The joint investigation of The Insider, Bellingcat and CNN, with the participation of Der Spiegel, established the names and titles of FSB officers who poisoned Alexei Navalny “Novichok”. As it turned out, the poisoning in Tomsk was the second attempt, two months earlier, the same FSB officers made an attempt on the oppositionist in Kaliningrad and almost killed Yulia Navalny. A key role in the attempt was played by a special unit of the Institute of Criminalistics of the FSB.
After The Insider and Bellingcat through billing of telephone conversations of the Skripal poisoners managed to establish that the “Novichok” employees of the GRU received from the NC “Signal”, it became possible to investigate other poisonings. Analyzing the billings of telephone conversations of the director of the NC “Signal” Artur Zhirov, received by Bellingcat, it was possible to identify a number of FSB officers who support regular communication with him. That is how we managed to reach the Institute of Forensics of the FSB, whose employees (as shown, in turn, their billings) and were the main performers of the poisoning.
What is a “laboratory”?
Telephone billings and travel data show that the operation to poison Navalny was carried out by a group of at least eight FSB operatives from the secret unit of the department operating under the guise of the FSB Institute of Criminalistics (aka NII-2 FSB or IV / h 34435).
The FSB Institute of Criminalistics, established in 1977 as a high-tech investigative unit of the KGB, is an extensive organization that provides services ranging from polygraph check and voice recognition and face recognition to robotic demining. The unit played a key role in the investigation of all major incidents in the post-Soviet period – such as residential explosions in 1999, the crash of the Kursk submarine, the hostage-taking in Beslan and Nord-Ost, as well as explosions in the metro of St. Petersburg (in all these cases, the objectivity of the investigations raised great questions among journalists). This unit of the FSB also stated some more esoteric achievements, such as, for example, the ability to determine the growth and formation of a suspect on the model of the voice, as well as the opportunity to find out the circumstances of the last days of the life of Jesus Christ. The same institute “discovered” drugs in the hair samples of Ivan Golunov (later it was proved that the examination was fabricated). Sometimes the Institute is engaged in linguistic examinations, for example, Alexander Korshikov and Anna Osokina found extremism in the words of HSE student Yegor Zhukov “to fight the system with a system strictly and systematically.”
While the official target of NII-2 is to conduct examinations, former Soviet and Russian intelligence officers who defected to the West said that the Institute also manages a secret laboratory that in Soviet times produced poisons used to kill Western diplomats, Ukrainian nationalists and Soviet defectors. According to former KGB general Oleg Kalugin, one of the first projects of this KGB laboratory was the preparation of a special bullet (a tiny ball with two holes), filled with ricin, which was used to poison the Bulgarian emigrant writer Georgy Markov, who was killed in London in 1979. Another defector from the KGB, now living in the United States, on condition of anonymity told Bellingcat that the basic laboratory of the KGB for the production of poisons was at the place where, as we established, the operational center of the Institute of Forensics, which deals with poisoning, is located. The same defector also claims that the site of the KGB laboratory was so secret that it was used by the putschists as a “situational room” in August 1991.
In 2007, an article on the website Gazeta.ru (later deleted but preserved in the archive of the Internet) it was reported that polonium, used to kill Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 in London, was also taken from the NII-2. On the basis of phone billing, 12 FSB employees associated with the Institute of Criminalistics, we were able to confirm that this unit continues to operate a chemical weapons poisoning laboratory, which is based in two secret and strictly guarded places in Moscow and the Moscow region. The main complex of buildings is located at the intersection of Academician Varga Street with the Teplostan Passage.
The second most important base of the location of the “laboratory” is a complex of buildings in Podlipki (near the Korolev). Also, operatives involved in the poisoning program often visit the administrative headquarters of the head organization of the Institute – the Center for Special Equipment, located on Vernadsky Avenue, 12.
Director of the Institute of Criminalistics of the FSB – General Kirill Vasiliev. Vasiliev is a chemical engineer and specialist in the field of identification of metabolites of substances in biomedical samples using mass chromatography and mass spectrometric detection (gold standard for the identification of chemical weapons in biomedical samples). Without revealing his belonging to the FSB, he is also involved in research for the NC “Signal”, which we identified as a key participant in the updated underground research and development program “Novichka” in Russia as a key participant.
