Our colleagues from @the_ins_ru were able to compute the minimum number of convicts recruited by Prigozhin since August and already killed by now. The number is 458, and is based on the consecutive numbering of posthumous award letters received by families from Wagner.
Family members of the killed convicts post the award letters on social media. The Insider contracted some of the relatives who said the ex-convicts were told they would be pardoned - and then died. theins.ru/news/256690
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Interesting stats from Russia's FSB; for once they might be believable: nearly 15 m (!) Russians left the country since the war began; this is more than 5 times more than same period last year. Primary (initial) destinations: Turkey, Georgia, Finland, Abkhazia and Kazakhstan.
nearly 10 m left in Q3, double the number who left in Q2. The Q3 2021 number was 1.3 m
"Trips to Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Mongolia and Abkhasia has broken all historical records" << no shit?
Today it's GRU day in Russia. My personal wishes on this important day to Chepiga, Mishkin and their 100s of colleagues whose personal, and often intimate, details we now know better than their spouses do. С праздником!
.@Dobrokhotov, after 6 years of joint investigations into GRU operations, what are your 3 most memorable moments?
For me, one of the most memorable moments was when we got access to the leaked #Runtastic data of Gordienko - a trained GRU assassin. The data had his pulse history on a per minute basis - and we found his pulse spike on the day we outed him - and he had to flee from Switzerland.
A micro-thread on a whole new level of Kremlin route of disinfo laundering & manipulation. 1. UK media publish story that Liz Truss's phone was hacked. The hack was apparently discovered "during the summer", and was hushed by PM Boris Johnson bbc.in/3zsFqzL .
2. All-round conspiracy boy @KimDotcom posts either a sarcastic or purposely misleading tweet saying Truss sent message to Blinken saying "it's done" a minute after Nord Stream pipeline blew up, and that's how Russia found out.
Obviously this is not possible, given that the hack was discovered during Johnson's rule (i.e. by early July), and the explosions took place in later September. (Plus, the whole idea of only @KimDotcom knowing is wacky). However, this is no obstacle for the Kremlin
A short 🧵 on how Russian intelligence launders fake news by using helpful EU "media".
A leading headline in Russian state media today is that "Poland plans to capture Western Ukraine and hold a referendum". The cited source is "the Belgian portal Modern Democracy".
Indeed, three days ago the Greek-owned portal "Modern Democracy" published an article with verbatim the same allegations. moderndiplomacy.eu/2022/10/27/pol….
The site ModernDemocracy.eu indeed exists, it's not flagged as a fake news site, it's editor in chief has a thriving LinkedIn profile and we even share 6 contacts, one of whom has endorsed him.
Watching Nothing New on the Western Front while arguing in telegram with Russian soldiers in Ukraine about the inevitability of their demise. "don't bury us yet, this may be the demise or Britain instead. We can be in London soon".. and then this scene comes up.
"At least we do not live boring lives" as the last line of defense for this war.
Breaking: Norwegian authorities named the real identity of the fake "Brazilian researcher": his name is Mikhail Mikhushin, born 1978. This announcement is in line with what we, together with our investigative partners, had already discovered, and I will add some more details:
As a reminder, his cover identity was José Assis Giammaria (born 1984). It was clear that that was a fake identity, as we found that he first appeared on the horizon with that ID in 2006, when he applied for Brazilian passport and social security number claiming a BR mother.
(Mind you, 2006 is the year that at least three other GRU illegals - one of whom Maria Adela Kuhlfeld, or Olga Kolobova - obtained or tried to obtain South-American citizenship. The Peruvians caught "Kuhfeld"'s application and stopped the process, Brazil apparently was more lax).