Alexei Navalny is a Russian critic of the Putin government. He was nearly killed by a Novichok nerve agent in August. Yesterday, he talked to the FSB agent who poisoned his underwear and got a full confession.
Bellingcat is an investigative organization that developed out of Eliot Higgins’s investigations of Syrian munitions, particularly nerve agent munitions, when he blogged as Brown Moses. They worked with CNN and Navalny in this operation.
Bellingcat uses open source information in their investigations. They exposed the two FSB poisoners of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia and have uncovered large amounts of information about nerve agent use in Syria.
[Disclosure: I consult with Bellingcat and occasionally write for them.]The Bellingcat folks do a good job of telling their own story, with CNN’s help. So I’ll let them give the details. Here’s their full report on the Navalny investigation. The report on the phonecall, with a recording and transcript. The transcript is in English, and the phonecall video has English translation. CNN report.
Navalny called several FSB officers with no luck, then decided to pretend that he was an FSB higher-up who wanted a readout of the operation. It worked stunningly.
Why did they poison his underwear?
Bellingcat has been wildly successful in using open-source information to scoop conventional news sources and, probably, national intelligence services. National intelligence services have been reluctant to admit that open source information can be as useful as their classified sources. Bellingcat is not the only non-governmental organization doing this kind of work. The James A. Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Middlebury’s Monterey campus is also excellent. Datayo is a newcomer and much quieter than I think they should be. The New York Times has recently acquired a visualization unit who use overhead photos.
Bellingcat, with its Skripal and Navalny investigations, have shown that the Russian intelligence services are sloppy in their execution, dropping clues everywhere and leaving far too many things, like telephone numbers out in the open.
Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner
Gin & Tonic
What also helps is that in Russia, everything is for sale.
zhena gogolia
Reposted from below.
The video is really something. The best part are his associates sitting next to him and covering their mouths so they don’t burst out with something audible.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Good to see that Russian security is as non existent as ours is. But pretending to be the assassins boss is pretty funny – it sounds like the kind of silly stunt someone would pull in a role playing game while laughing “Oh this would never work in real life…”
Mary G
They seem to be pretty skilled at hacking, though?
Baud
I want Navalny to interview Trump people.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
Oh, yes, please!
bjacques
I used to think that the sloppiness was deliberate, as a way of gloating that (mostly British) governments are powerless to stop them. But, as with Trump’s spectacular own goals over the years, there doesn’t seem to be any master plan after all.
Mike in NC
Let’s hope “poisoned underwear” is what everybody gives Mitch McConnell for Christmas!
MattF
@Baud: He could claim to be Giuliani’s assistant.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Baud:
Voice on Phone “I was just chatting with Donald at the omelet bar at Mar-a-lago and he said, oh just tell Don Jr to give you a full briefing so here I am”
Don Jr “Ah, you sure dad said that?”
Voice on Phone “His words were “And if Donny give you lip, tell him Full Conformance or else from me.”
Don Jr “Yes, that sounds like dad.”
Major Major Major Major
Well thank god for sloppy enemies.
Kristine
I hope those folks are watching their backs because no way they’re not targets.
West of the Rockies
Russia needs to start facing repercussions, be they financial, political, the revealing of embarrassing state secrets–something!
Please note I am advocating non-military repercussions. The tanking of their position as an energy supplier would be peachy. Hit ’em in the financial nut sack.
zhena gogolia
Putin gave a two-hour press conference the other day. His answer to questions about Navalny was basically, oh, if we’d wanted to kill him we would have killed him. So Navalny extracts from this guy the admission that yes, they did want to kill him, but the pilot landed the plane in time and the emergency medical staff got to him in time to save his life. It is a remarkable conversation and completely exposes Putin as a cold-blooded, lying murderer, as if we didn’t already know that but it’s nice to have some more incontrovertible proof.
Gin & Tonic
@West of the Rockies: The only thing that would work is the only thing the US won’t do – lock them out of SWIFT.
The Moar You Know
They’re sloppy because they can be. The Brits won’t lift a finger to touch them. Hell, I think they’ve even stopped trying to track them. Just take a flight into Heathrow and start killing some fuckers who’ve pissed Vlad off. It’s a consequence-free crime; you’ll get more legal trouble mixing in your recyclables with your household trash in London than you will if you kill a few Russian dissidents.
The US is almost as bad.
