BREAKING: the House sub-committee on intelligence says "now convinced that foreign adversary behind AHI (Havana syndrome) incidents", "Intelligence community has hindered the subcommittee's efforts" to get to the truth. The Subcommittee is aware that the IC continues to withhold valuable information from the Subcommittee. For this reason, a final unclassified report cannot be issued at this time. In addition, the Subcommittee plans to issue a classified report that explains why the Subcommittee finds the conclusions reached in the ICA dubious at best, and misleading at worst. It is not possible, in an unclassified format, to detail the full scale and scope of the Subcommittee’s investigation, as well as the findings that have resulted from this investigation. Nevertheless, it is the hope of the Subcommittee that this interim unclassified report will shed light on the need to better understand AHIs and the toll they have taken on the IC workforce.

This must be the funniest Russian Intel failure I have seen. It's 'Allo 'allo level. The FBI read the Whatsapp (!) chats between FSB's Col. Popov and his asset Ionov, and indicted them. And the two continued to discuss the indictment...on Whatsapp!!!

https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1834305242130706889

DOJ indicted today RT's employee Konstantin Kalashnikov for organizing illicit dissemination of fake news aiming to poison the domestic US election debate. Aptly, his Facebook profile is named "Novichok"

Born in Donetsk, Ukraine, Konstiantyn/Konstantin was the (adopted) son of Donetsk's deputy mayor who sided with the Russian invaders in 2014. Here, the two in a "Dolce & Gabanna family" photo they posted on the Dolce & Gabanna website for a competition.

Because this "story" is getting some undue attention, I will explain how it first came to my attention and why I concluded it was not true (and helped some colleagues not rush with a misleading scoop).

https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1830998913899262226

I was on vacation 2 weeks ago when I got a message from @JulianRoepcke. He had gotten an incredible scoop from an anonymous source, but - as responsible journalists should do - needed to be 100% certain that the story can be validated. He asked me for a second opinion.

Putin has called an emergency meeting of the Russian security council today. While Russia's MoD has not yet acknowledged Ukraine's counter-incursion into Russia, Russian military telegram bloggers are sounding alarm (chart w/ scale of incursion from one of the telegram channels) The MoD just came up with this bullsjit statement.

The following is simply an opinion on why Putin agreed (counterintuitively) to a swap deal before Trump came to power (which in Russian calculus has been a given for over a year). The Trump campaign has proposed that this was a sign of Putin's fear of a better-negotiating Trump. Even colleagues and analysts not invested in Trump have posited that this was the result of "an unpredictable Trump" that the Kremlin is not comfortable with

.@IlyaYashin (who had explicitly asked not to be included into exchange lists as he didn't want to make Putin happy by leaving, I can confirm that), tells us how 2 days before the swap he was told to write a plea for clemency to Putin (1/2) He refused. Said he would not plead to a war criminal. The next day they asked him again. Instead, he wrote this letter. It said "I refuse to be exchanged against my will as this is unconstitutional". Yet, he is here, "extradited, not swapped".

In a helmet with handcuffs in Ankara. Krasikov, one would assume.

How a drunken boast by an FSB agent lead to the failure of a secret mission with "serious consequences" for the Olympics: In English here: theins.press/en/politics/27… In French with @lemondefr : lemonde.fr/societe/articl…

In addressing the Havana Syndrome controversy, I'd stick to the old golden triangle for crime investigations: who had the Motive, Means and Opportunity - and if a suspect is found, does s/he have an Alibi (short thread) In his February 2012 "election" platform essay, Putin wrote:

Our friends at @agents_media used recently hacked Russian airline booking data to prove what Polish authorities have claimed all along: that "Pablo Gonzales", aka Pavel Rubtsov, is in fact a GRU operative. They found joint flight bookings between him and GRU officer Sergey Turbin

https://twitter.com/agents_media/status/1730230305288605928

What I can add is that Sergey Turbin is not just any GRU operative (as seen from his address registration at the GRU academy); he belongs to GRU's 5th Department, i.e. the one running the illegals program. His phone number appears in call records of members of the 5th department.

Russian telegram channels show (graphic) video of wreckage of plane on which Prigozhin and Utkin/Wagner were registered to have flown. Still anticipating evidence that Prigozhin did fly on that plane (and didn't just send a decoy). and a video of the falling plane with 10 passengers on board (competing narratives in Russian channels of "two S300 missiles" vs "bomb on board" circulating for now).

I keep getting asked what's going to happen with PMC Wagner. My answer usually is "no one knows, not even Prigozhin or Putin", but there are a few things that can be put on the record for the time being, based both on leaks by in-fighting clans, ex-mercs, & phone data (short 🧵) First, a reminder of the context: at the start of the war, Wagner was not invited to the table. On the assumption of a quick victory for 🇷🇺, generals at MoD and GRU set up their own PMC, both to seize control away from Prigozhin, but also to dip into the (corrupt) funding flows.

Russian channels report three naval drones attacked the Crimea bridge (official reports claim drones were destroyed), but another drone reported hitting an oil tanker approx 30 miles from the bridge...which may have been the real 🎯? Indeed, the Sig oil tanker that Russian channels report was hit, was in the right place near the bridge and appears to have shuttled oil between Crimea and Syria, worked for Russian armed forces and was thus a legitimate military target.

Russian media report that a drone attacked buildings near Komsomolsky prospect 17 in Moscow; traffic down this avenue has been closed. What is interesting is that this address is just across from the headquarters of GRU's cyber offense (incl. FancyBear), among other mil. units At this location is also the Military University () and several top-secret GRU facilities, including the head of their illegals program. If Ukraine hit that building complex, the symbolic damage to MoD/GRU will be very significant.vumo.mil.ru

IYMI: @agents_media report GRU illegal Pablo Gonzales, aka Pavel Rubsov (detained in Poland last year) was able to infiltrate the Boris Nemtsov Foundation, befriended its key members and stole and reported to Center data about their activities:

agents.media/gonzalez/ This Kremlin special operation was particularly disgusting, given the Kremlin was implicated in the killing of Boris Nemstov bellingcat.com/news/2022/03/2… and then used a spy to befriend his orphaned daughter, betray her trust and steal data from her.

FBI indicated Sergey Cherkasov, the Russian illegal whom we had earlier identified as a GRU spy. However, the indictment contains one new proof of that affiliation that FBI seem to have missed. The clue is contained in the passport number Cherkasov used to enter Brazil in 2011. That passport number is not random. It's part of a series of passport numbers reserved for GRU spies. In fact, it is part of the very first such batch of numbers, issued to many GRU spies in 2009. Every two years, the GRU issues its spies new passports from a new series...

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.

https://twitter.com/Dpol_un/status/1629521055789338624

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...

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.

Such an illiterate sentence. It may have two completely different meanings.

https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1604531265419591681

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.

The new and improved AI chatbot is quite something. Omg. this is pretty good. "Write a song about @bellingcat"