Since the beginning of the Russian invasion in Ukraine on February 24, hundreds of Russian missiles have fallen on Ukrainian soil, including on civilian buildings, causing numerous victims. But who are the men and women in charge of preparing these destructive strikes, from a distance, from Russia? Investigative media have asked themselves the question. Bellingcat website (link in English)the independent Russian media The Insider and the German weekly Der Spiegel published, Monday, October 24, the result of six months of investigation. By cross-checking the telephone data, those of the Russian military academies accessible in open-source (freely on the internet) or by searching social networks, they managed to reconstruct the organization chart of a unit responsible for launching missiles within the Russian army.
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Behind at least some of these attacks is a secret group of around 30 people whom Bellingcat claims to have identified. All have a university or professional background in missile programming. Officiating within the Main Computing Center of the Russian General Staff, known by the acronym GVC, they are based in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. The founder of the investigative media Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins shared on Twitter the identities of these soldiers.
Scourge of the Russian intelligence services, Christo Grozev, has spent the last several months piecing together the team responsible for programming Russian cruise missiles launched at targets in Ukraine, frequently hitting civilian infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/gKpSZbFczu
— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) October 24, 2022
This unit is mainly made up of young men and women, engineers or computer scientists. “Most are in their twenties, with the youngest four aged just 24”, details Bellingcat. Among them, a married couple has even been identified. All have received military training. Some participated in the war in Syria, where Russia militarily supports the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, between 2016 and 2021. One of them was notably spotted, in January 2021, at the command center installed by Russia in Damascus: it appears in the background of a photo where Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with his Syrian counterpart. One of them also received a “certificate of gratitude” from Vladimir Putin in 2020, according to his CV posted online.
“Unlike their military colleagues, most of whom put themselves at personal risk near the front line, these young people work from secure command centers in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and seem to continue their life without being affected by this war in which they nevertheless play a crucial role”points out Bellingcat.
To find the profiles, the journalists first analyzed data from the Russian military academies most likely to have trained ballistics engineers. They also turned to Russia’s black market for selling data, a source”who has helped journalists and activists carry out numerous investigations into the country’s army and secret services”, explains Bellingcat. The site says it has identified, through this, graduates claiming to work for the GVC, and retrieved data related to their phone numbers.
This telephone data shows very many calls in the hours preceding the Russian missile launches. This is particularly the case of a line attributed to a Russian officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Igor Bagnyuk. A member of the GVC, whom the journalists contacted, sent them a photo of the latter, which the founder of Bellingcat shared on Twitter.
The direct commander of the missile pre-planners sub-unit appears to be Col. Igor Bagnyuk. This was established on the basis of the analysis of telephone data of eleven members of the group of engineers obtained from data sources on the Russian black data market. pic.twitter.com/i11WTZ9E7M
— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) October 24, 2022
The journalists contacted all the young soldiers they identified. On the phone, some hung up on the spot. Others confirmed their identities but denied working for the Russian military, even when reporters sent them a picture of themselves in uniform. One claims to be an independent plumber, another claims to be a bus driver, while a third claims to work as a florist. The investigators also found the profiles of these individuals on social networks, in particular VK, the Russian equivalent of Facebook.
Journalist Christo Grozev, author of the Bellingcat article, recounts on Twitter his very brief exchange with one of the members of this secret unit. “I asked him how he managed to sleep at night with what he was doing. He replied, ‘Be professional, ask me a professional question.’ I asked him why they were killing so many civilians. He wrote: ‘You know I can’t answer that question.'”
When I first confronted one of the missile programmers months ago, I asked him how he sleeps at night after what he does. He snapped back: “Be professional. Ask a professional question”. I asked him why they kill so many civilians. He wrote “You know well I can’t answer this”. https://t.co/19Gd6bodDt
—Christo Grozev (@christogrozev) October 24, 2022