Journalist says Skripal suspect helped Yanukovych to flee Ukraine – 2:54 PM 10/1/2018

This combination of undated handout pictures released by the British Metropolitan Police Service created in London on on September 05, 2018 shows Ruslan Boshirov (L) and Alexander Petrov, who are wanted by British police in connection with the nerve agent attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
Photo by Bellingcat

One of the suspects in the poisoning of Sergey and Yulia Skripal, “Ruslan Boshirov,” who was identified by investigative-journalism website Bellingcat as Colonel of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (also known as GRU) Anatoliy Chepiga, reportedly headed an operation to “evacuate” ex-president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych to Russia amid Euromaidan events in February 2014.
“Chepiga-Boshirov took part in the evacuation of Yanukovych to Russia. At least my sources claim so. He and his special forces unit arrived at the residence of Yanukovych in Mezhyhirya. He was there, guarding him [Yanukovych]. They transported him from there to Crimea and further to Russia,” former Russian journalist of the Center for Investigation Management Sergey Kanev, who took part in a probe by The Insider and Bellingcat into the suspects in the Skripals case told Ukraine’s Hromadske news outlet.
According to Kanev, it was for that special operation that Chepiga was decorated the title of “Hero of Russia.” The investigator said that Alexey Dyumin, a former security guard of Russian President Vladimir Putin, also received the “Hero of Russia” award for the “evacuation” of Yanukovych from Ukraine.
“Then that man worked for the Ministry of Defense, and now he is governor of Tula region. Everyone speaks about Dyumin as Putin’s successor. I also know that the people who later formed the backbone of Private Military Company (PMC) Wagner also got awards for Yanukovych’s evacuation,” Kanev said.
Read alsoBellingcat: Skripal suspect Boshirov identified as GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga
The journalist promised that he would publish a detailed investigation into the facts of Chepiga-Boshirov’s participation in a special operation concerning the flight of Yanukovych from Ukraine.
Yanukovych’s lawyer, Alexander Goroshinsky, who recently joined the case, told Hromadske that he knew nothing about Russian special operations forces’ involvement in the “evacuation” of Yanukovych.
He also said he did know anyone with such names as Chepiga and Boshirov.
“I have not studied this issue. There is nothing in the materials given to the court on this. I haven’t read all the materials, but in those which I have, I haven’t read anything [about this,]” the lawyer said.
The prosecutor in the Yanukovych treason case, Ruslan Kravchenko, said that he could neither confirm nor deny the participation of Chepiga-Boshirov in the “evacuation” of the ex-president, because the investigators were not aware who of the Russians had participated in that operation.
Investigative journalists also found out that Chepiga was a highly decorated GRU officer with the “Hero of Russia” title for participation in the Chechen war and a certain “peacekeeping mission” in 2014, which is probably the Russian invasion of Donbas, eastern Ukraine.

The Metropolitan Police made one statement in the Skripal case which is plainly untrue; they claimed not to know on what kind of visa Boshirov and Petrov were travelling. As they knew the passports they used, and had footage of them coming through the airport, that is impossible. The Border Force could tell them in 30 seconds flat.

