It wasn’t enough that Vladimir Putin probably tried to kill former Russian spy Sergei Skripal with a super-secret nerve agent—he had to smack-talk him, too. Putin told reporters Wednesday that Skripal was a “scumbag” and a “traitor to the motherland.” Why is the Kremlin offering comment on Skripal after staying relatively quiet on the subject other than to deny responsibility? It could have something to do with the fact that the alleged Russian assassins’ cover story is coming apart at the seams.
Welcome to Rabbit Hole.
The cover: When British Prime Minister Theresa May accused two Russian men of being a Russian military intelligence hit team responsible for the failed assassination of Skripal, a double agent living in Salisbury, Russian television dragged the two accused men on TV for a clumsy denial session. The men, using the names Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, said they were mere tourists on a business trip, drawn like moths to the irresistible flame of Salisbury cathedral’s 123-meter spire and not covert operatives exacting revenge on a traitor to Russia.
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Passport problems: “Petrov” and “Boshirov” have some funky internal passports, though. In addition to passports for international travel, Russia issues its citizens “internal passports” akin to driver’s licenses. The investigative news outlet Bellingcat, along with The Insider, obtained copies of the two alleged assassins’ internal passports and noticed a few things amiss. Though the men are clearly in their late twenties at the youngest, their passports dated back only to 2009 with no record of anyone of those names before that time. More intriguing, their passports had near sequential numbers and were stamped with a marking, “Do not provide any information,” that police sources said was reserved for intelligence personnel under cover. The outlets also linked a phone number listed on the documents to the Russian Ministry of Defense and the headquarters of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU).
Cover problems: Armed with the knowledge that “Petrov” and Boshirov” were likely GRU officers, Bellingcat pored over yearbooks, photographs, and honors listed at Russian military academies where the two would’ve likely been trained, and identified GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga as the man purporting to be Ruslan Boshirov. Colonel Chepiga, it turns out, is a veteran of the 14th Spetsnaz Brigade who served three tours in Chechnya and a mysterious 2014 tour in Ukraine for which he received the Hero of the Russian Federation award. Photos of Russia’s Far Eastern Military Academy found by Bellingcat online showed an official portrait of Chepiga alongside other recipients of the prestigious military award. In the meantime, users of a Russian 4chan-style online forum launched their own investigative effort and found what they believe is a picture of Chepiga at a graduation ceremony at Russia’s Far Eastern Military Command academy where his portrait now hangs.
Neighbor problems: For those who may have lingering doubts about the paper trail linking “Boshirov” to Colonel Chepiga, a host of friends and classmates of Chepiga have since come forward to tell reporters that the man accused of trying to assassinate Skripal is their old pal Anatoliy. Old family friends and neighbors of the Chepigas, in his home village of Beryozovka, identified Boshirov as Chepiga for The Washington Post, BBC, and The Telegraph. A fellow army veteran also told Russia’s Novaya Gazeta that he recognized Chepiga’s voice in the Boshirov denial interview on Russian TV.
Hero for what? We don’t know what specific actions earned Chepiga the Hero of the Russian Federation medal, but one outlet has offered an unconfirmed theory: spiriting the Kremlin’s man out of Kiev as a revolution swept him from power. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former Russian billionaire imprisoned by Putin for his forays into politics, launched the Dossier Center, a London-based journalism outlet that does investigative reporting on Russia. A reporter for the center claims that Chepiga helped escort the Kremlin-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych out of Ukraine and into Russia as the 2014 Maidan revolution took hold.
As intriguing as the story sounds, there’s no confirmation of it—particularly from those well sourced on the Chepiga story. Bellingcat has said it’s seen no hint of corroboration for the story. The Ukrainian government, never one to miss an opportunity to take a swipe at Moscow, hasn’t come out to support the story either. In fact, the former head of Yanukovych’s security detail has asked a court in Kiev to let him testify to the fact that he never saw Chepiga or anyone like him while whisking the ousted Ukrainian president from the country.
Opsec fail or just don’t care? Russia’s alleged GRU assassins were caught on closed circuit camera meandering about Salisbury, where the attempted hit took place. The British government was able to trace the passports that the two men used to enter the country and thus the identities they used while traveling. Just days after Russia put the two on state-run TV, their cover collapsed as Bellingcat revealed the intelligence markings on their internal passports and former associates came out of the woodwork to identify one of them as a known GRU colonel. And let’s not forget, their targets—Sergei and Yulia Skripal—survived the attempt on their lives. So do Russian spies just suck at their jobs these days?
Maybe. Maybe not. Russian security expert Mark Galeotti makes a convincing case that the expectation the hit team’s cover would fall apart was probably baked into Moscow’s decision to green-light the operation. In this interpretation, the revelations about the hit team are a symptom of the GRU’s aggression rather than its incompetence.
There’s much to be said for the argument. In an era of mass surveillance, when everyone hemorrhages selfies and personal data on the internet, it could be unrealistic to expect you can slip in and out of a country for a high-profile assassination without pinging on at least a few hard drives. Just take a look at Israeli Mossad’s 2010 assassination of Hamas military commander Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room. The Mossad, widely regarded as among the most effective intelligence services, saw the faces of its operatives and their passports plastered all over the media after the operation, because Dubai, not unlike closed circuit-happy Britain, saturates its cities with security cameras.
