Russia

[walrus]

I wish we had a strong leader in my country like Putin, instead of the pathetic Trudeau.

See cats are cool

[Master]

[Freedom]

Although he's not an ideal president, Trump is a much better leader for Americans than the silly Trudeau is for Canadians.

[Spicoli]

I wish we had a strong leader in my country like Putin, instead of the pathetic Trudeau.

See cats are cool

Could always move? Looks like one of those trumpy cats. You scratch his chin and those spots change in record time.

[Master]

Russia are cunts, they may have even interfered with the Brexit referendum.

Skripal attack: Second Salisbury suspect a 'decorated' officer

The second suspect in the Salisbury poisoning case was a doctor and highly decorated Russian military intelligence officer, an investigative website says.

Bellingcat said it used a combination of online material and leaked documents to identify Alexander Mishkin, 39, as someone linked to the attack in March.

It said President Vladimir Putin had presented him with the Hero of the Russian Federation award in 2014.

When asked about the naming of Mr Mishkin, the Kremlin would not comment.

Last month, Bellingcat named the first suspect as Anatoliy Chepiga, a claim also rejected by Russia.

At a news conference in the Houses of Parliament on Tuesday, Bellingcat investigator Cristo Grozev said Mr Mishkin - like Mr Chepiga - was a member of the GRU and given the celebrated award for "actions in Ukraine".

He said Mr Mishkin's grandmother has a photograph, that has "been seen by everybody in the village" of President Putin shaking his hand and giving him the award.

The BBC has contacted two people who knew Mr Mishkin as a child in Loyga in the north of Russia, and they confirmed from photographs that he was the man seen in images released by police after the Salisbury attack.

Bellingcat, a UK-based website, said both Mr Mishkin's real passport and the false passport he travelled to the UK on in the name of Alexander Petrov carried the same date of birth.

Outlining in detail how it identified the Salisbury suspect as Mr Mishkin, Bellingcat said it had pieced together his identity using various databases online, including telephone and car insurance records, and later obtained copies of his passport and driving licence.

It also used social media to contact hundreds of people who may have been at military academy with Mr Mishkin.

Most people did not respond to the inquiry but one, who requested complete anonymity, said they had recognised Mr Mishkin as the suspect who was interviewed under the name of Alexander Petrov by the RT television channel.

Mr Grozev said: "That person told us everybody from his class, his department, was contacted two weeks ago and told not to talk to the media."

Bellingcat said Mr Mishkin had been recruited by Russian intelligence while completing his medical studies, and made several trips to Ukraine, including during the 2013-14 unrest.

In spring 2014 mass demonstrations in central Kiev over the government's decision to suspend the signing of an association agreement with the EU ended in bloodshed and the ousting of pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych.

Soon afterwards Russian troops annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, and unrest broke out in mainly Russian-speaking eastern areas of the country.

The unrest became a full-scale insurgency, and rebels seized large swathes of territory. Since then, thousands of people have died in fighting between the rebels and Ukrainian government forces.

Moscow denies sending regular troops and heavy weapons to the separatists, but admits that Russian "volunteers" are helping the rebels.

The tiny village of Loyga in the Russian far north is not the kind of place you would expect to be at the centre of an international spy scandal.

With fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, it has rail access but no paved roads. It's too small even to show up on Google Maps.

But Loyga has proved crucial to piecing together the story of the real "Alexander Petrov" - the second man the UK authorities suspect over the Skripal poisoning case in Salisbury.

Former GRU officer Sergei Skripal - who sold secrets to MI6 - and his daughter Yulia survived being poisoned with Novichok on 4 March.

The attack left Mr Skripal and Yulia critically ill, but Dawn Sturgess, 44, was later exposed to the same nerve agent and died in hospital.

London's Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service said last month that there was enough evidence to charge Mr Mishkin and Mr Chepiga with attempted murder over the Salisbury attack.



Detectives said the pair arrived in the UK using passports bearing the names Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov on 2 March, although they had said it was likely the men were travelling under aliases.

The movements of the suspects, who are alleged to have smeared Novichok on a door handle of Mr Skripal's home, were captured in a series of CCTV images that were released by police.

The event sparked a series of accusations and denials between the UK and Russian governments, culminating in diplomatic expulsions and international sanctions.

It took longer for investigators at the Bellingcat website to identify Alexander Mishkin because he has an even sparser digital footprint than the first man to be named, Anatoly Chepiga.

But using databases and passport details they concluded that this was the real name of the man who came to Salisbury as Alexander Petrov.

Facial recognition experts were asked to examine two photos 15 years apart and use techniques of simulated age progression to establish the match.

Last Thursday, four GRU officers were exposed for trying to hack into communications of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in the Netherlands at the time it was investigating the Salisbury poisoning.

