Did this Russian cause BREXIT, too? Bellingcat names ‘3rd GRU officer’ in Skripal poisoning saga
Bellingcat claims that a high-ranking Russian military intel officer named Denis Sergeev was in the UK under the alias of Sergey Fedotov at the time of the poisoning drama in Salisbury – plus, “notably,” on eve of the Brexit vote.
The UK-based organization touting itself as a citizen journalism outfit published a report on Thursday, saying that Sergeev is the real name of the man whom it previously connected to the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and another poisoning case in Bulgaria. The report is part of a series in which Bellingcat offers “open source” or leaked data to connect the Salisbury affair with the GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency.
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The fresh report lacks the chain of reasoning that led Bellingcat to believe that Fedotov and Sergeev are the same person, focusing instead on the background of Sergeev and the travel history of Fedotov. It however promises to publish the evidence later, saying it was obtained despite the Russian government allegedly trying to erase Sergeev’s public record.
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Sergeev is said to be an elite graduate of a military diplomatic academy in Moscow with the current rank of at least a colonel and a string of shady business arrangements. Fedotov’s travel records put him in Britain in March 2018, when the alleged poisoning of Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia happened. He was supposedly also in Bulgaria in April 2015, when a local arms trader fell ill after an alleged poisoning, which Bellingcat implies was an attempted murder by Fedotov.
Two of his other trips that Bellingcat marked happened in March and April 2016, with London as the destination.
“Notably, or perhaps entirely coincidentally, these two trips were shortly before and after the Brexit referendum,” the website said.
Fedotov is also said to have traveled on one occasion with Aleksandr Petrov, the person earlier accused by the British Government of attempting to kill Skripal with a “military-grade” poison. Bellingcat earlier said Petrov is alias of Aleksandr Mishkin, a high-ranking doctor working for the GRU.
Since being established by Eliot Higgins in 2014, Bellingcat has become a darling of the mainstream media, which rarely questions the authenticity of its research. Higgins has since become a fellow at the Atlantic Council, and the “researchers” have been promoted as a trusted source by the shady UK government-funded influence outfit, the Integrity Initiative.
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