New: After an eighteen-month investigation, @InsiderEng has uncovered new evidence suggesting that Russia’s GRU paid tens of millions of dollars to the Taliban in Afghanistan to target American, coalition, and Afghan military forces. GRU Unit 29155 was behind this operation. We have unmasked the officers and their Afghan agents. theins.ru/en/politics/27… The program, per four former Afghan intel (NDS) sources we queried, averaged $200,000 per killed American or coalition soldier. There were smaller allowances for killed Afghan troops. One former official estimated that Russia paid a total of approximately $30 million to the Taliban via the scheme.

New "Karl" thread, with @holger_r: 🧵 "The situation on the frontlines has not significantly changed in the last month. For UA, the most difficult area remains the southern part of the eastern front—Pokrovsk and Kurakhove. RU continues to advance there, but very slowly and at the cost of heavy losses."

Breaking: The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has released an unclassified report into the IC and its work on Havana Syndrome, or Anomalous Health Incidents. From the first lines of the executive summary: "It appears increasingly likely that a foreign adversary is behind some AHIs." Last March @InsiderEng and @60Minutes concluded a yearlong investigation pointing at evidence that Russian military intelligence -- specifically GRU Unit 29155 -- was likely behind AHI. You can read that here: theins.ru/en/politics/27…

The reporting on Ankara’s hand in all this will be necessary reading. turkishminute.com/2024/11/29/erd… Rare opportunity for the Tukrs here. IRGC/proxies are a busted flush. Russia is busy elsewhere, in a battle space where Erdogan has quietly armed the opposing side to rather impressive result (while not antagonizing VVP as other NATO allies have). Erdogan and Fidan are thoroughly and utterly fed up with Assad's BS on normalization.

New: Remember "Pablo Gonzalez," the GRU illegal traded back to Russia in August? He posed for years as a Spanish journalist. A #FreePablo campaign was undertaken by various press freedom organizations when he was arrested in Poland on charges of espionage. Well, guess who gave him a big old hug at Vnukovo Airport when Pablo touched down? This guy.👇 Oleg Sotnikov is a GRU officer and team member of Unit 26165, or "Fancy Bear," which is responsible for the 2016 DNC hack. He helped with the close access hacking of the OPCW in The Hague, and also anti-doping organizations, including USADA, for which he was indicted in District Court in PA. Sotnikov was consul in Rio during the Brazil Olympics in 2016, when over a hundred Russian athletes were caught cheating with performance enhancing drugs. Our story below: theins.ru/en/politics/27…

New "Karl" thread, the first since the U.S. election, with @holger_r: "RU is pushing hard on 2-3 fronts. On the Kursk front, they have managed to gain control over a third of the territory occupied by UA. I don’t see RU being able to push UA out of Kursk within this year or by the time Trump takes office on Jan 20. Their pace of progress is slow everywhere on the front."

New insights from "Karl," the Estonian military analyst, as told to @holger_r and me: 🧵 "Last time, we discussed that the situation near Vuhledar had become critical for UA. By now, it has been abandoned. In summary, RU's offensive toward Vuhledar began a year ago with an attack on Novomykhailivka. The situation in Vuhledar itself started to become uncomfortable a few months ago."

New "Karl" analysis on the latest in Ukraine, with @holger_r: 🧵 "In Kursk, the UA offensive developed further (since last time we spoke), and in total UA managed to conquer as much territory as RU had conquered in eastern Ukraine since the beginning of the year. This was done in the first 2 weeks of the operation."

DoJ announcing now: Cyber threat group Cadet Blizzard is Unit 29155. 📷Fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/g… More about them here and their use of justiceua[dot]org: microsoft.com/en-us/security…

Latest from "Karl," @holger_r's and my favorite Estonian military analyst, on developments in the war: "Let’s start with the situation on the eastern front as it is still the most painful and problematic for Ukraine. Russian pressure and forward movement toward Pokrovske and Toretsk continue there. Russia has very small daily advances there but it is still worrying that Ukraine hasn’t been able to put a stop to it."

The European Federation of Journalists is celebrating the release of "Pablo Gonzalez" and equating him with Evan Gershkovich and Vladimir Kara-Murza. This is not only ridiculous in light of the swap, it is dangerous. Gonzalez is a GRU operative whose real name is Pavel Rubtsov. He was detained by Polish intelligence in Feb. 2022. Short🧵europeanjournalists.org/blog/2024/08/0… According on leaked travel data obtained and reported on by @agents_media, Rubtsov traveled with GRU officer Sergei Turbin, who belongs to the service's Fifth Department, which handles GRU "illegals" (spies working outside of diplomatic cover). agents.media/sledivshij-za-…

NEW: @InsiderEng and its partners @lemondefr and @derspiegel have identified the French chef arrested on suspicion of working for Russian intelligence to disrupt the Paris Olympics. Meet Kirill Griaznov, a Cordon Bleu-trained chef, reality TV star and FSB officer. We have his emails. Oh, and he's been to New York too! theins.press/en/politics/27… The Perm-born Griaznov has resided in France for 14 years. He only decided to become a chef suddenly in 2010 after years working as a lawyer for financial services companies. While in Luxembourg, he met Lord Robert Skidelsky, a British peer. He was very excited about this and wanted to meet Skidelsky again in Moscow. Skidelsky seemed keen.

NEW: With our partner @derspiegel, @InsiderEng has obtained a secret SVR plan -- "Operation Kylo" -- to weaken pro-Ukrainian sentiment in the West, using "fear," "panic" and "horror" as psycho-emotional triggers. theins.press/en/politics/27… The architect of this operation is a 20-year veteran of Russia's foreign intelligence service, Mikhail Kolesov. He acknowledges Russia's total failure in the propaganda war with the West since the full-scale invasion and proposes clever new active measures to undermine support for Ukraine.

New "Karl" thread on the latest Ukraine developments, with @holger_r: 🧵 "Since we last spoke in May, there haven’t been substantial changes on the frontline. Russia is still pressing but without remarkable results. The pressure is heaviest on the eastern front near Pokrovske, west from Avdiivka."

🧵 An interesting data set from a group of Western aviation experts, one of whom I'll quote in this short thread. Between May 3 and June 15, Russia dropped no fewer than 64 FAB glide bombs on… Belgorod, Russia. In other words, almost every day for a month and a half, Russia has been bombing itself. Not intentionally, of course. But why? There are several reasons.

🧵New thread from "Karl," the Estonian military analyst, on the state of play in Ukraine, with @holger_r: "The most significant development since we last spoke is of course the U.S aid package. Without this, the situation would have grown very critical for Ukraine by autumn."

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."