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Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

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Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#201

Post by JackFr »

scrumper wrote: post #57
temporarely wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most realistic Russian sleeper scenario imo was in Slow Horses. Brits don't insult your intelligence too greatly in their spook shows; the American variety always involves some sort of super-human characters. It's good as entertainment, the Americans, but just over the top.

That was a brilliant show. Not just because of Gary Oldman. Well-drawn characters throughout. I've just started season 3 so no spoilers please :)

Gary Oldman was a lot of it.

I had read and enjoyed the first two books. After the first couple of episodes I had to admit I was watching it for Gary Oldman more than anything else. I'd watch just a supercut of him expressing disdain for and disappointment with his subordinates.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#202

Post by wildylion »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #179
mmsc wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deportation is just the end result. Fines, blacklisting, even imprisonment is possible in many countries.

Britain has a fairly unique attitude, it must be left-over from the empire - best summed up as "this is the garden of Eden, and the worst punishment is exile' When the 15 year old girl joined Isis, and then subsequently re-appeared in a refugee camp with a newborn, there was little desire to arrest her and figure out if she is guilty or a victim. We just took away her British passport and washed our hands of her. I t…

You sure they don't?

As in, 'you have 2 days to GTFO, or we'll land you in prison for a few years to think of your actions'.

Happened many, many times since the start of this horrific war and many times before.

Source: I'm one of the lucky ones who managed to GTFO from Russia and find a job abroad.

Also, Russia is [contemplating](https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/04/25/russia-reportedl....) stopping issuing passports abroad - to try and catch the 'undesirables' again. Which would leave many people de-facto stateless. This is what Belarus did quite a while ago, by the way.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#203

Post by cryptonector »

> Travel and border crossing data, recently made available thanks to an avalanche of terabytes leaked from Russian government databases, showed that Elena Šapošnikova is in possession of a secret Russian passport. Critically, her nine-digit passport number is part of a numerical range reserved exclusively for members of Unit 29155, differing from those of her colleagues only by its last two digits. Šapošnikova’s is 646518955.

That is very sloppy of Russia. Why even bother doing something so dumb?

> Šapošnikova used this passport to travel between Greece and Russia on at least two occasions, once in December 2015 and the second time in December 2017. In both cases, she used sophisticated tradecraft that sought to leave no trace in databases accessible to European authorities. For instance, she booked her trips and bought her plane tickets using her Czech passport, registering only that nationality with the Greek airline. But upon crossing the Russian border, Šapošnikova used her secret Russian passport, thus bypassing the need to obtain a Russian visa issued to her as a Czech citizen and eliding the digital footprint associated with the relevant application.

How does "bypassing the need to obtain a Russian visa" "elide the digital footprint associated with the relevant application"? Why would the Czech government learn of a visa application to Russia?

The airline most likely would want to know that Šapošnikova had a visa, so they would have looked, and Šapošnikova would have shown them her Russian passport, which the airline probably would have reported to Czech authorities (I imagine that's what happens normally).

So this is just more sloppiness, or at least TFA reaches the wrong conclusion about the point of not Šapošnikova not applying for a visa. Perhaps she should have applied for a visa so as not to have to reveal her Russian passport to the airline, or she should have had a different Russian passport to show the airline.

In any case, having a block of passport numbers for a super-secret ops team is just beyond dumb. It's so dumb that I'm not sure I believe it -- I might sooner believe that such evidence was planted than that such evidence is real, but maybe the Russians just don't have enough Soviet-era intelligence clue left and haven't developed enough post-Soviet intelligence capabilities.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#204

Post by ivan_gammel »

vkou wrote: post #128
epistasis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If responding to this would mean nuclear armageddon, then what is Russia doing by attacking NATO in this way? Rolling over beacuse somebody is a nuclear power only seems to come up when Russia is in the chat. If China or Israel attacks someone, nobody says "we can't respond to it because it would start a nuclear war." What is it about Russia that makes Russia so irresponsible? And if it is, isn't it time to completel…

> If responding to this would mean nuclear armageddon, then what is Russia doing by attacking NATO in this way? Doing low-stakes trial runs of its capability for sabotage in a future conflict. The reason it can do this against NATO is because NATO has non-war means to tit-for-tat punish Russia for this sort of behaviour. Those means are called sanctions, and there could always be more of them . NATO does not do much…

>because NATO has non-war means to tit-for-tat punish Russia for this sort of behaviour. Those means are called sanctions, and there could always be more of them.

Except that they don't really work well against Russia, if you ask anyone in those small and formerly depressive Russian cities where property prices are currently rising. Parallel imports and proxy exports do magic, bureaucrats in the financial block of the government handle monetary policy extremely well, China is helpful and half of the world simply does not care or directly benefits from this war.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#205

Post by ClumsyPilot »

wildylion wrote: post #202
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Britain has a fairly unique attitude, it must be left-over from the empire - best summed up as "this is the garden of Eden, and the worst punishment is exile' When the 15 year old girl joined Isis, and then subsequently re-appeared in a refugee camp with a newborn, there was little desire to arrest her and figure out if she is guilty or a victim. We just took away her British passport and washed our hands of her. I t…

You sure they don't? As in, 'you have 2 days to GTFO, or we'll land you in prison for a few years to think of your actions'. Happened many, many times since the start of this horrific war and many times before. Source: I'm one of the lucky ones who managed to GTFO from Russia and find a job abroad. Also, Russia is [contemplating]( https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/04/25/russia-reportedl... .) stopping issuing pas…

I believe the idea of not issuing passports is the opposite -> to get people to come back to Russia where they can face consequences?

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#206

Post by nikcub »

yencabulator wrote: post #158
dylan604 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your pay is whatever job you have as a cover pays you. If you were getting additional pay to that, then it would be a red flag when the various agencies investigate you.

The article directly contradicts you: > Elena also provided a veneer of plausibility for the Šapošnikovs’ lavish lifestyle. Despite Šapošnikov’s modest income from Imex (around $650 per month), the family bought real estate in Czechia and Greece at a value far in excess of what their collective income could account for. As Czech investigators note, “in some cases their official income could not cover even their phone…

They were just blending in with all the other regular corruption in East Europe

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#207

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

thriftwy wrote: post #178
The_Colonel wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the victims of Russia's imperialism, there have been many downsides, starting with deaths counting millions.

[flagged]

> > For the victims of Russia's imperialism, there have been many downsides, starting with deaths counting millions. > Oh come on, communism had a hundred million of confirmed victims and I see Californians arguing for communism every week. On HN.

You are changing the subject completely. We are not talking about communism, it has another set of victims, but about Russian imperialism.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#208

Post by int_19h »

Krasnol wrote: post #157
syngrog66 wrote: post #150

Russian website, yikes

> On 23 July 2021 Russia's Ministry of Justice added The Insider to its list [ru] of "foreign mass media performing the functions of a foreign agent".[66][67] On 14 December 2021 a court in Moscow ordered the outlet to pay 1 million rubles.[68] On 15 July 2022, the publication was banned in Russia alongside Bellingcat. Following this restriction, any Russian citizen who aids Bellingcat or The Insider may face crimina…

I do wonder how they managed to retain that domain name. Most news orgs that were banned in Russia moved to other TLDs.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#209

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

thriftwy wrote: post #154
The_Colonel wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

The downside is that Russia as a state has few friends. Had you decided not to go the imperial route, we could have normal, civilized relations like with the rest of the world. At some point we could even have something like EU-Russia union (why not?) with people traveling, living and working where they choose.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#210

Post by voltaireodactyl »

The_Colonel wrote: post #131
notnaut wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smart people don’t like sex scenes?

I guess smart people visit porn sites when they want to watch some. For me it's just boring filler and I skip them.

While we’re expressing opinions: in a show about navigating a partnership that accepts seduction as a necessary part of intelligence work (not solely of a romantic nature, but often), where the main characters are also being seduced by the capitalist lifestyle — I suspect some smart people might also view those less-clothed scenes as contributing (and even critical to) the underlying themes.
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