Kirill Vasiliev, in turn, reports to Major General Vladimir Bogdanov, the former head of the Institute of Criminalistics, who currently heads his head enterprise – the Center for Special Equipment of the FSB – and is the deputy director of the scientific and technical service of the FSB.
Poisoners from the FSB
Analyzing the metadata of calls and comparing them with offline databases, as well as with data from open sources, we identified 15 people from the FSB Institute for Criminalistics related to poisoning operations, and at least 8 of them, including the head of the group – Colonel Stanislav Makshakov, participated in the attempted murder of Navalny (curiously, that a group of GRU poisoners also included in the text of the text«Отравительная восьмерка»). Members of the criminal group have a different background – someone has a medical education, someone has a career in the army, someone in the special forces of the FSB, there are also specialists in chemical weapons. Here are the brief biographies of the main performers of the failed murder:
Stanislav Makshakov
Born on March 25, 1966. Colonel, a military scientist who previously worked in the closed military town of Shikhany-2 (Volsk-18, military unit 61469). Before the official termination of the Russian chemical weapons program in 2017, new forms of chemical weapons were developed here, including Novichok-class nerve agents.
Oleg Tayakin (“Tarasov”)
Born on December 6, 1980. A senior member of the Navalny poisoning group, usually coordinating the actions of other officers and working mainly from the central office on Academician Varga Street. He served on the basis of the “White Coal” of the Special Purposes Service of the FSB in Essentuki, as well as in the military unit 03523 of the Space Forces. In 2004 he graduated from the Pirogov Medical Academy in Moscow. Before joining the Institute of Criminalistics, the FSB worked as a doctor.
Alexey Alexandrov (Frolov)
He was born on June 16, 1981. In 2006, he graduated from the medical institute in Moscow and worked as an ambulance doctor, and then a military doctor, began to serve in the FSB in 2013. Aleksandrov, apparently, is a key operative involved in two attempts to poison Navalny in 2020.
Ivan Osipov (Spiridonov)
He was born on August 21, 1976. Doctor. He retired from social networks in 2012, apparently, it was then that he joined the FSB.
Konstantin Kudryavtsev (Sokolov)
Born on April 11, 1979. He served in the military unit in Shikhany. Before starting work at the Institute of Criminalistics, the FSB graduated from the Russian Academy of Military Chemical and Biological Protection.
Alexey Krivoshchekov
Born on April 11, 1979. Prior to joining the FSB in 2008, he served in the Ministry of Defense.
Mikhail Shvets (Stepanov)
Born on May 3, 1977. It is officially registered at the address “Trubetskaya Street, 116, Balashikha” – this is the address of the Center for Special Operations of the FSB. Recall that it was there, on the basis of the Central Service of the FSB in Balashikha, Vadim Krasikov (Sokolov), just before he went to Germany, where in August 2019 he killed a refugee Zelimkhan Khangoshvili. Telephone metadata shows that Shvets spend part of his time in the laboratory on the street Academician Vargi, and some – on the basis of the FSB CSN.
Vladimir Panyaev
He was born on November 25, 1980 in Serdobsk, Penza region. Before joining the Institute of Criminalistics, the FSB worked in the border service of the FSB, then became a co-founder of the company engaged in gas equipment. Coincide or not, but he lives in the same house as Alexei Navalny. After the poisoning of his registration address was changed to the headquarters of the FSB in Lubyanka, 1.
37 “coincidences.” How the poisoners followed Navalny
An analysis of previous trips of members of this group of poisoners shows that they have begun to follow Alexei Navalny at least since January 2017, immediately after he announced his plans to participate in the presidential election in Russia in 2018. As part of his election campaign during 2017, Navalny made more than 20 pre-election trips outside of Moscow. FSB officers-poisoners followed him in almost all these trips, with the exception of a few one-day, which did not require him to spend the night at the destination. In total, these FSB officers made 47 trips to the same destinations where Alexei Navalny flew or went.