Start sending home some agents in body bags and sooner or later they’ll stop being sloppy.
@Gin & Tonic: or do this. The Brits won’t allow it, though. The Russians own 20% of London; it would break the back of the British financial system to impose real sanctions on them.
West of the Rockies
@Gin & Tonic:
Look, I like Gulliver’s Travels as much as the next guy, but… Oh. Never mind.
Another Scott
@West of the Rockies:
Reuters:
I don’t think Biden’s people have any illusions that physical consequences are required to get Putin’s attention and change his behavior.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@West of the Rockies:
Create a Department of Vengeance and put Hillary in charge of it.
Geo Wilcox
@The Moar You Know: Too bad, so sad, lie down with a bear, end up mauled.
West of the Rockies
@Baud:
Oh, I think I will apply to the Grudges and Resentment section! Maybe the Passive-Aggressive unit needs some help in reception.
Cheryl Rofer
MisterForkbeard
@Baud: I don’t know why, but ‘DoV’ has such a great ring to it.
Especially if run by Hillary.
Baud
@Cheryl Rofer:
I hope for his sake he lives in the first floor.
Cheryl Rofer
I think it’s not gonna matter in the long run.
Baud
@Cheryl Rofer:
In the long run, we’re all dead.
germy
What ever happened to the two people who poisoned Kim Jong-Nam?
They claimed they didn’t know what they were doing – that they were told it was for a prank TV show or something?
I’m curious what happened to them, and if their story was true.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Cheryl Rofer: That was predictable…I was actually just wondering how long the FSB guy who fell for the ruse was going to keep breathing…
The Moar You Know
@Cheryl Rofer: Not sure which this is in reference to but I’ll just take it as “the existing condition of full-fledged cyberwar that exists between the West and Russia” and say as an IT guy in the trenches (and out of them frequently dealing with management and the government) that America WILL NOT take this seriously until one day, we will all wake up and check our bank balances and everything will say “$0.00”.
THAT’S when we will start taking it seriously, and that will be far, far too late.
Another Scott
In other news, ScienceMag:
(Emphasis added.)
Good, good.
That last bit is most important, IMHO. It’s far too easy these days to sort though a mountain of data and come up with some explanation with a “significant” p-value less than 5% that might instead be explained by something else (e.g. a problem with the data). Journals need to be much more aware of the implications of publication of stuff like this.
Cheers,
Scott.
Raoul Paste
@Baud: Foreign or domestic?
geg6
Navalny is like some kind of superhero. He continues to amaze me just by being alive, let alone trapping his would-be assassins. He makes Putin his bitch like no one else. Russia, why don’t you rise up and put this man at the top?!?!?! I know nothing of his ideology, but certainly he’s gotta be a better leader than the low life KGB thug leading them now.
Baud
@Another Scott:
This is going to make it more difficult to publish my paper on phrenology.
@Raoul Paste:
Is there a difference anymore?
oatler.
“I Won’t Be Your Poisoned Underwear” next country hit
Anomalous Cowherd
@Mary G:
Yeah, if their OpSec is that bad, how did they manage to penetrate US networks and keep it hidden for months? Sounds like we need some competent cyber security gurus. Maybe Putin’s plan was for The Donald of the Bigly Hands to screw around with things until he unwittingly created the conditions for a breach.
Chyron HR
@Cheryl Rofer:
I would be willing to offer Trump some clemency if he went full supervillain on the henchmen who’ve failed him.
WaterGirl
@Kristine: Which folks? There are a lot of players here. I’m thinking the guy who was duped is not long for this world.
WaterGirl
@Cheryl Rofer: I wondered why the first guy – who was called and said “I know who you are” and then hung up the phone – didn’t immediately call the others who were involved, to warn them not to fall for that trick.
Benw
@WaterGirl: he probably thought to himself, “I hope Boris tells him to fuck a yak, nobody’s THAT stupid,” and went back to reading Dostoyefsk!
SFAW
@geg6:
Like Butchie Doe?
[Sorry, local reference. Butchie Doe was a Boston mobster who survived a multitude of attempted hits.]
gene108
@Anomalous Cowherd:
Part of me feels the cybersecurity grunts knew about it, but no one higher up would bother escalating things, because showing Russia can hack us would upset Donnie.
It’d just prove that Russia’s more than capable of helping him win in 2016.
West of the Rockies
@oatler.:
Talk about friends in low places!
Wag
@germy: There’s a documentary coming out on Netflix about that murder that sounds really interesting. There was an interview with the filmmaker last week in NPR. Here’s the trailer.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CmyVSZ2yDeo
eclare
@Wag: That does look good!
Ruckus
@bjacques:
Even if trump had some sort of master plan, it would be crap.
Because he’s blinded by narcissism and greed.
How often do you think that might just be the entire operational thought process that he and his possess?
jonas
Was just about to say the same thing. And with Trump fully in control of the GOP for the foreseeable future, even if out of the WH, Putin knows he can count on Republican politicians at all levels to continue running interference for him as a sign of loyalty to Trump.
germy
@Wag:
I’d forgotten about the LOL shirt!
What a strange story, Historians of the future will wonder if we were all high.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
Allowing their financial system to be owned by russians has done wonders for them hasn’t it? Do you think they ever thought once about who the wealthy russians are and how and why they were able to get wealthy in russia?
Ruckus
@Cheryl Rofer:
They will just move him to the penthouse as a gesture of good will.
Then he will have a window that he can jump through.
The Moar You Know
@Ruckus: Nope. Not for a second. Just like how Americans and Canadians pay no attention to who the wealthy Chinese are – not to mention how they got that way – who are buying scads of West Coast real estate.
Ruckus
@Anomalous Cowherd:
You think?
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
:-) I just wanted to see this again…………….
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
Thought you’d agree. Money buys everything and anything. People are not only available, they might be some of the cheapest and easiest things to buy. Although, like in every other situation buying the most expensive thing is no guarantee of quality, the cheapest one is often a very good sign of a lack thereof.
Frank Wilhoit
“…the Russian intelligence services are sloppy…”
Time was, they knew better; and even today, this kind of thing could be cleaned up very quickly, if the motivation was there. Can it be that the motivation isn’t there: that it is all performance for them, as it is for us?
...now I try to be amused
Roger Moore
@Frank Wilhoit:
I think the sloppiness is, if not precisely the point, then at least a potential message. I’m sure they’re perfectly happy when an operation goes without a hitch and they get away cleanly. But getting caught and facing no real consequences is at least as intimidating to dissidents.
Geminid
@jonas: Maybe Karl Rove will give trump underwear for Christmas.
Ruckus
@Frank Wilhoit:
The bigger any process involving humans gets, the bigger the possibility of sloppiness gets. Less control, more chances for miss communication, more chances for confusion, more chances for miss understanding, more chances for fuck ups. It’s why extremely important things are supposed to have cross checks. Two people to read a court filing to make sure the line above the signature doesn’t have the words “plenty of perjury” in it.
The Pale Scot
@The Moar You Know:
Fukem
UK is out of the EU in less than 2 weeks, their influence and usefulness is fading. The shitshow that is going to be UK politicos trying to keep things together is going to run over any other international concerns the UK might have.
The UK’s red lines means that they are going to be way outside the Single Market. The treaty process that allowed them to cobble something together with the EU end date is 12/31. After that the UK is a third country with the same access as Armenia. The UK hasn’t worked to keep the Interconnector that sends electricity from Europe to the UK nominal. Or set up certification for their air traffic control. They need to hire and train thousands of custom agents, so far they’ve hired 16. They have spent little on ferry customs infrastructure, 100’s of millions on container port infrastructure.
COVID, especially the current embargo the Europeans have placed on the UK due to this new strain, will cover up the Brexit ruins for a couple of weeks. But people will notice that small continental businesses are no longer taking their business. Toyota and Nissan have stashed about 2 weeks of parts, after that they need JIT deliveries from the continent
I should add that all indications point that it will be a generation before UK, if it still exists, would be accepted back into the EU. Most Europeans don’t care about the UK and have already moved on
Frank Wilhoit
@Ruckus: Yes, but the other angle is when you hire your friends/tribal affiliates instead of people who know how to do stuff. If you’re performing, you hire your friends. If the outcome actually matters (arguably an obsolete concept), you hire people who can get outcomes.
scav
@Roger Moore: If the point is actually quell general dissent, you certainly don’t want to be too successful at fading into the probable. And if you don’t mind burning your own personnel, why bother with over-scrupulous stealth?
Feathers
I see London, I see France,
You’ve got Novichok in your underpants.
Deepest apologies, I am my inner five year-old sometimes. I have been on a Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie kick, and am imagining David Suchet as Poirot or Jeremy Brett as Holmes saying, “You see, it was the poisoned underpants.” Wondering how much this will penetrate the zeitgeist.
...now I try to be amused
@Feathers:
My inner twelve-year-old thinks:
Roger Moore
@scav:
Yes and no. There’s more than one of avoiding fading into the probable. The way you want to do it is the way they’ve done it inside Russia: people keep dying in things that are officially declared accidents but which are so obviously not that everyone gets the point. This happens without people blowing their cover or revealing interesting methods. In contrast, the stuff that’s been caught happening overseas just seems sloppy. They can claim intimidation and proof of impunity as a consolation prize, but I think they’d probably be happier if their operatives maintained cover and their methods weren’t shown to be sloppy. The deaths of prominent dissidents would be enough of a message.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@The Pale Scot: What is the UK with COVID-19 and no-deal Brexit going to look like…
Warblewarble
SpongeBob underpants works for Putin?
scav
@Roger Moore: I really don’t know. There’s the ideal and then there’s satisficing behavior. If the ideal takes time and money, many just go for good enough. If there are no costs (that you’re unwilling to pay) to being sloppy, why bother? There are also questions of style — some bullies really enjoy the public sand kicking and the swanning around bare-chested riding a stegosaurus. In a world of Trump, Bojo and minions, I’m not sure I’m thoroughly expecting optimal practices from team Putin.
Kristine
@WaterGirl: I was thinking of the folks from Bellingcat.
mad citizen
@The Pale Scot: I’m curious what the source is for this “The UK hasn’t worked to keep the Interconnector that sends electricity from Europe to the UK nominal.”
According to a recent article at powerengineering.com, ““While Britain is set to leave the EU, as far as power markets are concerned it is set to increasingly look less like an island.”
https://www.powerengineeringint.com/world-regions/europe/uk-interconnectivity-with-europe-to-rise-despite-brexit/
WaterGirl
@Kristine: They did good work here, and it appears that they do a lot of good work. May they stay safe.
debbie
More than a bit surprising that Kudryavtsev shot his mouth off like that. How long until he takes a leap out the window?
Cheryl Rofer
The Pale Scot
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
A no deal Brexit means the UK trades with the EU on WTO terms. That means Britain must put standard tariffs on food, auto parts, a whole range of items. It also means that Britain cannot discriminate. Chicken coming from Nigeria must be treated the same as chicken from France or Nigeria can bring a suit against Britain at the WTO (as long as the chx meets UK standards, which they have not yet published). It’s the same with everything, If Britain waves thru meat and produce from the EU they have to to do the same for every other export, so pop goes Britain’s Agri industry. The most immediate WTFs are the thousands of SMEs that sell small amounts of goods to the UK and are just going to say fuck it, it’s not worth the hassle. Horticulturalists are getting these letters now, “we won’t be shipping to the UK until this Brexit thing is sorted out”
Amazon isn’t going to collect VAT taxes, so sellers are going to need to keep stock both in the UK and in Europe to manage the paperwork. Capt. Kirk has announced that his store will not be shipping to the UK because it’s not worth the hassle
@mad citizen:
Energy Becomes Barnier’s Brexit Bargaining Chip
Unless the UK does a long backpedal, the UK’s access on preferential is terms is over. As a 3rd country it will be competing with the Ukraine on price, and deliveries into the EU will have to have tariffs attached. This all WTO mandated, or as Boris calls it, Australia terms
Leaving the SM is like Pennsylvania seceding and trading with the USA on the same the same terms as Tongo. The Brexiteers want to slash regulations and compete globally on price (by reducing wages, benefits and environmental protections). They think they could replace say Cali lettuce with lettuce from Cuba, both would have the same tariffs but the Cuban lettuce would be so much cheaper. What exactly they think the could export other than laundromat services for criminal enterprises I don’t know.
This is an episode of Leverage where the whole team is doing poppers and huffing glue. I see no sense or final goal in the UK gov’s actions. It’s all just reacting to daily headlines.
The UK is fucked. At least in the US Trump’s powers were restricted by the federal system. In the Uk everything is run from London as far as International relations go, The Scots will use this to pry themselves loose of a sinking ship, but the margins are tight