It's been a minute, but we have a new thread from "Karl," the Estonian military analyst, on the war in Ukraine. With @holger_r: "Let’s start with the strategic view first. The U.S. has grown even more cautious and inept. Congress is exactly at the same place as the last time we spoke. For a brief moment, 1-2 weeks ago, it looked like they might be closer to a deal but today there is no certainty about it."

NEW: A yearlong investigation by @InsiderEng, @60Minutes and @derspiegel has uncovered evidence suggesting that Havana Syndrome may have its origin in the use of directed energy weapons wielded by the Russian GRU’s infamous Unit 29155.  theins.press/en/politics/27… The Insider et al. have obtained intercepted Russian intelligence documents, travel logs, and call metadata, along with eyewitness testimony that challenges the US intelligence community assessment that it’s “very unlikely” Havana Syndrome is the work of a foreign adversary.

NEW: Jan Marsalek, the fugitive COO of disgraced company Wirecard, wasn't just behind Germany's biggest financial fraud in history. @InsiderEng can now reveal he was also a GRU agent for a decade. theins.press/en/politics/26… Marsalek been living in Russia for more than four years, using a passport that belongs to an Orthodox priest from Lipetsk, Father Konstantin Baiazov. We have the fake passport.

Best thing you'll read all weekend, on CIA-HUR cooperation. I'll highlight the key bits below: nytimes.com/2024/02/25/wor… CIA "put in the plumbing" for a massive partnership with HUR, Ukrainian military intelligence, around 2015, after Poroshenko's election and the appoint of Gen. Valeriy Kondratyuk, formerly the head of CI at SBU, as HUR chief.

Estonia's foreign intelligence report is out. A few highlights to follow 🧵: raport.valisluureamet.ee/2024/en/ "Russia has managed to recruit at least as many contract soldiers as needed to compensate for losses on the battlefield and create some new units, such as the 40th Army Corps and the 25th Combined Arms Army, both of which, however, are reported to be understaffed."

Exclusive: Andrey Kharchenko, one of the Russian attendees of a much-scrutinized 2018 meeting in a Moscow hotel with Lega leader Matteo Salvini's right-hand, is an FSB Fifth Service officer, @the_ins_ru today reveals. The meeting was to negotiate Russian funding of Lega. The principal Italian at that event was Gianluca Savoini, Salvini's "sherpa to Russia." Savoini constantly travels to Russia, sometimes for no more than a day. He was a big reason Lega signed a partnership agreement with Putin's United Russia in 2017.

Exclusive: Putin’s assassination and terrorism squad behind the Skripal poisoning and bombings across Europe has also infiltrated Russian NGOs including @Kasparov63’s, @InsiderEng reveals. GRU Unit 29155 has “illegals” spying within and without Russia: theins.ru/en/politics/26… They’ve posed as human rights activists, documentary filmmakers and trade journalists. One has even spied under his legal name, Konstantin Medvedev.

Exclusive: A controversial aide to Bundestag deputy Eugen Schmidt, of Germany's far-right AfD party, is an agent of Russian intelligence. Oh, and his handler raps! theins.press/en/politics/26… As @InsiderEng and our partner @derspiegel reported in August, Vladimir Sergienko, 52, a Lviv-born German parliamentary aide, had been communicating with a certain suspected FSB operative named "Alexei." Alexei, we've discovered, is Ilya Vechtomov, 36ish, an officer of the FSB.

Exclusive: Tatjana Zdanoka, a Latvian member of the European Parliament, has been an agent of Russian intelligence for at least twenty years, @the_ins_ru can reveal, based on emails we obtained between Zdanoka and two of her FSB handlers. theins.press/en/politics/26…
Her two known case officers we have identified as Dmitry Gladey, 74, and Sergei Beltyukov, 53. Both are attached to the FSB's apparatus in St. Petersburg. The FSB is Russia's domestic security service, one of the successors of the KGB.

🧵New interview with "Karl," the Estonian military analyst whose insights on the war in Ukraine have proved remarkably acute. With @holger_r: "Let’s start from the frontlines where changes over the last months have been completely minimal. Russia has slight success south of Kupyansk and allegedly also south of Avdiivka, but it is only on a very operational level."