Members of this group usually traveled two or three people – on different flights, mixing not only the composition of their team, but also alternating real names and cover names, and sometimes they even traveled under one name from Moscow and under the second – back. It is noteworthy that they almost never flew the same flight that the opposition politician flew, and instead flew in parallel flights, preferably from other Moscow airports. Most often, they also made a flight, the previous one – sometimes for one day – the arrival of Navalny at a certain destination. Such modus operandi minimized the likelihood that Navalny or members of his team would notice the same passengers on different flights.
In fact, of all group trips made by members of this team of the FSB in 2017, only one did not coincide with Navalny’s trip. On April 27, 2017, officers Alexey Alexandrov (flying under the fictitious surname “Frolov”) and Vladimir Panyaev (under his real name) flew from Moscow to the city of Astrakhan in the south of Russia and returned two days later, on April 29, 2017. Navalny did not go to Astrakhan. However, as he wrote on his blog on April 28, 2017, he bought a ticket and planned to fly to Astrakhan this morning to watch the opening of the local election headquarters in the city. His trip became impossible due to severe inflammation of the eyes after an attack on him the day before, when the Kremlin provocateur Alexei Kulakov splashed him in the face of a green layer mixed with an unidentified acne, Navalny’s vision was then saved by Spanish doctors.
Did this group of FSB officers attempt to poison in 2017 or were only preparing for an attempt? In an interview with us, Alexei Navalny said that during one of the flights in 2017 (which he definitely does not remember), he felt symptoms very similar, albeit less serious, to what was during the fatal flight from Tomsk.
Anyway, after the CEC in December 2017 refused Navalny to register for the presidential election (under the pretext of a criminal record in the case of Kirovles, the verdict on which the ECHR was canceled), the surveillance stopped for a while. In 2018, Navalny did not have coincident trips with poisoners at all, in 2019 – only one, in February to St. Petersburg. In July 2019, Navalny became ill in the detention center, where he was imprisoned for calls for protests – he was hospitalized with a strong swath. He was officially diagnosed with an “allergic reaction,” although Navalny’s allergy was never and he could not have any contact with allergens in the cell.
In 2020, the hunt for Navalny resumed at full capacity.
The Kaliningrad fiasco
Billings of telephone conversations show a surge of communication between employees of the NC “Signal” and three FSB officers already two months before the poisoning of Navalny in Tomsk.
On July 2, 2020, three members of the poisoners’ detachment – Alexandrov (“Frolov”), Shvets and Panyaev (under real names) bought tickets to Kaliningrad. Panyaev flew the same evening, and “Frolov” and Shvets – the next morning, July 3. On the same day, July 3, Alexei Navalny and his wife Julia flew to Kaliningrad to spend a five-day vacation at the hotel “Scholos Hotel Amber” on the Baltic Sea coast. This time, the FSB officers again flew out of another airport, so as not to be noticed: Navalny flew out of Domodedovo, poisoners – from Sheremetyevo. Shortly before the flight, all three FSB operatives repeatedly spoke on the phone with Colonel Makshakov. He, in turn, exchanged phone calls with his superiors – Generals Kirill Vasilyev and Vladimir Bogdanov. All three operatives at the time of the trip turned off their regular mobile phones. However, at least one of them, Alexandrov (“Frolov”), used the “left” phone number to contact his commander Makshakov throughout the operation.
Two employees of the hotel independently told us that the day before Navalny arrived, “a few people came in civilian clothes, talked to their superiors, then went to the rooms, something was done and left.” Employees of the hotel then decided that these are special services that establish wiretapping. Unfortunately, both employees saw the faces of those who came only glimpse and could not identify them by the photo, saying that they no longer remember how they looked.
On July 3, Alexandrov and Makshakov exchanged several SMS from 15 to 17 hours Moscow time and one day after midnight. July 4, communication became more active, in just a day 21 text messages were sent, the last of which was at 4:57 am the next day (3:57 am July 5 local time in Kaliningrad). In the afternoon of July 5, at 16:55, the trio flew back to Moscow. Upon arrival, Alexandrov called Makshakov, and all three immediately went to the office on the street of Academician Varga.
