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,
Image
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. Image
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. Image
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" Image
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. ImageImage

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More from @christogrozev

Feb 27
I have often said this is one of Russia's least intelligent "diplomats". He keeps quoting GRU and troll farm troll account, apparently oblivious he is burning them as he goes along. This one is a perfect exemplar.
The account he burned this time was created in September 2020. It appeared to be an anti-Trump and "slice of Americana" account... Except, it also was interested in that big unknown country that it knows little about, but feels is somehow misrepresented in the West...
Fast forward to thee weeks before the war in 2022, when it is incredibly informed about the Nazis in Ukraine and the history of Russia. And explains to others how Russia does not need democracy.
Read 4 tweets
Dec 26, 2022
Loud explosions at Russia's strategic military airfield at Engels, more than 600 km from the Ukrainian border.
Another angle of the explosions. #Baza reports at least three dead, a fire encompassing 120 sq m as of now.
Official RU announcement says a drone was shot by anti-aircraft defenses "causing it to change direction and hit a building where pilots were waiting", killing three and wounding several more.
A Ukrainian drone flying 800 km through Russia undetected - twice - is mind boggling.
Read 4 tweets
Dec 18, 2022
Such an illiterate sentence. It may have two completely different meanings.
On the substance of it, this new rule is likely to run afoul of at least EU competition regulation and the Digital Services Act. There's no way a ban on cross linking (especially to newer/smaller platforms) will be legal under EU law.
Also, he either has no clue what his own rules are or he is disingenuously lying. Cross-linking to mastodon posts is NOT allowed, I just tried it. Cross-linking to TikTok or Facebook is quite okay though.
Read 4 tweets
Dec 5, 2022
The new and improved AI chatbot is quite something.
Omg. this is pretty good. "Write a song about @bellingcat"
Too harsh?
Read 5 tweets
Nov 28, 2022
Russia's GRU spy was caught by the Dutch and sentenced to 15 years by the Brazilians. Now Russia fabricated a ridiculously inept criminal case against him to try to have him extradited. Read up here.
I have many nuggets from this botched-up extradition story, but my favorite must be how the police "investigator" who was told to just insert a Cherkasov into the old criminal file wasn't really told if he was a man or a woman: so he seemed to assume it was a woman:
But the funniest thing overall in this spy story (so far! more coming up..) must be the luggage tag with which Dutch authorities extradited "Victor Muller Ferreira" to Brazil. Check out the destination airport:
Read 4 tweets
Nov 17, 2022
The verdict in the #MH17 case is being pronounced, and the court is already making a clear case that the armed invasion in 2014 was controlled by the Kremlin, and thus responsible for the shoot-down. Very likely thus today's verdicts will not be the last, or most important ones.
"The court has ascertained that the Russian Federation coordinated military actions in the DPR, finanzed and provided weapons to the militants, but also undertook military actions on its own. Russia was in full control of the DPR"
The court is now leading up to the verdict, and is addressing the defense arguments. The court did criticize the prosecution over its overly public behavior but concludes this did not affect the court's ability to issue a fair verdict.
Read 13 tweets

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