Month: March 2015

Yesterday, the never-disappointing Russian hacking group Anonymous International released another trove of emails. This time it belongs to the former Kremlin employee Alexey Anisimov, one of the assistants to the Kremlin’s chief of Domestic Politics Vyacheslav Volodin.

The trove bears further evidence to the way the Kremlin engineered the takeover of Crimea, including evidence that as early as March 4th and 5th, Russia’s Central Electoral Committee had already prepared all paperwork for the Referendum: 2 full days before the Crimean “local parliament” decided to proceed with a referendum. But this we knew before; and I have previously written about Anisimov’s involvement in the Crimean takeover project.

What is new and shocking comes out in an email sent on 22 March 2014 to Anisimov by a certain Maria (unidentified sender)

The email is titled “Proposal for honoring staff of the All-Russian social organization “Combat Brotherhood”.

Combat Brotherhood (“Боевое Братство”) is a Russian veteran’s organization set up in 1997 to “unite war veterans from regional and international military conflicts. The March 22, 2014 proposal includes some fascinating names:

List of personnel for recognition from the All-Russian public organization of veterans “Combat Brotherhood”

Medal:
1. Roman V. Ivanov – Member of “Combat Brotherhood”
2. Konstantin V. Malafeev – Member of “Combat Brotherhood”
3. Piterimov Eugene N. – Member of “Combat Brotherhood”

Certificate of Merit:
1. Boris Gromov  – Chairman of the “Combat Brotherhood”
2. Girkin Igor Vsevolodovich – a member of the “Combat Brotherhood”
3. Dmitry V. Konov – Member of “Combat Brotherhood”
4. Mashkov Oleg Vladimirovich – Member of “Combat Brotherhood”

 Letter of gratitude:
1. Batygina Alexander E. – Member of “Combat Brotherhood”
2. Boroday Alexander Yurevich- member “Combat Brotherhood”
3. Alexander Gerasimenko – Member of “Combat Brotherhood”
4. V. Gromov Maksim – Member “Combat Brotherhood”
5. Andrew Y. Egorov – a member of the “Combat Brotherhood”
6. Zadoya Sergey Viktorovich – member of the “Combat Brotherhood”
7. Karlushina Maria Alexandrovna – member of the “Combat Brotherhood”
8.Kedrova Svetlana D. – Member of “Combat Brotherhood”
9. Kabyakou Sergey – a member of “Combat Brotherhood”
10. Laguta Alexey – member of “Combat Brotherhood”
11. Andrey S. Lebedev – a member of “Combat Brotherhood”
12. Petunina Elena – a member of “Combat Brotherhood”
13. Potapenko Andrey Nikolaevich – member of “Combat Brotherhood”
14. Chervyakov Alexander – Member of “Combat Brotherhood”
15. Shaganenko Oleg Leonidovich – Member of “Combat Brotherhood”

The following is an excerpt from a risk report relating to the intended acquisition by Pierre Michel Louvrier of key  Bulgarian’s strategic telecommunications and defense industry assets.

Risk Event

Pierre Michel Louvrier, (PML), a Belgian citizen, seeks to acquire controlling stake in a group of strategic companies in Bulgaria, including the former telecoms monopoly BTC, the largest-penetration mobile operator Vivacom, the monopoly on TV and radio distribution NURTS, the monopoly on terrestrial TV distribution First Digital, the market-leading TV audience measurement service GARB, a munitions manufacturer company (Dunarit), and a service company for Russian military helicopters/fighter jets Avianams (“Bulgarian Entities”).

The group of companies is being acquired via a newly set-up Luxembourg SPV, LIC33 Sarl, where PML appears as the sole proprietor of capital.

The sellers are a group of SPV’s and offshore entities effectively controlled by fugitive banker Tzvetan Vassilev, currently in exile in Serbia and fighting extradition proceedings initiated by Bulgaria.[1]

The purchase price for the Bulgarian Assets, as disclosed by PML at the press conference in Sofia on March 24, 2015, is €1. To justify the notional price, PML referred to the assumption of liabilities of €900 m (which, in fact, are liabilities of the Bulgarian Assets, not of buyer).

Identity and history of buyer

 As the buyer of the Acquiring Entities is a new SVP and the purchase price is notional, the actual transaction and identity of the acquirer requires an analysis of the nominal buyer’s prior transactional history.

PML, born December 2, 1973, is a Belgian national, having worked primarily as investment banker and based in Russia over the last 10 years.

Since 2010, he has operated primarily as CEO of “CFG Capital Ltd”, a black-box investment vehicle with (publicly) unidentified shareholders. CFG has marketed itself as a private equity fund seeking to invest in FMCG, agricultural and IT businesses in Russia and the CIS. CFG’s most visible investment to date has been in RusFrain Holding, a leading Russian agricultural manufacturer and trader. PML is a non-executive member of the Supervisory Council of RusGrain Holding.

CFG Capital’s Joint Venture with Market Capital

On November 13, 2014, a press release on Market Capital’s (MarCap) website announced the forming of a joint venture between MarCap and CFG Capital, for investments in Russia:

Marshall and CFG Capital announce partnership for investments in Russia

“Marshall and CFG Capital investment funds announce today a partnership which will result in the establishment of a new venture named CFG Marshall with a total volume of investments of more than 2 bln euro”

The press statement announced that the new JV will have Konstantin Malofeev and PML as co-investors and co-managers, and will have prominent French and Russian public figures on its Advisory Board. Furthermore, the press release quoted PML as saying:

Pierre Louvrier, Chairman of CFG Capital: «Macroeconomic situation in Russia presents great opportunities for investments. Value of assets in Russia will grow, allowing for profitable long-term investments. I believe that the synergies generated as a result of this partnership of two high-profile investment teams will bring to both companies new ideas, new ways to make business, resulting in higher efficiency for both. We hope to announce launch of new projects on the Russian market in the nearest future. These synergies will also give me personal time to dedicate to CFG’s social responsibility projects in favor of Russian leadership in Europe».

Further, Konstantin Malofeev was quoted as follows:

«CFG Marshall will gather the best of both CFG capital and Marshall. CFG Capital is a professional investor with unique expertise of executing projects on both Russian and European markets. I am pleased to find in its capacity a reliable partner which I can fully entrust with financial management of the assets. This cooperation will allow me to concentrate efforts on projects which require my direct involvement – development of Saint Basil the Great Charitable Foundation and Gymnasium, construction of thematic parks of Russian history “Tsargrad” in Moscow region and Crimea, and other social projects».

In the press statement[2], MarCap is described as having a key investment focus in telecommunications, media and technology, as well as real estate and agriculture”. CFG Capital in turn is described as “maintaining a zero communications policy and does not provide public comments on its operations”

In summary, the language of the MarCap announcement indicates that Konstantin Malofeev planned effectively to delegate investment decisions and financial management of the MarCap investment fund to CFG Capital, which is controlled and managed by PML.  

Following the announcement of the creation of the JV, Malofeev was interviewed by a Russian business newspaper Vedomosti, where he confirmed that he will outsource his investment decisions to CFG’s management in exchange for “commission on the profit”. Malofeev also described his belief that “the European origin of his partner will not mean that the joint investments will be subjected to European sanctions”

Malfoeev also announces that the Advisory Board will include in addition to himself, the first deputy speaker of the Russian Senate Alexandre Torchin (also on the EU sanctions list), as well as Thierry Mariani, an MP in the French Parliament and a former deputy state secretary for transport in the French government.

French journalists and bloggers discover the planned affiliation, via CFG Capital, between MP Mariani and Malofeev – who has been on the EU and US sanction list since August 2014. The scandal causes Mariani to disclaim his link to the JV project, insisting that his name was added to the Advisory Committee by Pierre Louvrier without his consent.

Following the negative publicity in French media, CFG Capital deleted the names of Mariani and Torchin (as advisory committee members) from its website and added, instead, a Ukrainian citizen, Anatoly Kairo.[3] In a subsequent statement on the CFG website[4], the company denying that it was under any JV agreement with “politically exposed persons”, without mentioning Malofeev specifically. The statement attacks Vedomosti for publishing “untrue information” about the JV plans. At the same time, the statement makes no reference to the detailed information about the JV, including quotes from PML himself, still present on MarCap’s website. The statement also mentions CFG’s plans to suspend investments in Russia due to the unattractive economic climate.

The website aihitdata.com, which specializes in tracking changes in corporate websites, confirms the exact dates and names of the changes made to the CFG Capital website.

PML and the Russian-Ukraine Conflict

Since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, PML has consistently pursued – in social media statements – an anti-Ukraine and anti-West rhetoric. Appendix 1 presents certain of the comments made by him on Twitter, including a statement from March 16^th 2014 celebrating the Russian annexation of Crimea.

In his Instagram profile, PML has published provocative anti-Ukraine photos, such as a Photoshop montage of himself with an AK47 with the heading “Onward to Kiev”. He has also published photos of himself next to Igor Girkin (Strelkov), praising him as “a modern Russian hero”. Girkin is the EU-sanctioned Russian military commander who oversaw the initial invasion by Russia, first in Crimea and then (as Supreme Commander of the so-called DNR) in Eastern Ukraine. Girkin’s initial assignment to Ukraine (in January-February 2014) was during his employment as Chief of Security for MarCap. Furthermore, intercepted phone conversations from March 2014 provide evidence that during the take-over of Slovyasnk, Girkin was (still) reporting directly to Konstantin Malofeev.[5]

Analysis

PML’s denial and destruction of evidence of his involvement with Konstantin Malofeev and Alexandr Torshin clearly indicates that he has been untruthful, both in his statements on the CFG Capital website, and during the press-conference in Sofia, where he denied ever having links with Malfoeev. Furthermore, at the press conference he stated that he has had no political linkage in Russia; both the presence of the deputy chairman of the Russian Senate on his fund’s investment committee and his photograph with, and eulogy of, Igor Girkin (who, in addition to being wanted by Ukraine on terrorist charges, is the chairman of a new political movement in Russia) suggest the exact opposite.

The analysis of PML’s transactional history and behavior in the last year makes it highly probable that in his current acquisition of the Bulgarian Assets, he acts as a proxy for a third party. At least one case of acting as proxy-owner (for Alfa Holdings) has been confirmed with documents; and his involvement with the CFG Marshal joint venture bears all the marks of a plan to avoid the impact of EU sanctions by outsourcing (part of) MarCap’s investment activity to PML.

Within this general assumption, there are two hypothesis. Either

(A) PML acts as proxy for the seller Vassilev, an indicted banker whose assets are threatened to be impounded as part of the criminal investigation against him.[6] Thus, in this hypothesis, the seller tries to create an optical separation between himself and his key remaining assets, aiming to preserve them via a fictional “sale” to a third party. The purchase price of €1 is consistent with this hypothesis.

(B) PML acts as a proxy of Konstantin Malofeev, and possibly other related Russian investors. This hypothesis is supported by the following:

• The announced JV for “outsourced” investment activity only 4 months before the Bulgarian transaction.   Furthermore, Malofeev’s own statements in relation to the planed JV (CFC-MarCap) strongly indicate plans to outsource not only capital management, but possibly also capital nominee ownership. The JV was hastily refuted by PML after the French public scandal, and also at the press-conference in Sofia, but there are clear documentary traces proving that the joint venture was in fact agreed and planned.
• The overlap between the strategic interests of Malofeev and the Bulgarian assets. Malofeev has been an investor in Russian telecoms companies (Rustelecom, Svyazinvest, SMART mobile operator), and states telecommunications as his investment focus.
• The simultaneous appearance of another Malofeev-linked “foreign investor”, the US citizen Jack Hanick, as a potential purchaser or another asset owned by Vassilev – the national-coverage TV station TV7. Hanick was the founding CEO of Maloeev’s own TV station in Russia, Tzargrad TV, and is a close confidant of Malofeev’s.
• The unusual behavior by PML during his press-conference. While initially refusing to comment on his linkage to Malofeev, due to the persistent questioning by journalists, he provided an improbable explanation to the public records of links, i.e. that Malofeev wanted to be his partner and presented it as reality, but that PML “could not be a partner with a sanctioned person” (contradicting the fact that another sanctioned person is on his company’s Advisory Committee). At the same time, he never used the name Malofeev in his rebuttal, suggesting he feared being put on the record in case of future leakage of proof of his links.
• The fact that one month before the acquisition, Malofeev and VTB Capital, the other large investor in BTC, settled their 7-year-old legal dispute, with Malofeev paying an inexplicably discounted price to VTB for settling his debt.[7] It is likely that the discount will be cross-accounted in the partner relationship within BTC[8]

The most probable hypothesis is a combination of A and B, i.e. Malofeev is the principle investor behind PML, but Vassilev may retain a residual economic interest. It is also possible that Malofeev is providing additional political assistance to Vassilev due to his contacts with influential politicians in Serbia[9]

Key Risks to Bulgaria

In the most probable hypothesis, the risks from (beneficial) ownership of the Bulgarian Assets by Malofev are severe.

On the one hand, Malofeev has financed and facilitated the invasion of Ukraine by Russian paramilitary and military forces, which has resulted in his placement on the sanctions list. This alone is sufficient to make unacceptable his ownership of the leading telecoms infrastructure in the country with access to government and private data essential to national and European security. The same holds true about his potential control over the monopoly over TV distribution in an EU country.

Secondly, Malofeev’s prior control over telecoms assets has resulted in attempts to abuse them for political purposes, even in Russia. While he was in control of Rostelecom, the company had a monopoly over local e-government in the federal districts in Russia. In a letter to Putin, a group of governors complained in early 2012 that Malofeev has abused Rostelecom’s position to exert political pressure over them, using the threat of raising prices for critical e-government infrastructures. If Malofeev had the ambition to use his telecoms asset to interfere with political life in Russia, such ambition may be even more easily implemented in Bulgaria (see Appendix 2). Along the same line, Malofeev has used his position as chairman of the Russian Internet Safety League to block access to certain sites in Russia that have been disclosing compromising data on him.

Third, Malofeev has been the center of several criminal investigations. These include fraud accusations by Western investors, accusations over take-over raids by competitors, electoral bribing, and the already mentioned fraud case in relation to VTB. (Evidence available upon request)

NB! All of the above-listed actions by Malofeev constitute criminal offences under Russian law. Formal charges have not been raised on any of them; however the possibility of such make Malofeev an investor who is controllable by the Russian government.

All of these facts taken together make it an urgent necessity for Bulgaria to block the possibility of a potential transfer of control of the Bulgarian Assets to Malofeev.

Options available to the Bulgarian government

The following legal options exist for Bulgaria’s government to block the pending transaciton with the Bulgarian Assets:

[REDACTED FOR CONFIDENTIALITY]

[1] Vassilev was indicted in 2014 on charges of large-scale embezzlement from the now-bankrupt CorpBank, the bank has been lender to (or financer of the original acquisition of) most of the Bulgarian Entities

[2] http://www.marcap.ru/en/press/news/item/64

[3] At the Sofia press-conference, Anatoly Kairo was presented by PML as one of the management team of LIC33

[4] http://www.cfgcapital.ru

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSYSU7j0HNA

[6] The prosecution accuses Vassilev of creating a Ponzi-scheme of related party-borrowing, totaling, by the prosecution’s accounts, nearly €2 b.

[7] In 2007, Malofeev, acting under false pretense, borrowed USD 232 m from VTB Capital, and never returned it due to the borrower company going bankrupt. Despite winning the court proceedings for the full amount including interest, VTB Capital settled, in February 2015, for $100 m.

[8] PML has announced that LIC33 intends to buy out the remaining shareholders in BTC; VTB owes nearly 40% of the shares.

[9] In recently leaked email correspondence between Malofeev and one of his employees, he refers to the current governing party in Serbia as “Our Serbs” and implies influence over them. Unconfirmed information from two sources suggests  Malofeev may be assisting Vassilev in obtaining Russian citizenship to avoid extradition to Bulgaria.

As I have written before, one of the earliest hard evidence of Malofeev’s direct involvement in the invasion of Ukraine came from this phone call, intercepted by the SBU on April 14th 2014:

At 3:25 in the video, you can hear Girkin, then stationed in Slavyansk, report to his boss Malofeev how his team of scouts ambushed 3 cars of VIP passengers and slaughtered them, without knowing whom exactly they killed. His words are, literally: “We shot the guards and the persons traveling in the VIP cars…We had no losses on our side, not a single wounded one”.

Malofeev then instructs  Girkin to report the achievement to Aksenov, the fresh Russian-installed Prime Minister of Crimea. Girkin then proceeds to ask Malofeev whom exactly they have slaughtered, as he clearly had no clue of the identity of their targets. Malofeev explains that it was the leadership of the Alpha team of the Ukrainian ATO, and praises him for the job well done.

Today, Girkin effectively owned up to the story contained in that leaked call. In an interview published tonight on the Russian website rusprav.ru, Girkin thanks the Providence for guiding his scout team him to accidentally stumble upon the elite Alpha team of Ukraine, without suffering a single wounded combatant.  Doubtless, he is recounting the same episode referenced in the call.

Not only does this admission give further credibility to SBU’s line of intercepted phone calls, which – other than sometimes being edited to exclude certain information –  have never proven to be faked. More importantly, it puts Girkin in hot legal water, as he effectively admits to a war crime. It is one thing to believe that you are at war, and to kill your enemies in battle. It is a completely different matter, at least according to international criminal law, to ambush VIP cars with passengers whose identity you have no concept of, and massacre everyone indiscriminately.

But most importantly, this is the latest example of Girkin becoming a liability to his handlers, by admitting to events that his co-conspirators – in this case, Malofeev – have made everything possible to pretend never happened.

The question is, when will the handlers decide to ambush the liability.

On November 28, 2013, Igor Girkin, then head of Security for Konstantin Malofeev and still very much totally unknown to the rest of the world, spoke his mind in a comment left on Russia’s blogging site of choice, LiveJournal.com.

We find out what he posted in his email box from that day, as he got an automatic notification from the blogging site that the blogger had replied to his comment:

In the middle of a long-winded geopolitical question, Girkin asked rhetorically:

The question now is similar: is the world oligarchy interested in a new brothel, or is still satisfied, for now, with the slow degradation of Russia, which is being ensured by Putin & Co?

The blogger, going by the name of El Murid (later a staunch Girkin supporter), answers the question extensively.

Not surprisingly, Girkin has made sure this comment is no longer to be found on El Murid’s blog, lest Putin finds out what the Novorossya movement chief, pledging eternal and military support to the President, really thought about him just over a year ago. Here is a snapshot of the website with this particular chain of comments, now:

In short: Girkin’s question is deleted, and somehow, El Murid response remains there answering an unasked question.

Not so brave, after all..

After nearly a week of radio silence from the batch of the Kremlin super-trolls (about 25 high-impact bloggers, curated and paid directly out of the Kremlin’s Domestic Politics department), today they re-appeared with a vengeance.

Here’s what the their time-line looks like right now:

The message: a variation of the following:

“In the Crimea: Back to Homeland documentary, Putin thanked Vyacheslav Volodin [Head of Domestic Politics Department], but notice how he didn’t thank Surkov”

What does this mean in plain-speak?

Volodin is the guy who said last year “Putin is Russia” and “There is Putin, there is Russia, there’s no Putin, there’s no Russia”. He is also the guy whom Navalny accused of large-scale corruption. Most importantly, he is one of the Russian elite’s hardliners, and is on the EU & US sanctions list.

Surkov is currently Putin’s special adviser on Ukraine, of Chechen origin. He used to hold Volodin’s position until 2011, when he was fired – at Volodin’s instigation – allegedly over his “modernizing” policies. Thus it was a surprise to many that Surkov was brought back in 2013, albeit with a limited brief – to deal with Ukraine only.

So, the nabs taken by the Kremlin trolls at Surkov might be explained by the old animosity by Voloding towards Surkov, one might assume? It would make sense at any time except at this very moment. After one week of silence during probably the riskiest period for the Kremlin, from a PR perspective, would the first message from the super-trolls be pure personal vendetta? This doesn’t make sense.

Two possibilities emerge. One is related to the stigma that Surkov bears of a “5th columnist” at the Kremlin. This stigma has been continuously thrown at him by the nut-case-grade right-wing lobby (Fedorov+Dugin+Rogozin). He has been branded as the sole reason Russia “betrayed” Novorossiya. Thus, his processing today might mean that the right-wingers have won the intra-Kremlin strife (and Shoigu’s announcment of a large-scale military exercise today supports this hypothesis).

The alternative explanation is, paradoxically, almost the opposite. Even though Surkov is too soft for the nut-case lobby standards, he is as dark a horse as they come. Suffice it to say that he was helping Yanukovich prepare a strategy against the Maidan and was reported to have been in Kiev during (or just prior to) the sniper killings. The only alternative explanation I can think of, therefore, is that Putin has decided to dump him overboard as a liability in his attempts to reconstruct a roadmap out of the current cold-war with the West.

But this latter hypothesis, I am afraid,  bears the scent of wishful thinking.

Just a few comments on the absurd theater we were unwitting spectators of today.

Here are a few things of note that are likely to become formative of a new storyline to be fed by the Kremlin in the next few days:

• First, the police try to arrest one of the alleged killers, somewhere in Chechnya. Contrary to logic, they “block him” in his apartment, rather than wait him out and detain him – at much less risk to themselves and to the other inhabitants of the “multistory apartment building”. (as Russian blogger Anton Nosik rightfully observes, “any time that Russian police block someone in their apartment, this has resulted in the blocked alleged criminal dying, one way or the other“; never in them being actually caught. Predictably, the alleged co-killer, Beslan Shavanov, blows himself up with a grenade. Somehow, the blow-by-blow (n.p.i) report about this suicidal act is conveyed almost in real time to Interfax.
  • Why is this relevant? It provides a “fanatic suicide bomber” meme, something that will be very useful for the new narrative, see below.
• Then, the key alleged “killer”, Zaur Dadaev, is shown in the court-room cage grimacing and rambling under his nose; his eyes reading “I am an extremist and I am a fanatic”. The only thing that Dadaev says coherently, is a shout at the cameras “I love Mohamed”.
  • What does this element provide? More of the same. An extremist meme. Clearly, we are witnessing a radicalized religious fanatic, who else declares their love for the prophet in a (legally speaking) self-damning context.

• Last, out of the blue, Ramzan Kadyrov posts a long eulogy on Dadaev and Shavanov on his newly created VK wall.  Kadyrov says Dadaev was a true patriot, he knew him well, he was one of the bravest soldiers he has worked with, he loved Russia. Notice the past tense? Dadaev hasn’t died (Shavanov did, and Kadyrov speaks just as highly of him in his post). So why the past tense? Because, Kadyrov implies, something must have happened to Zaur. Something mystique. Why did he leave the army? (why not, after more than 10 years, as his mother said, one might wonder).  Something must have changed him. But Kadyrov will find out. He has personally ordered an investigation – not of anything related to the murder, such as (one would expect) any preparation for the murder done in Chechnya, any other co-conspirators that might pose a threat to society, BUT – mind you – into “what made him leave the army and what his mindset may have been in the last months”

• Why is this relevant? Because it prepares the groundwork for the sudden to-be-made discovery – by Kadyrov’s own investigative team – that these two patriots have fallen prey to some foreign mind-control power, some entity that is known to bend minds and attract converts from amongst even the sanest and good-est. A power like ISIS, for example. Hey, they do convert Americans and Brits, why wouldn’t they be able to convert Russian nationals?

Once this story is spun, the Kremlin is off the hook. And so is Kadyrov. After all, wasn’t Russia the country that warned the West not to meddle with Assad, because the alternative is much worse? Here you go. it is worse.
So don’t meddle with Putin either.

UPDATE: The morning after I wrote this, a “source inside the investigation” leaked to Russian media the scoop that they “have identified that Dadaev has had foreign contacts prior to the murder“, and as a result, the “foreign connection” is now being actively investigated.

On the same day Ramzan Kadyrov received a Medal of Honor from President Putin for “work successes and many years of loyal service to the nation”. In this context, one cannot but remember this quote from Kadyrov, given in an interview to NewsWeek in 2010:

Those who criticize Putin are not human, they are my personal enemies. As long as Putin backs me up, I can do everything—Allahu akbar!

In my previous blog post today, I half-jokingly wrote that one of the possible identifies of the suspected killer of Boris Nemtsov, detained by FSB, is that of a Chechen sergeant who, in 2010, was awarded a Presidential medal of honor for

“extraordinary valiance shown in operations in the North Caucuses”.

When I had discovered the apparent overlap of names this morning, I tweeted, again half-jokingly:

— Christo Grozev (@christogrozev) March 7, 2015

Well, now it appears that the brave medal-bearer is indeed the alleged killer. At least that what appears from an interview given to Interfax by the mother of the detained Zaur Dadaev. In it, she expresses disbelief that her son (and his two cousins, apparently) have been charged with the murder, and refers to his

10-year military service in Battalion North, а Chechen army unit under the direct control of Ramzan Kadyrov.

As I reported earlier, in October 2010 Zaur Dadaev, then a sergeant in the 46th special interior operations brigade, was awarded an Order of Valiance by the Russian President (then Dmitriy Medvedev, and not Putin as incorrectly reported by some media). I found this information on the Chechen government server this morning, but shortly after that, as Kavkaz Center reports, it was deleted from the site, only to be re-published several hours later.

The 46th Brigade includes two battalions, “Battalion North” and Battalion South”. It was namely in the former that Dadaev’s mother says he served.

Battalion North has a controversial history. Russian spetznaz complained in 2010 that its soldiers were playing double whammy and, while fighting on the side of Russia, were leaking positions of ethnically Russian servicemen to the separatist fighters, resulting in high casualties. А Moskosky Komsomolets article from July 2010 claims the composition of the battalion was conducive for treason, given that it was mainly made up of former separatists and Jihadists. Ramzan Kadyrov personally stood up in defense of the battalion, saying all allegations were unfounded and its members were heroes. It is very likely that his personal intervention brought about Medvedev’s decree which bestowed the high military honors to several of this battalion’s members, including the now-alleged killer of Boris Nemtsov.

What does this mean? One possibility is that, as I (again, half-jokingly wrote last week), Ramzan Kadyrov initiated the hit on Nemtsov, tired of waiting for his pussy-cat boss to do it.  Another possibility, although less likely, is that the Kremlin engineered the story so that the blame can be cast on Kadyrov, who has become increasingly embarrassing to Putin with his outlandish – even for Russian’s bizzaro-land standards – actions, statements, and lifestyle.

It appears that the next couple of days will give us the answer to which of the two scenarios we are looking at.

P.S. If this Zaur Dadaev turns out to be a different one than the Jihadist that I wrote about in the previous blog post, this does mean that Russia is a failed state where someone can openly operate a terrorist website, murder threats, Osama quotes and all, for years without being noticed by the authorities. I still have my serious doubts that this is possible, even in Russia.

Read my follow-up: The Writing on the VK Wall

A few peculiarities in the way the Nemtsov investigation has progressed so far.

1. Shortly after Boris Nemtsov was murdered, the Russian Investigative Committee came up with its list of priority hypotheses about the killers’ motives. Immediately following the “sacrilegious victim” hypothesis, the investigators listed the possibility of an Islamic connection, related to Nemtsov’s criticism of the Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris.

 What is odd here?

Nemtsov did indeed express condolences to the families of the murdered French cartoonists, and criticized, on his FB page, the Russian Council of Muftis for damning the magazine itself as a co-culprit for the terrorist act. However, in line with his liberal views, he never said anything remotely offensive in relation to Muslims, on his FB page or anywhere in public.

Furthermore, given that Nemtsov was not given exposure on national media, there is no reference of him ever having spoken (out of his FB page) on the matter of Charlie Hebdo. He was not even present at the anti-terrorism rally in front of the French embassy in Moscow in the wake of the Paris murders. And he was certainly less outspoken on the issue than, say, Echo of Moscow editor-in-chief Venediktov, who even toyed with the idea of publishing the original Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

Therefore, for Nemtsov to have been noticed, singled out, and meticulously murdered by offended Islamic extremists 3 months after the event, challenges credulity. For the Investigative Office to come up with this as a key hypothesis, boggles the mind.

2. The Investigative Office leaked to the media, a week after the murder, that in fact they did have photos of the suspected killers, and that they were “most likely from the southern regions of Russia”. Furthermore, its chairman said today that they had decided not to mention that they had the photos in order not to scare them prior to them being caught.

What is odd here?

In the event the authorities did have photo/video images of the killers in the most high-profile and brazen murder case in Russia this century, it would be extremely strange that they would keep these secret for more than a week after the murder. What would have been a much more standard reaction (correct me if I am wrong here), would have been to release the images to a widest possible audience, both to accelerate their capture, but also as a public service warning against – apparently – very dangerous criminals. What makes zero sense here is the investigators’ explanation for this failure:  “we did not want the scare the suspects“. But if that was their motivation, why would they publicly state that they have images, and that the persons on them are “of southern descent”? Doesn’t this completely contradict the “keep the enemy calm” story?

3. Today, the head of FSB leaked in a TV appearance that the two perpetrators of the murder have been caught.  He also leaked their names, with no further details (as of writing this). The names are: Zaur Dadaev and Anzor Gubashev. Zaur Dadaev is not a highly infrequent name combination amongst Chechen and Dagestani nationals. I did a search of plausible “candidates” to fit a killer profile, and assuming the FSB didn’t catch this Zaur Dadaev, who was awarded a medal of military honor by Pres. Medvedev in October 2010 (that would be too ironic UPDATE: YES, it turns out it WAS the one awarded with a Presidential medal of honor!! read my follow-up here), the most plausible candidate is this Zaur Dadaev – a self-acknowledged Jew-hating, Osama-bin-Laden respecting Jihadist, based in the capital of Dagestan.

What is odd here?

Well, just about everything. For those of you not familiar with Dagestan, it is a small republic in the Southern-most tip of Russia, bordering Chechnya and the Caspian Sea. Since 1990, it has been a hotbed of low-level terrorism and Islamic extremism. As such, it is probably the most carefully watched-over territory in the Russian Federation.

Here comes a guy, then, in the capital of Dagestan, who creates a profile on the Russian-based Vkontakte social network. He puts this photo as his profile page: (tip: the international Jihad banner)

In December 2013 (!), he  posts a quote of Osama bin Laden, with his own comment under it: “So true…”

Zaur then goes on to post a series of anti-Semitic cartoons such as this. And to top it all, he posts Jihadist videos, such as this one, uploaded in December 2013. In this video, after a Jihadist sermon, where аn Islamic preacher threatens an unidentified person with the words “you will not hear my answer, you will see my answer”,  a gun is pointed at the camera, then turns sideways and shoots. Following this, the video cuts to the funeral of Russian priest Daniel Sysoev, an Orthodox preacher who had been attempting to convert Muslims to Christianity, until he was murdered during a sermon in 2009 Moscow. His murder is still unresolved.

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Now, you tell me, what are the chances that this website can exist, in terrorism-troubled Dagestan, in a paranoid, police country such as Russia, since (at the very latest) 2013, and the FSB would not (a) know about it and (b) take action against its owner?

There can be only two plausible explanations here. Either (1) Russia is a rogue state where anything can happen  – including you can run a terrorist training organization online – and no one will ever notice, or (2) this was a site that has been cultivated by the FSB for years, waiting for the moment when its “author” might come in handy. The answer may become evident in the next few days.

UPDATE: As I was writing this, the whole account of Zaur Dadaev was deleted.  Here is a link where the Jihadist video was found until a few minutes ago https://vk.com/video165062585_167088447. Below is a snapshot of the account from before it was deleted:

UPDATE 2:

Here is the Zaur’s profile photo:

12 hours after the brazen murder of Boris Nemtsov, the Chief Investigative Body of Russia, Следственный Комитет (reporting directly to Putin), announced the priority hypotheses for the killing that it was working on. In order of plausibility, these werе:

• a provocation aiming to destabilize the political situation in the country, using Nemtsov as a “sacrificial victim for those who do not have any moral limits to the methods they will use to achieve their goals” [i.e., the opposition]
• An islamic-extremist link, related to Nemtsov’s vocal criticism of the Charlie Hebdo kllings
• Intra-Ukrainian links to the murder, as “extreme forces are at play on both sides of the Ukrainian political spectrum”
• Business related motives
• Domestic/personal motives

These are the most plausible hypotheses,  according to the top minds of the Interior Ministry and the Investigation  that were gathered for this case, working under the direct supervision of President Putin.

Let’s forget for a moment the [unthinkable] idea of the investigation listing the hypothesis of a “Government-instigated murder of the most vocal opponent who had announced that he would disclose crucial evidence of Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine“. What boggles the mind – even for Russian standards – is that Russia’s best and brightest would not list amongst their top suspects the only people who have actually, with various degree of explicitness, threatened to murder Nemtsov.

• Alexander Dugin, leader of the Eurasian Movement in Russia, has for years called for a final solution with the traitors in Russia; the 5th column of which Nemtsov was explicitly listed. In May 2013, the Eurasian Youth Movement, presided by Dugin, staged a mock execution of Boris Nemtsov (along with 3 other “traitors”) in Rostov-on-Don (you can see the mock killing in the video below). In this lengthy interview with Vladimir Pozner, Dugin names Nemtsov as the example of liberals who “must be annihilated” (Pozner even quotes back to him an article called “Liberals – To The Wall”)
• Igor Girkin (Dugin’s friend and hero) has formally announced that he (via his Novorossiya Movement) will serve as a paramilitary guarantor that no opposition member will be allowed to stage a “maidan” in Russia. This official manifesto of the movement explicitly states as its mission “..in case of mass anti-government actions, we will side with the current government, including, if necessary use force to deal with the opposition“. In this program video, Girkin pledges to defend Putin and Russia even when they don’t want to defend themselves, and will fight the traitors with all means, “including by use of force”. Boris Nemtsov was seen by the Novorossiya Movement as an arch-enemy.
• Numerous representatives of the paramilitary Cossack forces, a key component of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, have explicitly threatened to silence Nemtsov if he doesn’t shut his mouth and stop criticizing, for example in this case, the Russian military doctrine. Even upon news of his death, this “Imperial Cossacks Union” website gloated: “The Jew Nemtsov has been killed”

Add to this list of eager, willing, and explicit silence-wishers on Nemtsov the fact that both Dugin and Girkin are close associates (and in fact, paid employees) of Konstantin Malofeev; the person who funded a large part of the invasion of Ukraine, and the motive is near perfect.

Yet, NONE of these suspects that are crying loud at the top of their voice to be seen, are even being mentioned in the “top hypothesis list”. And because they are not, we have no option but to conclude that the “investigation” is a foregone charade, and that this country continues to be a joke.