This week the FSB arrested Ilya Traber, a St. Petersburg businessman from the same world Putin came from. Before Putin ran the largest country on earth, he carried his boss's suitcase in that city.

🧵Here is the origin story. [1/15] Putin owed his start to St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, often seen in photos as the subordinate carrying his boss’s suitcase.

[2/15]

He was never told it was Keir Starmer's house.

The man who set fire to the family home of the British PM was promised a few thousand dollars. The sole condition: it had to make national news. 🧵[1/12]
Roman Lavrynovych, a 22-year-old Ukrainian construction worker in London, was convicted at the Old Bailey this week over three fires:

1️⃣ A car Keir Starmer once owned
2️⃣ A flat he used to live in
3️⃣ And his family home

Starmer called it "an attack on democracy." [2/12]

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/ac…

“They’ve lost their fear.” A spy who inspired “The Americans” uses “Putin’s Davos” to suggest blowing up LNG tankers bound for Europe.

(🧵Here’s what else he said) His name is Andrei Bezrukov. For two decades he lived in the U.S. under a stolen Canadian identity, residing in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as Harvard-educated consultant “Donald Heathfield.”


[2/12]thecrimson.com/article/2010/7…

Imagine this: terrorists take 900 people hostage. They have political demands, offer to release 10 people a day. They name the opposition MP they're ready to talk to.

The MP agrees—but the president stops him, afraid the MP's rating might rise... 🧵[1/7] That president was Vladimir Putin, and the opposition MP was Boris Nemtsov. The 2002 Nord-Ost theater siege was one of the moments that came to define Putin's presidency.

He chose to use a fentanyl-based gas to knock out the terrorists and then sent in special forces to kill them off.

[2/7]

Imagine a foreign government doesn't like what your country is doing, and decides to change it. Without asking you.

That's what Putin is doing in the Baltic states. He just got his first big win in Latvia. 🧵 [1/13] On May 7, Ukrainian drones, pushed off course by Russian electronic warfare, entered Latvia from Russia. One exploded at an oil depot in Rēzekne: four empty fuel tanks were destroyed — luckily, no one was hurt.

[2/13]

Remember the pig heads at the Paris mosques? Or the Jewish centers painted green?

I knew exactly whose work it was the moment I saw it. Now — I finally have the proof. 🧵 [1/19] My colleagues at the @dossier_center have obtained a large internal leak from a Moscow company called the Social Design Agency, or SDA.

It is run by a political operative named Ilya Gambashidze, the Kremlin is contracting him to manufacture scandals.

[2/19]

"Privacy. That's iPhone." Apple pulled 1,213 apps from its Russian App Store last year at the Kremlin's request — more than from China, Vietnam, India, Korea, and the U.S. combined.

🧵 Most were VPN apps used to access WhatsApp To understand why they're doing this, you have to look at what the Kremlin wants people to use instead — a state messenger called MAX, built by VK, whose CEO is the son of Kremlin domestic policy adviser Sergei Kiriyenko. It's an app with a back door for security services.

[2/12]

The Kremlin has a plan for the Armenian NGOs left stranded after USAID's collapse: take them over.

Leaked documents obtained by @dossier_center show it's just one piece of Moscow's effort to derail Armenia's pivot to the West 🧵[1/21] Dossier Center has obtained internal Kremlin-linked strategy documents showing how Russian political consultants have been trying to influence Armenia's election by building, from nothing, an entire ecosystem of opposition to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

[2/21]

"I am ashamed, but I gave up. Please forgive me."

Those were the closing lines of a note left by Nina Litvinova, 80, before she stepped out of a window in Moscow.

🧵Read her story Nina Litvinova was born in Moscow in 1945 into one of the most consequential Soviet families. Her grandfather Maxim Litvinov ran Stalin's foreign ministry in the 1930s and served as ambassador to Washington during the war. He was Jewish and an open anti-fascist.

[2/16]

Putin has chosen Britain as his number one enemy. His agents are already inside the UK, preparing to strike.

🧵Here are the three tools the Kremlin will use — and why he won't stop. [1/13] Putin is a gangster, and he perceives someone else's weakness as an invitation to attack them.

Today, for Putin, Europe is a weak opponent.

[2/13]

Putin is scared.

His "fortress" is cracking and half his decrees are now secret — so Russians can't see how badly the regime is failing.

Here's what he's hiding 👇 [1/11] There have been no precedents to this blackout in modern history. In 2023, Putin set a record: 49.5% of presidential decrees were secret. Even last year, almost 45% of his orders remain hidden from public view. Half of the Russian government's actions are now officially "invisible."

[2/11]

State-run pollster in Russia have published a noticeable drop in Putin's approval.

