February 21, 2019
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
In the previous part of this report, Bellingcat and its investigative partners The Insider (Russia) and Respekt (Czechia) identified Denis Sergeev, the GRU officer who was present in the UK during the poisoning of the Skripals in March 2018, and was also in Bulgaria during the poisoning, with similar symptoms, of a Bulgarian arms dealer…
February 20, 2019
By Aric Toler
After months sitting in the Russian State Duma, a law will finally pass forbidding Russian servicemen from carrying or using internet-connected devices to share information about their military units and service. The law introduces additional restrictions on Russian servicemen from sharing information about the military, including speaking with journalists about their military service or “carrying…
February 19, 2019
By Aric Toler
In September 2018, the Russian website FindFace was taken offline in order to provide “solutions tailored for government and business”. This site received international press for its accuracy in its facial recognition capabilities, with a focus on finding someone’s profile on the Russian social network Vkontakte (VK). Recently, a new site has emerged from the…
February 14, 2019
Bellingcat previously confirmed that a third GRU officer was present in the UK during the time Sergey and Yulia Skripal fell into a coma, after what the UK authorities said was a deliberate poisoning with Novichok. In addition, Bellingcat established that this same officer traveled multiple times to Bulgaria during 2015, including a trip days…
February 7, 2019
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
Bellingcat has determined that a third Russian GRU officer, who was in the United Kingdom at the time of the Skripals’ Novichok poisoning in March 2018, arrived in Bulgaria just days before a local entrepreneur and his son became seriously ill after being poisoned with an unidentified substance. The third man, a 45-year-old Russian travelling…
January 30, 2019
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
At a Monday press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, the Ukrainian Security Agency (SBU) announced that it had intercepted passenger manifests from Russian MoD-chartered airliners transporting mercenaries working for Wagner, a Russian private military company (PMC). The manifests, involving flights from Russia to several African and Middle-East destinations in the latter half of 2018, allegedly transported a total…
January 9, 2019
If you are browsing around Google Maps and, for some reason, looking at islands in the East Siberian Sea, you will come across something peculiar — a nightmarish black blob covering up what should be a landmass named Jeannette Island. This island, in reality, is quite small, at only three square kilometers, and part of the…
November 30, 2018
On the 25th of November, Ukraine and Russia were involved in one of the most serious confrontations of the almost 5-year long conflict between the two countries. Russian Navy vessels first rammed and then later fired on and captured three Ukrainian Navy vessels, marking the first time Russian-flagged military units had officially attacked those of…
November 22, 2018
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
Two officers from Russia’s military intelligence (GRU) are sought, via Interpol, as suspected organizers of an unsuccessful 2016 coup in Montenegro, a small country on the Adriatic Sea in Southeastern Europe. The true identity of one officer is public, while the other officer is known only under his cover identity. Bellingcat has been able to unmask the real identity of the second suspect indicted by the Montenegro prosecutor, and to confirm that he is indeed a senior GRU officer.
November 16, 2018
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
One of the unanswered questions lingering after Bellingcat’s unmasking of the identities of suspects in the botched-up poisoning of Sergey and Yulia Skripal, is how two (or, likely, more) undercover GRU officers were able to obtain visas to travel to the UK. Securing a visa to the UK – as to most of EU destinations…
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