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ChristoGrozev@bsky.social Profile picture
ChristoGrozev@bsky.social
@christogrozev
Investigative journalist (Spiegel, The Insider, ex-Bellingcat), radio investor and hobby coder. Immediate blocks for whataboutism.
125 subscribers
Sep 12 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
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!!!

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Sep 4 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
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"
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Image 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. Image
Sep 3 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
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). 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.
Aug 7 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
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) Image The MoD just came up with this bullsjit statement. Image
Aug 2 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
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
Aug 2 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
.@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) Image 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". Image
Aug 1 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
In a helmet with handcuffs in Ankara. Krasikov, one would assume. Image
Jul 25 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
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…
Apr 3 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
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: Image
Nov 30, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
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 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.
Aug 23, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
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).
Aug 19, 2023 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
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.
Aug 4, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
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 🎯? Image 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.
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Jul 24, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
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 Image 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
May 2, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
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.
Mar 25, 2023 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
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...
Feb 27, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
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. 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...
Dec 26, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
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.
Dec 18, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Such an illiterate sentence. It may have two completely different meanings. 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.
Dec 5, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The new and improved AI chatbot is quite something. Omg. this is pretty good. "Write a song about @bellingcat"
Nov 28, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Russia's GRU spy was caught by the Dutch and sentenced to 15 years by the Brazilians. Now Russia fabricated a ridiculously inept criminal case against him to try to have him extradited. Read up here. I have many nuggets from this botched-up extradition story, but my favorite must be how the police "investigator" who was told to just insert a Cherkasov into the old criminal file wasn't really told if he was a man or a woman: so he seemed to assume it was a woman: