A Skripal poisoning suspect identified as a long-time GRU agent

The investigative site Bellingcat, working with the Russian-centric media site, The Insider, claims to have identified one of two suspects in the March poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, England. According to the investigation, one of the two men accused by the British authorities, who went to the United Kingdom under the name Ruslan Boshirov, is actually Anatoliy Chegipa, colonel of the GRU (military intelligence service Russian). Heroes of the Russian Federation in 2014. The British officials, who also accused the two men of being GRU officers, have not yet commented on the report, but according to the BBC, "it's not going to happen." There is no dispute over the identification ".

This, to say the least, contradicts the story of "Boshirov" and the co-suspect Alexander Petrov in a recent interview with RT. Both claimed to be vitamin vendors who had traveled to England for fun and had visited Salisbury – twice in two days for a few hours at a time due to bad weather – to see his famous Gothic cathedral. In the interview, Boshirov / Chegipa drew facts on the spire of the cathedral that seemed to come from a Wikipedia page. The RT interview also suggested that both men could be homosexuals.

Shortly after the interview, on September 14, Bellingcat reported that the documents indicated that the two men had received identifiers under their cover names in 2009 – there was no previous record under these names – and that one of their records contained marks associated with Russian secret services. A phone number on one of the files is linked to the Ministry of Defense, according to the Guardian.

On Wednesday, Bellingcat continued to identify Chepiga, through photo reviews of graduates of Russian military academies, telephone databases and passport files. Bellingcat is an open source survey site founded by English blogger Eliot Higgins, known for reporting on ammunition and chemical weapons in Syria and the destruction of the MH17 flight in Ukraine in 2015. His work is frequently cited by NGOs and the media. electrical outlets.

According to Colonel Chegipa's new bio, he was born in 1979 in a small town near the Chinese border, and at 18 he attended "one of Russia's elite training grounds for sea commandos and Spetsnaz He was deployed to Chechnya three times and received the pseudonym Ruslan Boshirov between 2003 and 2010. He received the title of hero of the Russian Federation in 2014 for an unspecified mission. (Given the timing, it probably had something to do with Ukraine.) The Russian President hands the award personally to a few officers a year. And in the news that will be disappointing for those who were behind the story of Ruslan and Alexander's love, Chegipa would be married with a child.

Bellingcat's analysis is unlikely to have much impact in Russia, where Higgins has long been dismissed as a NATO-backed propagandist. The new details could help the UK claim that Russia is lying, but it's not as if the Kremlin was really trying to make the cover convincing.