The next day, July 6, 2020, two separate storylines unfolded: one in Kaliningrad, and the other in Moscow.
Early in the morning on the fourth day of vacation in Kaliningrad, Alexey and Yulia Navalny decided to go for a long walk on the beach. They briefly returned to their hotel room and then went to breakfast in a nearby beach cafe. On the way to the cafe, Yulia Navalnya suddenly felt bad.
“I was just walking down the street, I felt perfectly normal. Suddenly I felt bad. It’s very bad then. Then I didn’t feel as bad as I’ve ever felt in my life. Alexei asks: what hurts you? How can I help you? And I don’t hurt and I don’t know what’s going on. He brought me water, I went back to the room. On the way she sat on a bench and already barely got up with it. She barely got to the room, although it was three hundred meters. Lied to the bed. It was just awful. It got easier in an hour and I fell asleep. And in the morning it was completely normal.”
Navalny recalls with alarm the moment: “Imagine, a person says: I am very bad, I can’t at all. You ask him questions: what hurts? Maybe the heart? Maybe an ambulance to call? And he says, nothing hurts. It’s now, after I’ve been through it myself, I understand how bad it can be and how it’s impossible to explain what’s going on. And then I thought, it’s kind of nonsense. Failure of the body.”
The fact that Yulia Navalny survived and has not even lost consciousness does not mean that the poisoning was weak. According to experts, toxic substances such as “Novichka” may not cause special symptoms until the inhibition of cholinesterase reaches 75-80%. That is, if the victim received a dose less lethal, she can only experience temporary motor or respiratory problems.
Meanwhile, telephone activity broke out in Moscow. Starting at 8:30 a.m. on July 6, 2020, there was a constant exchange of telephone calls between three members of the group of poisoners who had just returned from Kaliningrad, and their chief Makshakov, who, in turn, again called to report to Generals Vasilyev and Bogdanov. At 9 am, Makshakov, Vasilyev and Bogdanov in turn called Arthur Zhirov, the director of the NC “Signal”. At 10 a.m., Giov, and then Makshakov, called Oleg Demidov, a specialist in chemical weapons who previously worked at the 33rd Military Institute in Shikhany (who enrolled in the “Novichok”). Oleg Demidov is a co-author of several patents related to chemical weapons, including a 2003 patent for “imitation prescription for training troops with military operations in conditions of chemical contamination.” After a formal retirement from the 33rd Institute, he worked for several years at the Dubna Research Institute of Applied Acoustics, which is not formally related to chemical weapons, but which was regularly visited by Tayakin and Alexandrov in May-June 2020, judging by the metadata of their phones. As of 2019, Demidov worked at the NC “Signal” and recently often communicated by phone with at least five members of the group of poisoners from the FSB.
After an active exchange of calls between the FSB and the Signal Center, at 13:00 General Bogdanov went to the airport and at 14:30 he flew to Kaliningrad. Geolocation data show that the next few days he spent at the FSB headquarters in Kaliningrad, communicating by phone mainly with Makshakov, as well as with chemists of the NC “Signal” and the Institute of Forensics. Apparently, at the time of the release of the general in Kaliningrad, the FSB had already understood that the attempted poisoning had failed, and could also understand that Yulia Navalnaya had suffered from Novichok, not Alexei, but what was the specific task of Bogdanov at that moment is unclear.
The Last Attempt
A month after the Kaliningrad attempt, three poisoners from the FSB – Alexandrov, Osipov and Panyaev – booked tickets for a flight to Novosibirsk. Aleksandrov flew as “Frolov”, Osipov – as “Spiridons”, only Panyaev again under his real name. By this time, the FSB already knew that two days earlier, a key member of the team of Alexei Navalny from the FBK Anti-Corruption Fund, the head of his investigation department, Maria Pevchikh, had purchased a ticket to Novosibirsk. The FBK team did not take back tickets by that time, the FSB staff had not bought them. Navalny booked his return ticket (not from Novosibirsk, but from Tomsk) only on August 17, and a few minutes after that, the same was done by the FSB officers.
Immediately after booking tickets to Novosibirsk, Dr. Ivan Osipov called Makshakov, who, in turn, immediately called his boss Kirill Vasilyev, the head of the Institute of Criminalistics. On the same day, there was a continuous exchange of calls and with three other members of the group of poisoners – Krivoshchekov, Kudryavtsev and Shvets.
Judging by the calls, Tayakin stayed in Moscow and constantly communicated through the messenger with the poisoners who went after Navalny.
When Alexandrov, Osipov and Panyaev flew on a SU-1460 flight from Sheremetyevo to Novosibirsk at 9:05, their colleague Tayakin headed from the office to Varga to another Moscow airport – Domodedovo. Geolocation data from his phone show that he was late at the airport without calling anyone. He stayed there until 11:00 and then returned to the main office in Varga. It was at this time that the head of the investigation department of FBK Maria Pevchikh flew from Domodedovo to Novosibirsk. A few months later, the state channels showed video recordings (and not only from the surveillance cameras, but also, judging by the angle made by the operatives), from which it followed that the Singers were followed throughout the day, starting from the moment she left her Moscow apartment early in the morning.
The next day, August 14, 2020, at 15:34 Volume time, Alexandrov made one of his two main mistakes. He briefly turned on his main phone, which led to the verification of geolocation data. At that time, he was near the base station on Dimitrov Avenue, 2 – near the hotel in Novosibirsk, where Maria Pevchikh booked a room (Maria, however, prudently settled not in the hotel that she booked).
Recordings of telephone conversations for the next three days show that Oleg Tayakin during the operation was constantly in the main office on Academician Varga Street in Moscow, twice briefly leaving home during this time. For most of the nights, he constantly made and received calls via the Internet. He also called Makshakov early every morning. Makshakov, in turn, called out to General Bogdanov immediately after each call of Tayakin.
Due to the fact that three poisoners who went to Navalny to Novosibirsk used “left” phones, it is difficult to track their movements (not counting the error of Alexandrov), but the data on calls from other members of the unit who used their usual phones show that there were two periods of especially high activity in their work – one evening on August 16 and one night of August 19, 2020. At this time, the frequency of calls increased sharply, and night conversations appeared between Maksakov and his superiors, on the one hand, and Tayakin, Kudryavtsev and Krivoshchekov on the other.
The first peak – August 16 – fell on the last day of Navalny in Novosibirsk. The next day, he and his crew in cars went to Tomsk, three and a half hours of driving to the north. From 7:00 to 9:00 Novosibirsk time (or from 3 a.m. to Moscow), General Bogdanov and Maksakov exchange phone calls interspersed text messages between Makshakov and members of the team of poisoners – Shvets and Krivoshchekov. Perhaps initially the poisoners wanted to implement their plan already in Novosibirsk, but the departure to Tomsk mixed the cards.
The second surge of night activity occurred on the evening of August 19 – apparently, it was then that Navalny was poisoned in Tomsk.
At 16:21 Moscow time (20:21 Volume time), Vladimir Panyaev sent a text message to Klashakov. Around this moment, Navalny went swimming in the local river (a tradition that Navalny tried to observe in his trips to the regions). It was away from the hotel for about 2.5 hours. He returned to the Xander at 11 p.m. and met his team, which just finished having dinner at the Velvet bar at the hotel. After spending a few minutes at the bar, he went to bed. Around the same time, at 20:08 Moscow time, Krivoshchekov called Maksakova. At 20:37, Tayakin briefly talked to someone through the messenger, after which he called Makshakov, while maintaining a connection for data transmission. In the next few minutes, he spoke to McMahakov four times, the last time at 20:44. In Tomsk it was 0:44.
After four minutes, at 0:48, Alexandrov made a second mistake. He turned on his regular phone again. The phone was only turned on for a couple of seconds, but it was enough for it to exchange one byte of data with a cellular network. According to the metadata, at this point the phone was next to the cell tower in the center of Tomsk, just a short drive north of the Xander Hotel. Below, the map shows the triangulation data indicating the location of the device north of Navalny’s hotel on the night of the poisoning.
