🧵/ link in the last tweet. It’s not only Russian tourists who reveal positions of the Ru army by posting photos on social media with geolocation turned on. Soldiers themselves do that too. Here are some recent examples from the Kherson region, area of the UA counter offensive.
On August 27th, a user called "Sergey Shturman" posted 2 photos of himself near BM-21 "Grad"(archive.ph/GnfWc). He didn’t switch off geo, so here it is: water pump station near Berislav. No other buildings are in the vicinity, which proves it's correct (46.8621, 33.3627)
Russian forces and its proxies from the L/DNR often use such civic infrastructure objects to set up their bases. Another set of photos from VK (archive.ph/ImV0r) reveals the base in Berislav itself, in the office of a local water supply company (46.836054, 33.394393).
Russia is not only is stealing Ukrainian grain, but seizing its agro-industrial enterprises. This photo, as enabled geolocation proves (archive.ph/RCB9N), was taken on Aug. 27th in the office of an Agrofusion company tomato paste factory (46.4961, 32.5200).
The owner of the company, Sergey Sypko (on the photo), lives in Mykolaiv and is one of the richest people of Ukraine (91th in the Forbes Ukraine list). Another Ukrainian agro-industry businessman from Mykolaiv, Alexey Vadatursky was killed in the shelling on July 31 in this city.
Something really interesting. This guy, Pavel Frolin, posted his photos with a bunch of grapes and a raspberry (archive.ph/7u2mE) on Aug. 9th. Geotag of this and several other photos postet by him brings us to the field north of Kherson, near Stepanivka (46.7143, 32.5828).
He has several recent photos taken allegedly at their positions, but with geolocation turned off. By searching through dozens of photos of the area, we with @pustota were able to confirm that they were taken near the nearby quarry (46.7177, 32.5876) and UA police training grounds
Now this: on Aug 25th he posted the photo (archive.ph/khprs) of a HARM missile, erroneously calling it "HIMARS". Only 5 days later Ukraine confirmed the use of HARM missiles by posting a video of them being fired from a MiG-29 (h/t @Rebel44CZ for the quick missile ID).
No geotag again, but now as we’ve learned their approximate location from the "grape photo" we were able to find it – a parking lot of a nearby private winery and hotel called "Курiнь" (46.7197, 32.5810). Thanks again to @pustota for nailing it down.
There are several other photos in Frolin’s account, proving that they at least visited the winery, thanks to details matching Google users' photos – clean restaurant dishes, freshly baked pizza, metal corrugated panels, etc.
I tried to figure out what happened to the owner of the winery and hotel, Mykola Khalupenko, head of the local branch of Agrarian Party of Ukraine, but was not lucky. He didn’t read my message on Facebook, all social media accounts of the business are deleted for some reason.
The problem of soldiers using smartphones and even not turning off geolocation is well known to Russian authorities. They even passed the law forbidding smartphones in the army, but its effect was very limited. Also, Tik-Tok became popular, making control even more difficult.
It even took me like 20 minutes to figure out how to exclude geo from my photos (while keeping it for other apps) when I bought a new phone last year! (Yes, I know it can be done faster, but I'm sure this thread will not change the overall situation).
Still, worth mentioning that nearly all examples from this thread are photos posted by L/DNR soldiers, not Russian military personnel (photo from Frolin's VK account, taken in 2016).
For more geolocation gems click this link. Use Google for translation into your language. svoboda.org/a/selfi-dlya-v…
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1/3 When we found out back in September '25 that 'Rubicon' is based in Patriot Park (rferl.org/a/russia-drone…), I thought location might be a stunt to impress Belousov or something. Now, with this new GRU sabotage unit – 'Centre 795' – also based there, everything falls into place x.com/michaeldweiss/…
2/3 'Centre 795' is a rival structure to GRU Andrey Averyanov’s team, whose headquarters, as we recently found, are likely based in Moscow on the premises of a secret military institute.
3/3 So, we have two rival GRU structures whose duties somehow overlap, with both headquarters discovered by us with the help of open sources (and a little bit of HUMINT)🫡
🕵️Call us the 'Headquarters Hunters': together with @pustota, we found the 'mail center' of the GRU 'Africa Corps.' You will – and will not – be surprised where we found it. Full thread below 🔽
It all started when Georgy Kochkin, a 21-year-old defector from the 'Africa Corps', approached us. This guy wanted to be an IT specialist in Africa and needed money badly, so he just clicked on an ad on one of the job websites.
In October 2025, he signed a contract with the Russian MoD. There was nothing about Africa in it, of course, but he was promised a proper job fitting his expertise – information security.
1/5 An important P.S. to my Valdai thread. This clearly demonstrates that any piece agreements with Putin’s Russia don’t cost the paper they're written on. One day he will simply fabricate a pretext to breach any agreement without hesitation, regardless how absurd it will look.
2/5 The '91 drones targeting Putin’s residence' stunt was a way to pressure Ukraine (I really hope – and want to believe – this was not coordinated between the U.S. and Russia). Not a big deal by itself, but a reminder that Russian false-flag ops or psyops like this are common.
3/5 With a peace agreement, you can buy a year or less of breathing space. In 1938–1939, it was barely several months for Czechoslovakia – time that Britain bought through Chamberlain's policy of appeasement.
A @Planet satellite image of Novorossiysk taken today shows the aftermath of the Ukrainian underwater drone attack on a Russian Kilo-class submarine. Still hard to conduct a precise BDA, but at least we can see that the explosion occurred approximately 20 m from the vessel.
A still, high-resolution @Planet satellite image of the port of Novorossiysk showing damage from a Ukrainian submersible drone, taken today, Dec. 16, at 8:18 a.m. local time.
@planet Interestingly, back in 2021, Russia used this exact pier to place specially trained dolphins, which were later moved to Sevastopol. Good for them! (Although these dolphins are trained specifically to prevent attacks like the ones carried out by Ukraine.)
⚛️🇹🇷🧵Next year, Turkey’s 1st nuclear power plant, Akkuyu – built by Russia’s state-owned Rosatom – is finally set to go live after years of delays and scandals. Among its staff, we found a former GRU psyops officer. Our new investigation with @pustota exposes the full story 🔽
Meet Maxim Balabanov, who served for nearly 10 years, until 2017, in military unit 03126 in Leningrad Oblast – a SUPsO (psyops) unit of the Leningrad Military District.
He also listed as one of his addresses the location of another GRU unit, 20697 (St. Petersburg). As was discovered back in 2023, unit 20697 is another GRU psyops unit, whose officers pretended to act as politologysts and experts in their 'civic' life. ms.detector.media/internet/post/…
1/3 Finally, our investigation, together with @pustota, revealing several participants of the recent far-right and fascist organizations forum in St. Petersburg who did not want to be identified – including Hamburg Bürgerschaft MP Robert Risch from the AfD svoboda.org/a/rossiyskaya-…
2/3 Special thanks to @MackjackMaier for quickly revealing Risch’s identity, and kudos to the Belgian nationalists of 'Nation,' who accidentally shared his unblurred photo.