Sergei Skripal 'hitmen' linked to GRU officer's plot to assassinate Montenegrin Prime Minister

Oh man, now these two are in for it!!!

The Russian hitmen accused of poisoning Sergei Skripal have been linked to the plot to assassinate the Montenegrin Prime Minister.

The cover passports of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov were issued in the same batch as the passport of Col. Eduard Shishmakov, the GRU officer accused of masterminding the failed coup in October 2016.

The findings suggest that the passports have been issued to aliases by a special authority to a group of military intelligence officers.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/20/sergei-skripal-hitmen-linked...

Now you might ask, where is this proof coming from? From the same place that a lot of this crazy is coming from..,

About

Bellingcat uses open source and social media investigation to investigate a variety of subjects, from Mexican drug lords to conflicts being fought across the world. Bellingcat brings together contributors who specialise in open source and social media investigation, and creates guides and case studies so others may learn to do the same.

https://www.bellingcat.com/about/

Who/what is Bellingcat you might ask:

Watch out for Bellingcat

In November 2013, The New Yorker’s Patrick Radden Keefe called Eliot Higgins, an unemployed man from Leicester, England, “perhaps the foremost expert on the munitions used in the war” in Syria. As leading authorities go, Higgins, who used to blog under the pseudonym Brown Moses, is an unlikely one. He has never been to Syria or any other war zone. Yet he consistently identified which weapons were being used by which side (or rebel group) through the meticulous appraisal of photographs, satellite images, and YouTube videos, and the use of social media to seek information when he was uncertain. His work on the rocket fired into Ghouta in August 2013, widely remembered in the United States as the chemical attack that violated Barack Obama’s “red line,” was cited in a report on the incident by Human Rights Watch and helped prove that the culprit was almost certainly the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

At the end of The New Yorker piece, Higgins is quoted as saying, about whether others could emulate the model he has established, “Believe me, there are a lot of obsessive people out there who could probably put their passions to a more productive use.” His new project, a website called “Bellingcat,” initially funded via Kickstarter this summer, will give him a chance to prove his point. Higgins, who now publishes under his real name, is its most prolific contributor, but most of the other authors use similar investigate methods. While he says that the site gets as many as half a million visitors on high-traffic days, he adds, “I’m more interested in who reads it than how many.” In this sense, the site’s tagline, “by and for citizen investigative journalists,” is telling: Bellingcat articles are not noteworthy for their literary artistry or for an aspiration to mass digital appeal. They generally are rigorous, evidence-based examinations of extremely specific questions, such as the geolocation of the “June Russian Buk Convoy in Millerovo.”

https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/bellingcat_brown_moses.php

They’re a bunch of bloggers. Internet’s trollers. LIKE US! THIS is where a lot of the ‘information’ about RUSSIA! is coming from. And TPTB and the media pass it off as ‘gospel’. As verification of all this insane propaganda about them pesky Commie bastids.

Here’s their Fearless Leader:

Eliot Ward Higgins (born January 1979), who previously used the pseudonym Brown Moses, is a British citizen journalist and blogger, known for inaugurating open-sources and social media for investigations. He helped to investigate the Syrian Civil War, 2014–15 Russian military intervention in Ukraine, the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and the Poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. He first gained mainstream media attention by identifying weapons in uploaded videos from the Syrian conflict.[1][2] He is the founder of Bellingcat, a website for citizen journalists to investigate current events using open-source information such as videos, maps and pictures.

[1]. Weaver, Matthew (21 March 2013). "How Brown Moses exposed Syrian arms trafficking from his front room". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 April 2013.
[2]. Keefe, Patrick Radden (25 November 2013). "Rocket Man". The New Yorker. Retrieved 18 July 2014.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Higgins

Hey! We could do that. We do do that. And we don’t have an ‘agenda’ to push! Of course that’s also our problem. But we could do Webinars and charge for our expertise. We don’t do ads, so why not dazzle the world with our brilliance? All we need is access to the internet and time (which some of us have to spare in abundance) and WE too can become experts in world affairs. And war. And spies. And everything RUSSIAN!!!

Now back ack to our Dastardly Duo:

Bellingcat also claimed to have been provided information from sources in a Western European law-enforcement agency that the two men had previously been arrested in the Netherlands.

Sources told the Telegraph that they had no record of these arrests taking place.

Hmmm. That doesn’t sound good. You’d think somebody would have some paperwork on that, wouldn’t you? Anyway, here’s proof of it all...

It has now emerged that there are only 26 intervening passport numbers between Petrov's document and the cover passport for Col Shishmakov, who was organising the coup before the Montenegro's elections in October 2016 under the alias Eduard Shirokov.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/20/sergei-skripal-hitmen-linked...

There’s no proof stated for any of this, and what documentation there is is laughable because you have to accept the word of a bunch of bloggers that what they say is true, as in “It has emerged...”

I was curious as to exactly where a lot of this propaganda was coming from. Now I know. Now I’m just working on a plan where we can tap into this racket.

Any suggestions?

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It did not have the range, accuracy, payload or a sophisticated enough "bursting" warhead to distribute enough sarin to have killed the number of people claimed or to have been launched from "regime controlled territory" as indicated on the State Department map. Here it is all laid out at legacy DK. Please note the exchange that runs the thread with "Claudius Bombarnac."

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2013/9/2/1235688/-Syrian-gas-rockets-ap...

Syrian "gas rockets" appear homemade and incapable of flying 5-10 miles to target.
leveymg
Community
Monday September 02, 2013 · 11:55 AM EDT

Photos of devices allegedly used to carry Sarin gas show they appear to be homemade and are clearly incapable of accurately reaching targets 5-10 miles away. That is crucially important because the State Department report asserts that the gas barrage was launched from gov't controlled territory. But the map (below) that accompanied that report shows that several of the targets were miles away from the area in pink shown to be under the control of government forces.

These rockets have only the crudest stabilizers, no guidance systems, and would be highly inaccurate at any significant distance, which is why they are unlikely to have been the weapon used in the attack of 8/21, if the US target map is accurate along with the statement that they were launched from government-held territory.

Here's the State Dept. map of the 12 alleged targets in the North Damascus suburbs. Note the distances of some of the targeted neighborhoods from government-held territory (in pink): [CLICK IMAGE TO EXPAND TO SEE FULL MAP WITH ALL TARGET AREAS]

Something is clearly wrong either with the State Department report or accounts that say that these types of rockets were used to deliver the Sarin gas that night.

. . . MORE . . .

About 3 months later, my conclusions were confirmed by a study published by MIT Professor Theodore A. Postol. Available at as .pdf: https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/possible-implications-of-bad-intelli...

New Study Refines View of Sarin Attack in Syria
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/world/middleeast/new-study-refines-vi...

By C. J. CHIVERSDEC. 28, 2013
Continue reading the main story

A new analysis of rockets linked to the nerve-agent attack on Damascus, Syria, in August has concluded that the rockets were most likely fired by multiple launchers and had a range of about three kilometers, according to the two authors of the analysis.

The authors said that their findings could help pinpoint accountability for the most lethal chemical warfare attack in decades, but that they also raised questions about the American government’s claims about the locations of launching points, and the technical intelligence behind them.

Analysis of Rockets Used in Syrian Chemical Attack DEC. 28, 2013
Deadly Syrian Bomb Strikes Crowded Aleppo Market DEC. 28, 2013

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that relies upon copies of passport files that could only have been obtained by someone inside the Russian government or were simply manufactured by someone who isn't. There is no way to verify the provenance of the documents in question.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2018/09/14/skripal-poisoni...
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Istvan - September 16, 2018

Based on the dw coverage I am pretty sure they are not who they claim they are. But the information shared by Bellingcat is neither osint not social media based. The information can only come from within Russian police or deeper. There are two issues with this. 1) it can’t be verified. We have to trust Bellingcat 2) Bellingcat has to trust it’s source that it can’t verify. So frankly this could be anything including Russian provocation.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@leveymg

Moon of Alabama sums up the staged attention the western MSM gives amateur citizen investigator Elliot Higgins, in a post entitled, “Media’s Beloved “Expert” Eliot Higgins – Wrong Again And Again And Again."

Eliot Higgins aka Brown Moses, the founder of Bellingcat is an indispensable propaganda tool for NATO media. Higgins is always able to prove through amateur “analysis” of open source data that the Russians did indeed do the bad thing that happened.

Blogger Elliot Higgins' (aka Bellingcat) amateurish MH17 reports has been debunked everywhere. Not only have his methods been criticised by real experts and actual scientists, but now Higgins’ real identity as a neocon, Atlantic Council stooge are being brought to light.

Higgins has been adopted as an expert by the Atlantic Council and is one of the coauthors of a key anti-Putin report by the Council leadership which was published on May 28. He had found his nitch as an evidence-free anti-Russian propaganda mouthpiece for NATO, the US, and UK.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Pluto's Republic's picture

Bellingcat's bullshit was first deconstructed in this visual tweet stream:

https://twitter.com/elenaevdokimov7/status/1040764359998230528

It has since been widely incorporated in other blogs.

Here's the accompanying text:

Atlantic Council’s fellow Higgins and @bellingcat created a new opus on Petrov and Bashirov, implying that they are members of GRU, Russian secret service. Let’s look at “facts” they provided to prove these allegations.

Bellingcat implies that there is an alleged stamp on Alexander Petrov’s passport dossier, “Do not provide any information,” and his handwritten name. All passport documents in Russia are typed, without exception. There is no point in duplicating the name on top. Real 1P form is below:

BBC published Petrov’s so-called 1P internal passport application form, dated Nov 19 2009. What is this form? The 1P form of 2006 was used until it was replaced in Dec 2009. It looks nothing like the real form. Is it a fake made by the Bellingcat “source”?

This conclusion Bellingcat supports with another EMPTY document with a handwritten note on top stating that somebody recommended to make is confidential “совершенно секретно” “С.С.” We have to BELIEVE that its Petrov’s form. BTW, those words are always stamped, not handwritten.

Google easily found that as Bellincat stated “Mandatory for Russian citizens over the age of 14” passport became mandatory only on Mar 13 1997. Being born on Jul 13 1979, Petrov became 14 in 1993, so his first passport was issued not at 14, but when he was 16, in 1995. This passport was issued by the police dept of the place where he lived at the time (in 1995), it may be small Kotlas or even any place in former USSR republics if his family traveled for work in USSR. So his first passport might not be issued by Russian Federation in 1995. Most likely, as he was born in the area of Russian Federation, he was entitled to be a citizen of Russian Federation, no matter where he lived in 1991, when USSR fell apart. Another reason for the alleged missing records- the united database, that Belligcat either hacked or bribed somebody to access, started to fill in only in 2014. There were separate databases before-for border control, migration service, police, etc.

Petrov, as everyone else, graduated from Secondary school at 18, ie in 1997. 2 year military service was compulsory for boys ( until Jun 14 2006). So he served in the army until 1999. Military people do not have passports in Russia, they always have different documents. So, that’s why he was issued a passport in 1999, when he finished military service and not because he was a GRU agent in his teenage years, as Bellingcat implies. Petrov’s 1999 passport was not in the central passport database because the database was created in 2014, there were some errors occurred during databases merging, some passports were even declared invalid.

Petrov’s 1999 passport was replaced because it became “unsuitable for usage”, a marking typically used when a previous passport has been damaged, this does not make him Russian Secret service GRU agent. It simply means that his 1999 passport was damaged.

Bellincat’s claim that “Boshirov and Petrov’s passport files, indicating that they were separated by only 3 digits (-1294 and -1297), meaning that they were issued at nearly the same time,” implying that they are GRU, is funny, as they are gays, a couple that applied for passports together.

Read Elena Evdokimova's Twitter feed to stay abreast of the attempted propaganda.

https://twitter.com/elenaevdokimov7

@Pluto's Republic

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato