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Thread - The New York Times reported last night that the GRU's Unit 29155 paid militants in Afghanistan to attack US troops. Bellingcat has been tracking the activity of Unit 29155 for quite some time now https://twitter.com/John_Hudson/status/1276735865008656386
In the recent episode of @Bellingchat, @christogrozev explained his investigation into the Skripal assassination atempt, one of Unit 29155's most notorious operations https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/podcasts/2020/06/16/bellingchat-episode-3-hunting-the-the-salisbury-poisonings-suspects/
Bellingcat discovered the true identities of the Skripal suspects after UK authorities published their photographs and details of their fake identities https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2018/09/26/skripal-suspect-boshirov-identified-gru-colonel-anatoliy-chepiga/
Both suspects were recipients of the Hero of Russia award, Russia's highest honour, presented personally by President Putin https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2018/10/02/anatoliy-chepiga-hero-russia-writing-wall/
Their link to Unit 29155 couldn't be clearer when it was discovered that not only did one of the suspects attend the wedding of the daughter of the unit's commander, but one of his children participated in the wedding ceremony. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/10/14/averyanov-chepiga/
We were also able to identify a third suspect linked to the Skripal poisoning, Denis Sergeev, who appeared to be the commander of the other two suspects https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/02/14/third-suspect-in-skripal-poisoning-identified-as-denis-sergeev-high-ranking-gru-officer/
We then were able to connect Sergeev to another attempted assassination using a nerve agent, this time in Bulgaria in 2015 https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/02/07/third-skripal-suspect-linked-to-2015-bulgaria-poisoning/
Further investigation allowed us to identify many more suspects involved in the Bulgaria poisoning, all seemingly linked to Unit 29155 https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/11/23/the-dreadful-eight-grus-unit-29155-and-the-2015-poisoning-of-emilian-gebrev/
We were able to acquire travel details of many of the suspects, and found some interesting patterns. For example, Sergeev spent a lot of time around the World Anti-Doping Agency building in Switzerland https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/07/06/gru-globetrotters-2-the-spies-who-loved-switzerland/
Other Unit 29155 operations include an attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016 https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2017/03/25/balkan-gambit-part-2-montenegro-zugzwang/
Another GRU officer who was linked to the Bulgaria assassination attempt then ended up working at a diplomat at the World Trade Organisation, leaving suddenly once we started reporting on Unit 29155's activities https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/02/25/an-officer-and-a-diplomat-the-strange-case-of-the-gru-spy-with-a-red-notice/
The New York Times report demonstrates what we've found in our investigations, that what we've published is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the activities of Unit 29155, which includes plotting coups, assassinations, and other spying activity.
We have a very small team investigating a vast amount of information that will lead to even more Russian spying operations being identified and exposed, so if you want to support our work to hurry things up you can do so here https://www.patreon.com/bellingcat