Prigozhin and Utkin/Wagner were registered to have flown. Still anticipating evidence that Prigozhin did fly on that plane (and didn't just send a decoy).
and a video of the falling plane with 10 passengers on board (competing narratives in Russian channels of "two S300 missiles" vs "bomb on board" circulating for now).
Prigozhin's second plane is now landing, and everyone is holding their breath if he doesn't show up alive on it. If he does (less likely than the alternative), that will be a second humiliation for Putin in 60 days.
I keep getting asked what's going to happen with PMC Wagner. My answer usually is "no one knows, not even Prigozhin or Putin", but there are a few things that can be put on the record for the time being, based both on leaks by in-fighting clans, ex-mercs, & phone data (short 🧵)
First, a reminder of the context: at the start of the war, Wagner was not invited to the table. On the assumption of a quick victory for 🇷🇺, generals at MoD and GRU set up their own PMC, both to seize control away from Prigozhin, but also to dip into the (corrupt) funding flows.
The top general who in late 2021 was put in charge of creating the new PMC (variously called Reduta or Zvezda) was Gen. Vladimir Alexeev (yes, the same one who famously sat down to negotiate with Prigozhin on the day of the abortive coup attempt)
Russian channels report three naval drones attacked the Crimea bridge (official reports claim drones were destroyed), but another drone reported hitting an oil tanker approx 30 miles from the bridge...which may have been the real 🎯?
Indeed, the Sig oil tanker that Russian channels report was hit, was in the right place near the bridge and appears to have shuttled oil between Crimea and Syria, worked for Russian armed forces and was thus a legitimate military target.
Ukrainian telegram channels publish alleged intercepts of conversation of the crew of the Sig tanker; they talk of a fully flooded engine room and an immobilized vessel.