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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

#281

Post by lazyasciiart »

mmsc wrote: post #69
captn3m0 wrote: post #52

> 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…

The airline only needs to be physically shown a passport which will get the person into the destination: they don’t record it. So you book with the Czech passport, go through border control with the Czech passport, then show the airline staff the Russian passport.

At least some of them certainly do record it. I have multiple passports and have had difficulties several times with an airline that has one of my passports listed, that doesn't show the right of entry to the other country and which I was not intending to use for that flight. Moreover, if you are travelling on a codeshare flight, for instance, all airlines involved will record your travel documents, but only the airline operating the flight will be able to make updates to them.

edit: they certainly do not anywhere rely on eyeballing a piece of paper and letting some random staff member say "yup looks legit".

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

#282

Post by zarzavat »

mmsc wrote: post #127
chatmasta wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what’s the point of catching an overstay if they’re leaving already? It’s more important to catch them when they try to re-enter (at which point you could have collected data from airlines to estimate whether they previously overstayed). Exit checks are pretty pointless if there’s no violation that would lead to enforcement other than deportation (since the traveler is already self-deporting).

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

It tends to be the opposite. The UK is so strict about overstays that it doesn’t need to fine anybody to enforce the rules.

The countries that fine people are usually (not always) more open to allowing them back in again.

I’m not aware of countries that imprison overstayers, although I’m sure there must be some. Detainment awaiting deportation yes, but usually if you show up at a border and try to leave after overstaying most countries will not interfere with your exit (with or without a fine).

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

#283

Post by zarzavat »

mmsc wrote: post #127
chatmasta wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what’s the point of catching an overstay if they’re leaving already? It’s more important to catch them when they try to re-enter (at which point you could have collected data from airlines to estimate whether they previously overstayed). Exit checks are pretty pointless if there’s no violation that would lead to enforcement other than deportation (since the traveler is already self-deporting).

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

It tends to be the opposite. The UK is so strict about overstays that it doesn’t need to fine anybody to enforce the rules.

The countries that fine people are usually (not always) more open to allowing them back in again.

I’m not aware of countries that imprison overstayers, although I’m sure there must be some. Detainment awaiting deportation yes, but usually if you show up at a border and try to leave after overstaying most countries will not interfere with your exit (with or without a fine).

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

#284

Post by epolanski »

brnt wrote: post #215
DrFalkyn wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't any over the top than the original. It mostly just followed The BBC production almost to the letter, except with US spin. Until Season 4?. Whenever the re-election campaign started. Joel Kinnaman, while a great actor (loved him in Altered Carbon) was a massive miscast as a plausible candidate for the GOP. Mostly due to youth. And the last season was a Game of Thrones-level utter disaster.

I thought the original was scoped and paced perfectly: no fluff, all action (of the suspensy kind), didn't wait for itself to peter out. The remake just drags on and on and on. Tons of irrelevant detail and uninteresting sidestories.

> Tons of irrelevant detail and uninteresting sidestories.

That's how I felt about Succession for 3 seasons.

I felt it just dragged and dragged and I couldn't understand what was the fuss.

Then I started watching some YouTube commentary and starting to understand that the irrelevant and uninteresting was actually relevant and interesting.

ATN, the succession, that was all bogus for character development, a setup.

I feel like House of Cards may fall in a similar category there. It's not much about the action but character evolution and dynamics.

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

#285

Post by Krasnol »

int_19h wrote: post #208
Krasnol wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes, I thought that too but since we're on the Cold War level again, it might be a trick and the article a glorification of Russian agents...on the other hand, they work with Bellingcat and if those guys don't think it's fishy...at least I wouldn't dare to question their resources.

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

#286

Post by epolanski »

immibis wrote: post #228
seydor wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Furthermore, Elena owned a company registered in the Marshall Islands and controlled two bank accounts in Switzerland. If airlines could be fooled, you'd think at least Swiss banks would do some KYC

The whole reason Swiss has a banking reputation is that it didn't do KYC. At all.

Swiss banking system changed a lot during the last 15 years.

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

#287

Post by ivan_gammel »

vkou wrote: post #261
ivan_gammel wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 th…

So all it took to unfuck the Russian economy is for it to be subjected to sanctions and import/export restrictions? Weird, countries rarely tend to prosper under those circumstances. I thought that the crooks in charge were running it into the ground for the past ~33 years, I didn't realize that this was all it took to get them to start managing the country well. > if you ask anyone in those small and formerly depres…

> I thought that the crooks in charge were running it into the ground for the past ~33 years, I didn't realize that this was all it took to get them to start managing the country well.

You are completely misunderstanding modern Russian economy. The “Running into the ground” part ended 20 years ago. Organized crime was contained, necessary reforms were mostly done, entrepreneurial culture emerged, they started developing industrial policy and digitalization. Old Soviet industry and monocities around it were dying, true, but whole new sectors emerged and they are damn good. Banking and telecoms, hospitality, IT and e-commerce to name a few. Even industry is not completely dead, on the contrary: whole new automotive clusters have grown with increasing localization of components etc. One very good indicator of the shape of industry is the current output of military industrial complex: they scaled it incredibly fast and currently outperform the entire EU on a number of positions. This means that not just some factories are working but their entire supply chain is ok. This is the part of Russia that actually prospers and has been growing for a while now.

> Sure, you can inflate property values to whatever amount you want, if you start printing money to finance a war, but that doesn't on its own result in economic prosperity

The thing is, they don’t print money. Their head of central bank is one of the most competent professionals in Europe if not the entire world. What is happening now is redistribution: oil money going into the pockets of the poor people, a family member of which has signed the contract and went to war. No wonder the war feels “justified” for them: they have never seen this kind of money before and they spend it. Just for example take the small town Mtsensk. Since the start of the war property prices there increased by 50%. Old Soviet panel building is still a big upgrade for those who were used to go outside to the toilet. This is another part of Russia, forgotten and abandoned for a while, which won a lottery ticket while supplying the war with cannon fodder.

Both parts exist and when counted on average, negate each other. Omitting one of them is oversimplifying.

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

#288

Post by dclowd9901 »

garyrob wrote: post #26
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #9

This is my semi annual plug for all of you to watch the fantastic and somehow forgotten FX network TV show, The Americans, A spy drama set in Washington DC in the 1980s about KGB “illegals” posing as travel agents. It’s way better than any basic cable TV show had any right to be. Plus, all seasons are streaming on Hulu, so you don’t have to worry about whether the story will be completed. https://www.hulu.com/series/…

I want to give some advice: Don't judge it by its first few episodes. When I first checked it out, the basic setup seemed rather inane and I stopped watching. Then, a couple years later, I needed something to watch during long exercise sessions and I checked it out again. It was getting much more interesting by the end of the first season. And every season got better and richer. By the very end, I experienced it as a…

The best thing about the show is how stories constantly take unexpected turns. It will sometimes seem like they’re setting some big thing up and then suddenly the characters are caught completely off guard and the show makes a hard left. It might sound contrived the way I’m explaining it, but it all makes perfect sense in the way the show unfolds.

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

#289

Post by epolanski »

adolph wrote: post #76
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.

If your pay is less than your cover, do you have to give it back? How does health insurance work for spy stuff? If the GRU agent gets exposed to novachuck, do they get to see a Russian specialist or do they just have access to the providers in their cover plan?

> How does health insurance work for spy stuff?

Russia, as most of Europe, has free public health care. You don't have to pay for it.

Also, I think you have some confusion.

1) you are an officer in your army/services. You get your salary on your Russian bank account

2) you have a cover job that pays you. You use that money for your cover life.

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

#290

Post by robocat »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #281
mmsc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The airline only needs to be physically shown a passport which will get the person into the destination: they don’t record it. So you book with the Czech passport, go through border control with the Czech passport, then show the airline staff the Russian passport.

At least some of them certainly do record it. I have multiple passports and have had difficulties several times with an airline that has one of my passports listed, that doesn't show the right of entry to the other country and which I was not intending to use for that flight. Moreover, if you are travelling on a codeshare flight, for instance, all airlines involved will record your travel documents, but only the airl…

Is there a conflict between (a) wanting to exit a country using the passport you entered it on*, and (b) wanting to enter a flight using the passport you will exit on?

* don't want to be recorded as an overstayer

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