Mishkin's identification will raise more questions about how easy it has been to expose supposedly undercover intelligence officers and undermine Russia's official account that the two men who came to Salisbury were there to see the cathedral spire.

Recent reports in the Russian media suggest that Vladimir Putin - himself a former spy chief - is unhappy with the GRU's performance - and that a purge could be on the way.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45801154

[El Kabong]

Former GRU officer Sergei Skripal - who sold secrets to MI6 - and his daughter Yulia survived being poisoned with Novichok on 4 March.

The attack left Mr Skripal and Yulia critically ill, but Dawn Sturgess, 44, was later exposed to the same nerve agent and died in hospital.

Yyyyyeah see this is all kinda sketchy....Skripal was arrested, stripped of rank, imprisoned....if Russia, the GRU, wanted him dead they would never have released him. They released him as part of the spy swap from the busted Illegals Program (you know Anna Chapman and all ).

If they were going to "secretly assassinate" someone why use a nerve agent which ties DIRECTLY to you? Why not try a "OMG what a horrible accident, a car crash" or "OMG he fell off a balcony" or the fucking heart attack gun ....OR....some sort of gang member could be hired to kill someone in a "Robbery gone wrong"




It seems rather convenient IF it's Novichuk and the Russians were after him....seems a bit too Keystone Cops for me. But I could very well be wrong.

[Beanz]

Amazing. Do they not have treason laws in America anymore ? Falling over yourself to play make believe about the Russians, why? Covering for Trump? mental

[Beanz]

Master of course both the Russians and the Americans (Bannon/Trump etc) interfered in Brexit. Look at the Brexit thread here and the England thread, post after post after post by Americans desperate to make the world in their image and that of their dribbling leader. Someone should lock them all in the tower of London ffs.

[El Kabong]

Amazing. Do they not have treason laws in America anymore ? Falling over yourself to play make believe about the Russians, why? Covering for Trump? mental

OK so you're saying that it should be illegal .... punishable by death no less for me to QUESTION this?

[Beanz]

Amazing. Do they not have treason laws in America anymore ? Falling over yourself to play make believe about the Russians, why? Covering for Trump? mental

OK so you're saying that it should be illegal .... punishable by death no less for me to QUESTION this?

Not you, you can say what you like and question what you like but when Americans in positions of power make deals with people killing their allies you have to wonder what the fuck kind of morals they are operating by.

[Master]

They have successfully poisoned other Russians here before and this was a botched job. Failed badly.

On a separate yet similar note.

Russian attempts to launch cyber-attacks against US conservative groups have been thwarted, Microsoft says.

The software company said Russian hackers had tried to steal data from political organisations, including the International Republican Institute and the Hudson Institute think tanks.

But they had been thwarted when its security staff had won control of six net domains mimicking their websites.

Microsoft said the Fancy Bear hacking group had been behind the attacks.

"We're concerned that these and other attempts pose security threats to a broadening array of groups connected with both American political parties in the run-up to the 2018 elections," Microsoft said in its blog detailing its work.

The thwarted attack was likely the start of a "spear phishing" campaign, said Microsoft. This would involve tricking people into visiting the mimicked domains allowing the Fancy Bear group to see and steal login information that people use.

As well as the two think-tanks, the domains seized were associated with several Senate offices and services. One domain sought to mimic Microsoft's Office 365 online service.

Russia has denied Microsoft's allegations that it targeted the right-wing think-tanks.

President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was "unaware" of any attempted interference by Russia-linked hackers in the US mid-term elections.

"[Our] reaction is traditional," he told the Interfax news agency. "We are unaware what kind of hackers they refer to, we do not know what this interference entails."

BBC Monitoring reported him as adding: "We do not understand whom exactly it concerns, what the evidence is and what such conclusions are based on. We have no such information."

He said: "We hear confirmation from America that there was no meddling in the election."

The New York Times suggested that the two think tanks were targeted because they were former supporters of President Trump but were now foes who had called for more sanctions to be imposed on Russia.

The International Republican Institute's directors include Senator John McCain and General HR McMaster who was replaced earlier this year as the White House national security adviser.

IRI president Daniel Twining told the Times that the attacks were consistent with the "campaign of meddling" the Kremlin is known to have indulged in.

In its blog, Microsoft president Brad Smith said it had grabbed dodgy domains 12 times in two years to shut down 84 websites associated with Fancy Bear.

It said that, so far, it had no evidence that the domains had been used in any attacks. The domains could have been set up to help a future planned assault.

Microsoft added that the attack activity seen around the domains "mirrors" what it saw in 2016 in the US and during the 2017 election in France.

Microsoft's action comes soon after the US charged 12 Russian intelligence officers with hacking computer networks used by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45257081