bellingcat – Skripal Suspect Boshirov identified as Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga of GRU

Bellingcat and his investigative partner The Insider – Russia have definitively established the identity of one of the suspects in the poisoning of Sergey and Yulia Skripal, as well as in the homicide of the British citizen Dawn Sturgess.

Parts 1 and 2 of the Bellingcat investigation into Skripal intoxication suspects are available for information. In the previous two parts of the investigation, Bellingcat and Insider concluded that the two suspects – traveling abroad and appearing on Russian television under the pseudonyms "Ruslan Boshirov" and "Alexander Petrov" – are in fact secret agents of the Russian military intelligence. widely known as GRU.

Bellingcat was able to confirm the actual identity of one of the two officers. The suspect using the cover identity of "Ruslan Boshirov" is in fact Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, a highly decorated GRU officer with the highest distinction of Russia, Hero of the Russian Federation. Following the identification of Bellingcat, multiple sources familiar with the person and / or investigation confirmed the identity of the suspect.

This finding removes any remaining doubt that the two suspects in Novichok's intoxications were actually Russian officers operating on a clandestine government mission.

While civilians in Russia can usually possess more than one passport, no civilian – or even an intelligence officer on a personal trip – can cross the state border under a false identity. The discovery also highlights the scale of the effort – and the risk of public diplomacy – that Russia has taken to protect the identity of the agents. President Putin has stated publicly that "Boshirov" and "Petrov" are civilians. As it is established that the prices Hero of the Russian Federation are distributed by the Russian President personally, it is highly likely that Vladimir Putin would have been aware of the identity of Colonel Chepiga, since only a handful of officers receive this award each year.

Who is Colonel Chepiga?

Anatoliy Vladimirovich Chepiga was born on May 5, 1979, in the village of Nikolaevka, in eastern Amur, with 300 inhabitants, near the Russian-Chinese border. At 18, he enrolled in a military school located only 40 kilometers from his home, the East Military Command Academy in Blagoveschensk, one of the commando training centers. Spetsnaz officers

Anatoliy Chepiga graduated from the academy with honors in 2001. He was then assigned to the 14e Spetsnaz Brigade in the easternmost city of Russia, Khabarovsk, one of Spetsnaz's elite units under the command of the GRU. The Chepiga unit (74854, formerly 20662) played a key role in the Second Chechen War and was also observed near border end of 2014.

During his assignment at 14e The Spetsnaz Brigade, Colonel Chepiga has been deployed three times in Chechnya. The specific operations in which he participated are not known; However, a website of a branch of the Far East of a state-run military volunteer organization reports that it received more than 20 military awards during his service.

At some point between 2003 (the last year, we identified it at 14e The Spetsnaz Brigade in Khabarovsk) and 2010 (the year he received his first undercover passport), Anatoliy Chepiga was assigned his alter ego, "Ruslan Boshirov", and was transferred to Moscow. Given his current rank of colonel and underground agents of the GRU, it is plausible that he graduated as a military diplomat during this period. Academy, also known as the GRU Conservatory in Moscow.

In December 2014, Colonel Chepiga received the highest Russian state price, Hero of the Russian Federation.This prize is awarded personally by the President of Russia "As a recognition of the services rendered to the state and the Russian people involving a heroic act".

Most prizes are awarded at public ceremonies and accompanied by a presidential decree, such as the price in 2016 to Russian officers fighting in Syria. Other presidential decrees – when the act of underlying heroism is subject to state secrecy – are kept secret. This is the case with the award to Colonel Chepiga. Although there is no decree publicly published – or reference to him on the Kremlin website – the website of the volunteer run by the state specified that he received the award "In December 2014 … to lead a peacekeeping mission".

Indeed, the fact that Colonel Chepiga received the Hero of Russia prize is ad on the site of his military school. While most other recipients of the award have a detailed description of the acts that led to this recognition, the last two recipients – Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Popov – received only a laconic statement: "by decree of the Russian President". the mission for which he – or they – were rewarded was secret.

The wording and timing of the sentence provide important clues to Colonel Chepiga's mission. In 2014, there were no military activities in Chechnya. Russia has not yet committed militarily to Syria. The only region in which Russia conducted secretive military operations at that time was in the east of Ukraine, which is the most likely theater of its mission, as suggested by the secret of his reward.

Anatoliy Chepiga is married and has one child.

The challenge of finding Colonel Chepiga

Bellingcat started the search with only the photographs of the two targets and their cover identities. Initially, we attempted a reverse image search via several online engines, but no match was found. Similarly, no personal telephone number was registered in the name of "Ruslan Boshirov" in one of the conversely searchable telephone databases, usually counted by Bellingcat.

After trying these initial tracks of pursuit, Bellingcat and the Insider approached the search in a deductive way. Assuming that the two suspects were GRU officers focusing on secret operations in Western Europe (see our second publication about the Skripal poisoning suspects), and knowing their approximate age, we contacted former Russian military officers to ask them which specialized schools would have provided appropriate training. One of the sources contacted suggested that the school with the best reputation for foreign language training and clandestine operations abroad at the turn of the century – when both suspects would have studied – was the Academy of military command of the Far East. The graduation years for both were estimated between 2001 and 2003.

We have browsed several photos of (incomplete) yearbooks and classroom meeting galleries from 2001-2003, but we have found no exact match for any of the suspects. The suspect "Boshirov" had several matches possible – but not certain. One of them was in a group photo of a 2018 article on the history of the Academy. Near a photo of Academy graduates deployed in Chechnya, the text referred to "seven graduates [who] have received the Hero of Russia Award ".

While testing the hypothesis that the unnamed person at the far right end of the photo could to be "Boshirov", we searched online for references to "DVOKU" (the Russian abbreviation of the Academy of Military Command of the Far East), "Chechnya" and "Hero of the Federation of Russia ". website, which describes a certain Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga as being related to the three search terms.

Online searches on Google and two Russian search engines did not reveal any social media images or presence regarding Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga or any other person with a military connection. This seemed very unusual, given that he had received the highest honor from the state.

Subsequently, the research team searched the Russian databases to find references to Anatoliy Chepiga. A number of residential and / or telephone databases disclosed from various Russian cities and regions are available free of charge in the form of torrents on the Internet; the data in these databases vary between 2000 and 2014.

The research team was able to find Anatoliy Chepiga in two places and at different times in the database: in 2003, in Khabarovsk; and in 2012 in Moscow.

In the 2003 database, a certain Anatoliy Vladimirovich Chepiga had a telephone number and an address only "20662", the Russian abbreviation of the military unit 20662. 20662 is the designation number of the Spetsnaz unit of the GRU . 14e Brigade in Khabarovsk.

At the time of publication, the phone number listed next to the name of Anatoliy Chepiga was used by a person who had owned it for 4 years and who was not aware of the former owner of the number.

Bellingcat accepted the working hypothesis that this person was indeed Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, described in the publication as "Hero of the Russian Federation".

In the 2012 database, a person named Anatoliy Vladirovich Chepiga was listed as resident in Moscow. This man was born on the 5th April 1979.

Using the date of birth, the address and the names of the family members, Bellingcat searched this man online and on social networks, to no avail. Another person with the same full name and year of birth – but with a different date of birth – was identified as an unrelated business owner with "Boshirov". The year of birth (1979) of the database candidate was a year later than the year of birth in the cover documents of 'Boshirov', but this corresponded to a graduation year of the Military academy in 2001.

At this point, Bellingcat has accepted the working hypothesis that the man of the 2003 and 2012 databases is the same and is in fact Colonel Chepiga, hero of the Russian Federation.

To establish it is, in fact, "Boshirov", we had to get a photograph. None was available online or in open sources, even in a number of articles referring to "Hero of Russia Colonel Chepiga". Another DVOKU graduate, who would have received the same award simultaneously with Chepiga – Alexander Popov – could be seen in pics and videos, but Chepiga was obviously absent. The systematic omission of photographs of an otherwise outstanding character – that Bellingcat had previously observed in the case of General Oleg Ivannikov of the GRU, Minister of Defense of South Ossetia under the identity cover of Andrey Laptev – suggested that Colonel Chepiga secret service agent.

To validate the hypothesis that Chepiga is a Skripal intoxication suspect "Boshirov", Bellingcat and The Insider obtained excerpts from the passport record of Anatoliy Vladimirovich Chepiga – born April 5, 1978 – from two separate sources with access to databases prior to 2014, .

The passport file contained a photograph – dating back to approximately 2003, when this passport was obtained – that looked very much like a young "Boshirov" as can be seen in the passport photos of the British police. our previous publication on the Skripal suspects.

A passport application form in the passport file indicated that Chepiga's place of residence in 2003 was "Military Unit 20662, Khabarovsk", confirming that it was the person identified in the 2003 database. He also classified his birthplace as "village of Nikolaevka", linking this person more to the hero of the Russian Federation of the same name.

The passport application form also identified the marital status of Anatoliy Chepiga and indicated her military identity number.

A mission of critical importance

On the basis of all the sources of information consulted – all independent of each other and from different periods – Bellingcat was able to conclude with certainty that the person identified by the British authorities as "Ruslan Boshirov" is in fact the colonel Anatoly Vladimirovich. Chepiga, a highly decorated senior Russian military intelligence officer who received the highest state award in late 2014.

This statement flagrantly contradicts the statements of this man, as they were made during a television interview with the Russian TV channel, and the claims of President Vladimir Putin that the person in question is simply a civilian named Ruslan Boshirov. These proven falsehoods conceal the other denials of this man – and of the Russian government – in this regard, and corroborate the allegations of the British authorities that this individual was) complicit in the Skripal poisoning and b) acted on the orders of a high level government authority. Russia.

Bellingcat confidentially contacted a former Russian military officer of similar rank to Colonel Chepiga, to receive a reaction to what we found. The source, on condition of anonymity, was surprised to find that at least one of the agents involved in the operation in Salisbury had the rank of colonel. More surprising still, the attribution by the suspects of the highest military recognition.

In the words of our source, an operation of this type would normally have required a lower-ranking "field agent" with a military rank of "No higher than the captain." The source further assumed that returning a highly decorated colonel to field work would be extremely extraordinary and would imply that "The work was commissioned at the highest level."