These data do not give an unambiguous answer to the question of how the poison was applied, but they are well combined with the previous hypothesis of The Insider that the “Novichok” was applied to the underwear that the oppositionist handed over to the dry cleaning: things from the dry cleaning of the hotel brought at the moment when Navalny went swimming.
Getting Rid of Evidence
At 6 a.m. on August 20, 2020, Navalny’s team gathered in the lobby and waited for him to go down from his room to go to the airport with the press secretary Kira Yarmysh. They ordered a taxi. Navalny came down at 6:05. Exactly at this moment (at 2:05 Moscow time) Krivoshchekov sent a text to Maksakova. Makshakov wrote to Tayakin, after that he immediately went to the office. He arrived at the building on Academician Varga Street around 4 am, just when Navalny’s plane flew out of Tomsk.
Further, the story is well known – about 30 minutes after the start of the flight, Navalny felt ill, went to the toilet to wash, but it was better for him, he got out of the plane and managed to tell the stewardess that he felt bad and that he was poisoned, after which he lost consciousness. The pilot sent the plane to the nearest airport – Omsk – at about 5:15 Moscow time, and after a short (about 15 minutes) delay due to a false bomb alert at the airport, the pilot was able to land the plane at 6 am Moscow time. Ambulance doctors, assessing the symptoms of Navalny, injected him with atropine (which, according to German doctors, saved his life).
Exactly at 6 am, immediately after the landing of the plane, Makshakov called Krivoshchekov, and at 7:11 in the morning – Major General Bogdanov.
Meanwhile, at 5:36, Tayakin left the office and headed towards Domodedovo airport. Mobile phone data shows that it almost drove to the airport at about 6:27 in the morning, but stopped a few kilometers from it. He made a call from there, waited another half an hour, after which he turned around and went back to the office, from where he continued to exchange calls from Maxhakov and other team members. At 11:30 he arrived at Bogdanov’s office on Vernadsky Avenue, 12. He stayed there for an hour and then drove back to the office on Academician Varga Street. Immediately after this meeting, he booked a ticket to Gorno-Altaisk for the same evening. On the way to Domodedovo airport, he called the head of the FSB. He flew at 2:40 a.m. and immediately after landing went straight to the FSB department in the city center.
What could Tayakin do in Gorno-Altaisk – a city with a population of 60 000 people, which is 9 hours drive from Tomsk and a 13-hour drive from Omsk? Probably, its goal was not in Gorno-Altaisk itself, but in the neighboring town of Biysk, where the Institute of Problems of Chemical and Energy Technologies is located, which has a special relationship with the Institute of Forensics. According to public procurement documents, this institute provided the Institute of Criminalistics with “services for the production of pharmacological substances”, as well as “research and experimental services in the field of chemistry”. The institute also announced the invention in 2018 of “a set of nanosorbents to remove traces of chemical weapons from contaminated areas.” It is important to note that at least one of the FSB employees – Alexandrov – as phone records show, often maintains telephone contact with a scientist from this institute Mikhail Vasilishin – a chemical engineer specializing in experimental chemical production.
It was in Gorno-Altaisk that Alexandrov, Osipov and Panyaev also went. Apparently, it was there that they got rid of things on which the traces of “Novichok” could remain. On August 24, all three flew from Gorno-Altaisk to Moscow.
And on August 25, 2020, their colleague Kudryavtsev is a qualified specialist in chemical weapons, on the contrary, flew from Moscow to Omsk. He stayed in the city for less than 10 hours and returned to Moscow the same night. By that time, Navalny was already in Germany, but Navalny’s clothes (with traces of “Novichka”) remained in the Omsk hospital – apparently, it was Kudryavtsev who flew for her. Until now, the official authorities do not answer to Navalny, where his clothes have gone missing and why it is not returned if there was no official poisoning.
Note also that there is no evidence that one of the FSB poisoners was in Omsk when Navalny lay there. Therefore, the rumor that the FSB could again poison him in Omsk, which was distributed by The Times, most likely, is not true.