🧵Will add my own thoughts to the Morozov affair. I've interviewed two Russian agents unmasked and captured by KaPo. In both cases, I spoke at length to Estonia's counterintelligence chief, Alexander Toots, about his methods.

https://twitter.com/IlvesToomas/status/1747947264578854987

First, anyone who suggests KaPo arrests someone on a lark without sufficient evidence or out of some sense of chauvinistic malevolence toward Russians is laughably misinformed about how this service conducts itself.

.@holger_r and I talked to "Karl," the Estonian military analyst, about latest developments in Ukraine. Thread: "This time, let’s start with a broader overview of the situation. It got quite messy for Ukraine from the strategic communication perspective a few weeks ago. It was a combination of several issues..."

Exclusive: We have emails and documents from members of GRU Unit 29155–Putin’s assassination and sabotage squad—proving their culpability for a 2011 bombing in Bulgaria. The IEDs were planted in Czechia.The target was ammunition bound for Georgia. theins.ru/en/politics/26… Andrey Averyanov, the commander of Unit 29155, tasked three of his operatives with invented remote detain ties for the operation, the first known terrorist attack of this unit on NATO soil. Correspondence we obtained contains photos of the detonators and their technical specs:

Seems the most likely read of the trip. I'd also wager reasserting U.S. leadership at a time when this admin's Middle East policy isn't looking so hot and Putin has abased himself even among sympathetic Israelis -- not an opportunity an incumbent president would pass up.

https://twitter.com/BarakRavid/status/1714087048691528006

Trump stepped on his own dick last week with the "very smart" Hezbollah comment; by contrast, even the far right in Israel found favor with Biden's rhetoric. Plus, Iranian intervention risks U.S. intervention and nobody in this admin wants to indulge that contingency.

New "Karl" thread, as told to @holger_r and myself. Covers the counteroffensive, Black Sea developments, and also a bit on the emerging Israel-Hamas war: "It is clear that there will not be a big breakthrough this year. Smaller tactical breakthroughs are still possible. The maximum that I see is that Ukraine can still advance towards Tokmak. Capturing Tokmak inside this year would mark a significant achievement."

Assuming ABC News reporting is accurate re ATACMS, a very wise move by the administration. Here’s a short thread as to why: 🧵 It eliminates the last big item on Ukraine’s 16 month-long shopping list — a liar HUR provided me in Ukraine in April 2022. This is literally everything the last of what wanted since the early days of the war. (Cluster bombs were even on the list.)

New "Karl" observations on the state of the counteroffensive, Western agita, and the death of Prigozhin, as told to @holger_r and myself: 🧵 "Most stretches on the frontlines have remained quite stable. The only one with very high activity is the southern front where Ukraine is pushing strongly in at least two directions: most fiercely in Robotyne but actively also in the direction of Staromlynivka to the east."

NEW: Despite Western sanctions, companies in EU and NATO countries -- inc. Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Estonia -- have been re-exporting Texas Instruments and Analog Devices microchips to Russia. These chips are used in Russian weapons systems. theins.ru/en/politics/26… Texas Instruments microchips have been recovered from the wreckage of Russia's Kinzhal cruise missile. There are other military applications for this technology, too, as per an excellent report at @RUSI_org. static.rusi.org/RUSI-Silicon-L…

🧵New "Karl" thread on developments in Ukraine and Russia, as told to @holger_r and me. Pushes back, as you'd expect, on the emerging conventional wisdom about the counteroffensive, etc. "There have been no major changes on the front. Ukraine has been able to make very slow progress in 2-3 directions in the south. They have been able to advance even a bit more around Bakhmut. The pace is not very fast."

Oh for fuck’s sake, NATO membership has kept the Baltics safe from “little green men.” And if he thinks the U.S. did not try to welcome Russia into “the community of nations” under Bush and Clinton and Bush II, he has no business commenting on this part of the world.

https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1681100530666332160

Here is @andreivkozyrev, the Russian Foreign Minister from 1990-1996, in conversation with your humble servant, saying that the problem with American policy wasn’t that NATO went too far, but that it didn’t go far enough: newlinesmag.com/reportage/russ…

Utterly hilarious post-coup messaging from the IC. U.S. told Ukraine not to mess around in Russia during Prigo’s rebellion and “rock the boat.” Now U.S. sets the cat amongst the pigeons — Surovikin was in on it, kidnap the generals! — to prompt a 1937-style purge of top brass. Beginning to wonder if CIA didn’t want Budanov to steal their thunder.