Thread by @ZimermanErik

Undoubtedly some very interesting developments here. In the immediate aftermath, @bellingcat & its lead #Russia investigator @christogrozev began damage control regarding the announcement. Mr. Grozev claimed that he was not involved in the operation (as RU sources asserted) but

https://twitter.com/ZimermanErik/status/1551537711466663938

simply had a front-row seat as a film-maker (for a documentary). He also denied that the Ukrainian operation was a failure or a Russian coup. He portrays it as a mutual attempt at playing the other side, in which the UA came out on top and RU FSB blundered & revealed important

information.
(His thread

https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1551535542180929536

), calling it a "blunder for the FSB, disclosing unintentionally identities of dozens of counter intel officers, their methods of operation, and their undercover assets.".

As usual, let us apply some logic, & w/ some luck, intelligence to get passed the hype. First a word about Mr. Grozev. #Bellingcat's own website notes that he is focusing on "...extraterritorial clandestine operations & the weaponization of information" among other things. This

is a gentleman that knows how to play dirty. Here are some troubling allegations to this effect.

I am not exploring this issue in this thread, but let us not forget that Bellingcat & its investigators work under the pressure of getting sensational scoops

if not also under strong political biases as well. Having said that, let me summarize my conclusion on this matter thus far (and I thank many readers who expressed excellent points on this as well). Grozev has two main points.
1. This was not a Ukrainian failure (nor RU success)

and 2. He (& Bellingcat) was not involved in the operation but just had a "front row seat" as a journalist, for an upcoming documentary.

We of course cannot know the details of what happened. Not at this point & perhaps never. These are covert operations & we could expect either

side or both to be misleading about what occurred. However we can broadly address Grozev's main points, & make some conclusions from this.

Let us start with the latter point. This one does not pass the smell test. In his original thread Grozev explains that he was just a viewer.

Then proceeds to tell the story as an active participant. He is proud to have been instrumental in figuring out that the operation was compromised (RU was playing them), at one point bragging that discovering that a pilot's alleged mistress was an agent took him "about 5 minutes"

He mentions other such clues & one cannot believe that he was keeping those to himself and not sharing them with the UA operatives. More to the point, if he was only an audience to the operation, how was Russia, especially one that according to him failed at turning the operation

ever find out about him and accuse him of being part of it? Obviously his part was much more than spectator. The only alternative would be a Russian counter-intelligence operation so successful that it learned everything about the UA operation including who the "front seat"

audience was (in this case Bellingcat). This is unlikely & would also contradict his other point (that it was a RU failure). Finally, if we take Grozev at his word, and somehow reconcile his active participation with just being a documentarist in the operation, how in the world

would he as a supposed independent journalist have a front seat in a covert Ukrainian operation? Bellingcat purports being the at the forefront of independent journalism, not to mention impartial, and not part of the Ukrainian intelligence apparatus.

In his original thread, Grozev tries to casually gloss over this by quickly explaining the connection. The image he choses emphasizes his spectator role (as discussed, in contradiction to the rest of his story). Unspecified UA operatives were doing a covert operation & Bellingcat

somehow "found out" about it. Then apparently once you find out about a country's covert operations you can get a "front row seat", all while maintaining full impartiality as an independent journalist. Apparently this last point was raised by enough of his readers, that it

prompted him to add to his thread about 2 hours later. He tried to resolve this issue by claiming that the operation was started by "maverick ex operatives" whom he later calls "essentially, volunteers". Interestingly in his original thread, he simply called them:

"Ukrainian operatives". Now here is the additional problem with this. Even if again we take him at his word that they are "ex" operatives, the distinction in this case and in time of war is one without meaning. Firstly as he points out they have been active since the beginning of

the war. They are obviously very motivated to help Ukraine & hence "essentially" volunteering for this activity. In time of war and of total mobilization of the country, would these capable clandestine operatives not be mobilized? Not be helping their friends and contacts who are

not "ex" but rather just UA operatives? Would they especially not be contacting them with something this important? The nail in the coffin of course is that the coordination is obvious and necessary. Gozev states that the operation was based on an offer (money) to Russian pilots

based on the Ukrainian "weapons-surrender-incentive-law". The money, unless they meant to cheat the Russian would-be defectors, would come from the UA government. More importantly, the coordination of the defection, a complex endeavor at all times & more so in the midst of war,

had to bee coordinated at the highest levels with the UA government unless they intended to, besides cheating the Russian pilots, have them get blown to bits by AA fire when they tried to defect. Everything from the evacuation of the pilots families & EU citizenship to the

coordination of the flight routes (all which Grozev mentions) had to be coordinated with the UA government. Mere volunteers without the backing of the authorities could not offer any of this. When you add the fact that he admits that they were "ex" operatives, it stretches the

imagination to not conclude that they either were or were acting as present operatives. This was clearly a UA operation. It is most common for intelligence operatives to not be full time "W2" (in American) employees of the intelligence services. It is a murky world that employs

all sorts of contacts, not all full time nor uniformed employees of the state. One assertion being dismantled, let us address the first, namely that this was not an Ukrainian failure (in fact he implies it was a success due to data obtained) nor a Russian success.

In broadest terms, of course this was a Ukrainian failure. Or is it a UA "volunteer" failure. The attempt was to lure Russian pilots to defect and none did. No planes, no pilots. Additionally, even once again taking Grozv at his word, for some time negotiations & discussions took

place while the UA operatives did not know the FSB was playing a double game. This already would indicate that the advantage was on the RU side, and that at least some information that UA would have preferably not given was in fact given. If the RU side is to be believed, it was

quite significant and may even be part of why we see #Russian planes venturing deeper into #Ukraine than previously in recent days (which is part of what I plan to discuss in another thread). The video evidence Russian sources presented & their knowledge of Bellingcat's Christo

Grozev's involvement supports the assertion that the operation proceeded significantly without the UAs knowing they were being duped. Finally, the announcement to the public comes from Russian sources. While Grozev is reacting to the release, and defending himself, it is the

Russians who decided that their counter-intelligence operation was over & should release its results. This alone is not proof of who came out on top but is part of the picture. For all we know Bellingcat & the UA operatives may have had suspicions but did not know the game was up

There is in short enough in Grozev's own admissions, together with the Russian release, to reasonably conclude that this was a failed UA attempt at luring Russian pilots to defect, that at least for a significant period of time the FSB turned the operation on the Ukrainians, that

Bellingcat journalist Christo Grozev was part of the Ukrainian covert operation, in more than a "spectator" capacity, and that the Russians once satisfied that they had gotten what they could out of the operation & concluded the UA had either finally realized they were being

played, and/or could not be tricked into releasing any further information of importance, decided to release evidence of the counter-intelligence operation. Certainly this would embarrass the Ukrainians and Bellingcat, as it did, and we see them actively in damage control.

They have control of the final edit of their future documentary, in which they can paint a different picture, & we should not be surprised if we see it in the near future doing so, but two important points should be clear.
The Ukrainians attempted to lure Russian pilots to defect

for money and failed; and Bellingcat's Christo Grozev was suspiciously intimately involved with the operation (along w who knows what other western intelligence). This is in sharp contrast to what these "open source" independent journalists, darlings of the media, claim to be.

If Mr. Grozev, though Bulgarian, wants to be a Ukrainian patriot and fighter for the Zelensky government he definitely can be. Likewise if he wishes to be an operative against Russia and Mr. Putin's government. He likes to "weaponize" information as their website puts it, & they

often do so against Russia. But if he wishes to be those things I would suggest he be more frank, and not pretend to be an impartial journalist who is reporting an a conflict between two states. Especially not after he's been caught.

Note a follow up.

https://twitter.com/ZimermanErik/status/1551743955779424256