Last week, Russia's economy minister stood up and admitted the country's reserves are largely gone.

🧵Let's take a look at what it all could mean: [1/14] The trigger appears to be the continued economic downturn. GDP is down 1.8%, with industry and construction also weakening.

Even more strikingly, the economy minister has admitted that a large share of Russia's reserves has already been used up. Putin has demanded answers.



[2/14]finance.yahoo.com/economy/articl…

Imagine this: A major disaster hits your country. People are dying, cities are burning, the environment is ruined. You look to your national leader for a plan, but they've nowhere to be found.

Sounds unlikely? In Putin's Russia, it's an everyday reality. In 26 years in power, he has vanished every time the nation is in pain. [1/16]
Right now, in Russia's Tuapse, it's literally raining oil. After drone strikes, black soot covers the city, animals are dying, and a 10,000 sq m slick is spreading in the Black Sea. And the president is radio silent.

[2/16]

The West keeps making the same fundamental mistake about Russia.

I’ve spent a decade in the system, ten years in six different Russian prisons, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that switching the "Tsar" won't fix a thing.

Here is why the "Good Tsar" myth is a trap, and what actually needs to happen. 🧵 [1/12] There is a prevailing hope in DC and Brussels that if we just replace the current man in the Kremlin with a "liberal" leader, everything will click into place.

I’m telling you: It won’t. [2/12]

Putin just lost his "Trojan Horse" inside the EU.

Viktor Orban, one of Moscow’s most dependable EU allies, is out. This result carries massive implications for Russia’s ability to project power and disruption across Europe.

Here is why Moscow is panicking. 🧵 [1/14] Putin’s EU Veto: The End of Strategic Obstruction

For years, Orban turned Hungary into a pressure point inside the EU. Because of the bloc's need for unanimity, Budapest could, and often did, slow or block decisions on any issue, be it sanctions, funding, or military support. [2/14]

It is nearly impossible for a European to comprehend the psychological reality inside Russia. It is not just "fake news." It is a total deconstruction of reality.

Let me try to immerse you in the world Russians live in [1/9] First, understand the isolation. Around 90% of Russians have never left the country. Even fewer have ever stepped beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union.

For the vast majority, the "West" is not a place they have visited. It is a ghost story told by the state.  [2/9]

The real Iran crisis is nearing a terrifying tipping point. We are one mistake away from a catastrophic energy and water collapse that will trigger a global humanitarian emergency.

Here is why the "informal limits" are about to break: 🧵 [1/15] The Iran crisis is approaching a crossroads. Either it settles into a fragile political arrangement, or it escalates into a wider regional conflict. Either way, the consequences will reach far beyond the Middle East. [2/15]

Do you remember that recent, incredibly awkward exchange between Pashinyan and Putin in the Kremlin?

It was a masterclass in geopolitical trolling. Pashinyan literally looked Putin in the eye and teased him about Armenia having "too much democracy," even lecturing him on how they hold fair elections "twice a year." 1/4 From bragging that social media is "100% free" (a pointed jab at Putin’s total ban of social media and recent crackdown on Telegram in favor of the state-run "Max" messenger), to pointing out the lack of political prisoners, it was a bold and very public distancing from Moscow's playbook. 2/4

The generation of Europeans who understood Russia is gone.

The knowledge gap they left behind is now being filled by disinformation — and the Kremlin is exploiting it.

Here's what Europe must do before it's too late: 🧵[1/7] Europe is moving, steadily and predictably, toward a cold war with Russia. This is not a question of rhetoric or political mood, but of structural reality.

The Kremlin is already testing Europe's cohesion, and without a clear demonstration of readiness, those tests will intensify.

[2/7]

Putin's most powerful weapon in this war isn't the Oreshnik missile.

It is something far cheaper and infinitely more scalable: lies.

🧵Shameless lies literally capture cities — here're some examples: The Russian military has a term for this: "capturing a settlement on credit."

They report the victory on Telegram and TV now and plan to achieve it "someday." This way, the same town can be "taken" over and over, for example, General Kuzovlev "captured" Kupiansk twice in two months.

[2/14]militarnyi.com/en/news/gerasi…

We already knew the Kremlin was sending men to die in Ukraine.

But a new @dossier_center investigation based on leaked military records shows it's far worse than anyone imagined. For soldiers in front-line assault units, the odds of surviving the war are approaching zero.

(Read on) According to internal documents, more than 28,000 soldiers were assigned to a single Russian division in 2024. Its full wartime strength should not exceed 14,000.

That means roughly a whole division's worth of personnel was lost in one year — killed, wounded beyond return, captured, or missing.

[2/12]