To get a UK visa Boshirov and Petrov would have had to attend the UK Visa Application Centre in Moscow. There not only would their photographs be taken, but their fingerprints would have been taken and, if in the last few years, their irises scanned. The Metropolitan Police would naturally have obtained their fingerprints from the Visa Application.
One thing of which we can be certain is that their fingerprints are not on the perfume bottle or packaging found in Charlie Rowley’s home. We can be certain of that because no charges have been brought against the two in relation to the death of Dawn Sturgess, and we know the police have their fingerprints. The fact of there being no credible evidence, according to either the Metropolitan Police or the Crown Prosecution Service, to link them to the Amesbury poisoning, has profound implications.
Why the Metropolitan Police were so coy about telling us what kind of visa the pair held, points to a wider mystery. Why were they given the visas in the first place, and what story did they tell to get them? It is not easy for a Russian citizen, particularly an economically active male, to get past the UK Border Agency. The visa application process is very intrusive. They have to produce evidence of family and professional circumstances, including employment and address, evidence of funds, including at least three months of bank statements, and evidence of the purpose of the visit. These details are then actively checked out by the Visa Department.
If they had told the story to the visa section they told to Russia Today, that they were freelance traders in fitness products wanting to visit Salisbury Cathedral, they would have been refused a visa as being candidates for overstaying. They would have been judged not to have sufficiently stable employment in Russia to ensure they would return. So what story did Petrov and Boshirov give on their visa application, why were they given a visa, and what kind of visa? And why do the British authorities not want us to know the answer to these questions?
Which brings us to the claims of neo-conservative propaganda website Bellingcat. They claim together with the Russian Insider website to have obtained documentary evidence that Petrov and Boshirov’s passports were of a series issued only to Russian spies, and that their applications listed GRU headquarters as their address.
There are some problems with Bellingcat’s analysis. The first is that they also quote Russian website fontanka.ru as a source, but fontanka.ru actually say the precise opposite of what Bellingcat claim – that the passport number series is indeed a civilian one and civilians do have passports in that series.

Fontanka also state it is not unusual for the two to have close passport numbers – it merely means they applied together. On other points, fontanka.ru do confirm Bellingcat’s account of another suspected GRU officer having serial numbers close to those of Boshirov and Petrov.
But there is a bigger question of the authenticity of the documents themselves. Fontanka.ru is a blind alley – they are not the source of the documents, just commenting on them, and Bellingcat are just attempting the old trick of setting up a circular “confirmation”. Russian Insider is neither Russian nor an Insider. Its name is a false claim and it consists of a combination of western “experts” writing on Russia, and reprints from the Russian media. It has no track record of inside access to Russian government secrets or documents, and nor does Bellingcat.
What Bellingcat does have is a track record of shilling for the security services. Bellingcat claims its purpose is to clear up fake news, yet has been entirely opaque about the real source of its so-called documents.
MI6 have almost 40 officers in Russia, running hundreds of agents. The CIA has a multiple of that. They pool their information. Both the UK and US have large visa sections whose major function is the analysis of Russian passports, their types and numbers and what they tell about the individual.
We are to believe that Boshirov and Petrov were GRU agents whose identity was plainly obvious from their passports, who had no believable cover identities, but that neither the visa department nor MI6 (which two cooperate closely and all the time) knew they were giving visas to GRU agents. Yet this information was readily available to Bellingcat?
I do not know if the two are agents or just tourists. But the claimed evidence they were agents is, if genuine, so obvious that the two would have been under close surveillance throughout their stay in the UK. If the official story is true, then the failures of the UK visa department and MI6 are abject and shameful. As is the failure to take simple precautions for the Skripals’ security, like the inexplicable absence of CCTV covering the house of Sergei Skripal, an important ex-agent and defector supposedly under British protection.
A further thought. We are informed that Boshirov and Petrov left a trace of novichok in their hotel bedroom. How likely is it, really, that, the day before the professional assassination attempt, which involved handling an agent with which any contact could kill you, Boshirov and Petrov would prepare, not by resting, but by an all night drugs and sex session? Would you really not want the steadiest possible hand the next day? Would you really invite a prostitute into the room with the novichok perfume in it, and behave in a way that led to complaints and could have brought you to official notice?
Is it not astonishing that nobody in the corporate and state media has written that this behaviour is at all unlikely, while scores of “journalists” have written that visiting Salisbury as a tourist, and returning the next day because the visit was ruined by snow, would be highly unlikely?
To me, even more conclusively, we were informed by cold war propagandists like ex White House staffer Dan Kaszeta that the reason the Skripals were not killed is that novichok is degraded by water. To quote Kaszeta “Soap and water is quite good at decontaminating nerve agents”.
In which case it is extremely improbable that the agents handling the novichok, who allegedly had the novichok in their bedroom, would choose a hotel room which did not have an en suite bathroom. If I spilt some novichok on myself I would not want to be queuing in the corridor for the shower. The GRU may not be big on health and safety, but the idea that their agents chose not to have basic washing facilities available while handling the novichok is wildly improbable.
The only link of Boshirov and Petrov to the novichok is the trace in the hotel room. The identification there of a microscopic trace of novichok came from a single swab, all other swabs were negative, and the test could not be repeated even on the original positive sample. For other reasons given above, I absolutely doubt these two had novichok in that bedroom. Who they really are, and how much the security services knew about them, remain open questions.

Suspected nerve agent assassin Alexander Petrov visited Salisbury to attend a nutrition seminar, according to a bizarre new account in Russia.
Rather than being connected to the Novichok attack, he is a supplier to “elite” Russians of a brand of sports supplements, it is claimed.
These new claims come from a university professor who says she has known Petrov, 40, as a teacher and a friend.
The academic remained anonymous and wouldn’t say which university she taught at to avoid Petrov’s life being ‘in danger’.
Alexander Petrov is suspected to be an alias used by a GRU military intelligence staffer to obtain a UK visa and travel to Wiltshire at the time when Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned.
But the professor insists he was in Salisbury for a seminar at Porton Down science park.
This extraordinary new account comes from Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP) at a time when Russia has been put on the back foot by mounting evidence that Petrov – and his companion Ruslan Boshirov – are military spies.
The university professor calls him Sasha, the fond name for Alexander in Russia.
“In Salisbury there is the well-known Porton Down chemical laboratory, a military technology park,” she said, according to KP.
“But at [Porton Down] they also develop sports nutrition.
“There are chemicals involved in it after all.
“In Salisbury there was an event, something like a seminar for people engaged in the distribution of this nutrition.”
The professor – who says she taught English to the man claiming to be Petrov – now lives in Germany.
She refused to state which university Petrov had attended but said she gave him extra tuition at home after classes.
“I can’t say (because) then you will find out all the information about Sasha,” she said.
“What if his life is now in danger?
“I will only say that this university is not in Moscow.
“Petrov studied in the law department, he was dreaming of becoming a criminal investigator.”

She revealed he came from a military family and declared: “I am only five years older than him, so we got on well and even became friends.”
The woman said her former university colleagues in Russia all recognised Petrov but “they are afraid and refused to talk”.
Claiming he moved with ease among elite Russians, she said: “Sasha is into (sports nutrition) and distributing it in very serious circles.”
In his RT interview, Petrov claimed he was a mid-ranking businessman involved in sports nutrition – but he did not mention a seminar as the reason he travelled twice in two days from London to Salisbury, home of Skripal.
The professor said that he was always into a “healthy lifestyle” and regularly went to the gym and took nutritional supplements.
She seemed keen to deny the British charges that he is a GRU agent.
“Of course not,” she said. “He is not a poisoner. He, Sasha Petrov, is close to the elite.
“He was selling this nutrition in these circles.
“A healthy lifestyle is very popular among high-ranking individuals.”
She did not identify which elite circles he moved in but she implied the price was beyond the means of ordinary Russians.
Last week the pro-Kremlin media interviewed a former teacher of Anatoliy Chepiga, unmasked as the real identity of Boshirov.
Alexander Borzhko, his commander at the Far Eastern Military Command Academy (DVOKU) in Blagoveshchensk, insisted Chepiga was “not trained for secret-service operations” such as that allegedly carried out in Salisbury.

A hot air balloon became tangled in an electricity pylon in western Germany, firefighters have said, stranding six passengers 65m (213ft) above ground.
The balloon became caught at about 17:30 local time (15:30 GMT) on Sunday, authorities in the city of Bottrop said.
Passengers were individually abseiled to safety in a six-hour operation, and all were taken to hospital as a precaution.
The cause of the crash is not known.
The balloon struck the top of the pylon on Essener Street in the south of the city, a local fire brigade press release said.

Firefighters called up to the passengers by megaphone, before they managed to get in touch by phone.
Only the balloon itself hit the wires, rather than the basket – protecting all aboard from the electricity.
Power to the pylon was shut off as firefighters climbed the mast and secured the basket.
Each passenger was then rappelled down one by one.
Nobody was hurt in the crash, although two suffered slight shock.
Work got underway on Monday to remove the balloon from the wires, while authorities have launched an investigation into the cause of the crash.