Mark Krutov Profile picture
May 22 16 tweets 8 min read Read on X
What is really weird about this strike is the absence of any traces of dormitories in the destroyed buildings, while there are hundreds of photos of students in classrooms. There are two dorms nearby, and I assume they may have been damaged, but they were not shown in any videos. Image
Here's some photos from this dorm: Image
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Here's what it actually looks like. Did I miss any footage of this building being destroyed/damaged too? (honest question!) Image
Here's what the 2nd dormitory looks like from outside. It's quite close to the destroyed /damaged buildings shown in the videos and photos, but I haven't seen a single photos or video of it being damaged too. Image
Not trying to justify any strike on civilians (especially children), just trying to understand what is happening here. Is Russian propaganda just trying to inflate the incident by falsely claiming that dormitories were destroyed? Image
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So, the initial claim about dozens of students killed or buried under the rubble of a dorm is now being quickly downplayed by local 'LPR' authorities. t.me/astrapress/113… x.com/kromark/status…
Also, these buildings were hit, but these are not any of those dorms. Image
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(To make it clear, it is still a stone-cold truth that the college, 2 buildings of it, were targeted and destroyed. There is zero evidence that they hosted any military personnel, and there's not yet any reasonable justification for the strike)
Now there’s a poor-quality, low-resolution @planet satellite image in which at least some damage can be seen on one of the dormitories in Starobil's'k (a roof/attic?). Still, it’s strange that no footage featuring this building has been published.
@planet Finally, a post-strike image showing damage to the dorm. Yeah, it doesn’t look good at all (in all senses of 'looking good,' including the fact of the strike itself).
@planet My conclusion regarding the Starobilsk story is that the confusion was caused by the media trying to present more 'picturesque' collapsed college buildings as images of a dormitory for propaganda purposes, while the dorm itself was also badly damaged. t.me/glava_lnr_info…Image
As new photos emerge, it becomes clear that one of the floors of the 'main' college building was also used as a dormitory: mattresses and bunk beds can be seen in the rubble, and victims say they lived on the 5th floor, while there are only four floors in the 'dorm building'. Image
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I’d take this evidence of Russian military sharing the dorm(s) with teens – posted by a Ukrainian TG channel – with a grain of salt, but I’m including it in my thread for a better overall picture of today’s strike on Starobilsk.
t.me/Trikutnik_UA/1…
x.com/i/status/20578…
The latest death toll from the Ukrainian strike on a college and dormitories in occupied Starobilsk is 10 dead and 38 injured. svoboda.org/a/hronika-voin…Image

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More from @kromark

May 17
1/ Massive Ukrainian drones attack on Moscow. A Ukrainian drone making it to the outer Moscow 'Pantsir' ring and shot down by one of them. Image
2/ Probably shot down by this one (@planet image from May 16th) 56.027930, 37.137290 Link to my Moscow AD map: google.com/maps/d/edit?mi…Image
@planet 3/ Another location where a drone, according to the Moscow Oblast governor (t.me/vorobiev_live/…), hit a private house is Pogorelki, in the Mytishchi district. There’s a Tor-2M on a tower less than 1.4 km from it (built and discovered back in 2023). x.com/kromark/status… Image
Image
Read 12 tweets
Mar 13
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/…Image
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)🫡 Image
Read 6 tweets
Mar 4
🕵️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 🔽 Image
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. Image
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. Image
Read 19 tweets
Dec 30, 2025
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. Image
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. Image
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. Image
Read 5 tweets
Dec 16, 2025
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. Image
@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.) Image
Read 4 tweets
Nov 6, 2025
⚛️🇹🇷🧵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 🔽 Image
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. Image
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/…
Read 20 tweets

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