How an investigation team identified a suspect of poisoning in Skripal as a Russian colonel

According to a Russian RT television interview, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov were two innocent men in the fitness industry, who were traveling to Salisbury, England, to visit the city's famous cathedral.

The British government said the two men were there to poison former Russian spy Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

And now, an investigative website says that he was able to find the true identity of one of the men.

According to Bellingcat's research, Boshirov is actually an officer of the Russian military intelligence services decorated named Anatoliy Vladimirovich Chepiga. Russia has denied the allegations.

Christo Grozev is a researcher who conducted the Bellingcat investigation. As it happens Host Carol Off talked to Grozev about how they found Chepiga.

Mr. Grozev, when we saw this RT interview, one of the men came forward as Ruslan Boshirov. What did you discover is his real name?

He is called Anatoliy Chepiga. He lost a year compared to the personality he presented, in terms of age. And he has many other qualities of personality that we have seen on RT.

You seem very confident. How do you know it's Colonel Chepiga?

We have identified it through numerous objective and subjective measures. First, objectively, we got our original passport file. So we saw the passport database with his date of birth, the original photo, taken at age 17, another when he got his first passport and another at age 21.

Once we were ready with the report and the identification, we actually contacted British police and secret service sources to obtain a sign of assent, or not, regarding our findings. – and we received it. So we know for sure that it is that one.

You also searched Colonel Chepiga's file. This is a very decorated military. He received the highest award from the Russian state. What do you know about him?

He was born in a small village of less than 300 inhabitants in the most remote corner of the Russian Federation. He went to a military school located only about 30 kilometers from his original village, which at that time, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, was one of the most elitists or the best staffed with education personnel. He did his military studies in a special operations unit, a training unit, at the school.

Immediately afterwards, he was sent on duty to Chechnya, where he won numerous awards, apparently because he excelled in his profession as a soldier. And then, as a very promising soldier, who had already accumulated about fifteen awards, he was sent to GRU school. And the GRU Moscow School is one of … it's called the Academy, the Diplomatic Academy. But, in fact, it is an espionage school and the most prestigious spy school in Russia.

It's ringing [like] you have a lot of information, mostly from open sources. You did not go to the field to look for this. You did that from a distance. And it works for your Bellingcat website, which has been accused by the Russian government of being a face for Western intelligence agencies, that you fabricate evidence. Why should we trust your conclusions here?

All our findings in the past have been verified or Russia has stopped trying to refute them because they have no way of refuting them. What we do is very transparent. Almost anyone with the analytical skills can go and reproduce this data. We do not show people where they can end up in Russian databases, but they are there. They are on the Internet and they are in torrents. Anyone who spends a week will be able to get them and replicate our findings.

But a number of things have left people scratching their heads about your conclusion. I think you scratch your head too. Why a colonel? Why is someone of such high rank and such a decorated man sent on this mission to poison people in Britain? And also to be so exposed, because you know that when you're in Britain, there are a lot of cameras watching. So why such a high man?

It's a mystery. We received the advice of two senior Russian officers. Both said literally the same thing: "We were expecting someone with the rank of commander or even captain to do it."

The fact that they chose a colonel means that the order has come to a very high level. Probably a layer below Putin, not Putin himself. But it was something they did to show Putin that they had taken all the necessary measures and precautions to have the highest expertise on the ground, which they apparently did not do.

It's all about the poisoning of Sergey Skripal and Yulia Skripal – as well as the British citizen Dawn Sturgess. We saw this man who calls himself Ruslan Boshirov and his partner on TV in this interview with RT. They looked like blunders, is not it? You laugh, everyone laughed, including the Russians. So, how is it that a person of such caliber, such a clever one, can first be allowed to switch to Russian television, to be exposed – and then, to be such a blunder?

It's another mystery. There are at least two hypotheses about this circulating among the informed circles. The first is that they received this order at the last moment, after Putin made this mistake by saying, "We know that they are civilians and I expect them to". they come to save themselves. "

Keep in mind that people like this are never ready to go public and burn in public. It was a very embarrassing moment for them.

Another hypothesis was that it was a punishment for their blunder and their work upset. I do not think it's realistic, because whatever they are, they were not traitors. And in the Russian army, the only people they punish are really traitors. If anything, they would be demoted but not expressly embarrassed

Does this seem like a botched operation? I mean, they managed to reach these people and poison them. But was it a failure?

I think now it has become a failure. Even the Russians, the average Russians who think that Russia is good at spying, realize now that they are not. If you look at the Internet memes propagating on the Russian Internet, they were making fun of the West, America, the opposition. Now the Russians are making fun of their own intelligence services, which is unprecedented. I think it's a failure for the scheme.

Written by John McGill. Produced by Chris Harbord. The questions and answers have been changed for reasons of length and clarity.