Chernogorets—2

Bellingcat and The Insider Identify Second Russian Military Intelligence Officer Involved in Montenegro Coup

Two Russian military intelligence officers are wanted by Interpol as alleged masterminds of the failed 2016 coup in Montenegro. The real identity of one of the officers is public - this is Eduard Shishmakov, the other is known only under the false name "Vladimir Popov", under which he is wanted. team The Bellingcat claims to have uncovered the real identity of “Popov” and was able to confirm that he is indeed a high-ranking officer of the Main Directorate of the Russian General Staff. According to investigators, his real name is Vladimir Nikolaevich Moiseev, he is a lieutenant colonel or colonel of the Russian military intelligence, was born on June 29, 1980.

According to Bellingcat, Moiseev was born in the small village of Pivkino, Kurgan Region. He served in the military in Tyumen, after demobilization he entered the Tyumen Military Institute of Engineering Troops, which graduates military engineers in various fields from radio signal encryption to remote bomb detonation. It is not known exactly when (during his studies or later) Moiseev was recruited by military intelligence. At some point from 2005 to 2009, he moved to Moscow, where he served in military unit No. 48427 of the GRU Special Forces Airborne Forces. In 2008, this unit took part in operations in Georgia during the Georgian-Ossetian conflict and the Russian-Georgian war. Thus, if Moiseev ended up in this unit before 2008, he could well have taken part in the Russian military operation in Georgia, the investigation notes.

Moiseev received the dummy identity "Vladimir Popov" in 2009. Like his fellow Skripal suspects Chepiga and Mishkin, Moiseev appears in Russian databases under two identities: as Vladimir Moiseev and as Vladimir Popov. Since 2014, Moiseev and his family have been living in the dormitory of military unit No. 48427 at Matrosskaya Tishina, 10 in Moscow. In March 2015, he received an apartment in the same residential building where Mishkin had received an apartment a few months earlier. As in the case of Mishkin, the apartment is registered to Moiseev's wife and children, and the officer himself is not mentioned in the property documents. Under his new identity, "Popov" was listed as a "photojournalist" and "journalist" in the insurance magazine Marine Insurance and traveled under this legend across Europe in 2012-2016.

Investigators were able to figure out the true identity of “Popov” thanks to Interpol’s initial information about his date of birth and passport and several photos he posted on social networks, as well as a frame from a video taken by the Serbian police, which captured the meeting of Shishmakov and Popov in a park in Belgrade for several days before the events in Montenegro.

Comparing data in various databases, from Rosreestr to the database of car owners and traffic police fines, journalists were able to find Moiseev. The passport to "Popov" was issued by the Office of the Federal Migration Service for the city of Moscow. The same organization issued false passports to Mishkin and Chepiga. Popov’s contact phone number and the details of his car also became known, for which there were four unpaid fines for speeding in the area of ​​​​two Moscow addresses associated with the GRU: Khoroshevskoye Highway, 76b (GRU headquarters) and the GRU “Tower” in Khimki.

“Then we decided to test the hypothesis that had previously helped us establish the real identity of GRU agent Alexander Mishkin. We searched Moscow databases for the name and patronymic of “Popova”, indicating the date of birth as June 29, 1980, and leaving the surname field blank. We found one match in a 2011 Moscow car registration database. A certain Vladimir Nikolaevich Moiseev was listed as the owner of the Subaru Legacy Outback. This person had a passport issued in the Tyumen region. Tyumen is located near the Kurgan region and was listed as a place of study in the now-deleted VK account of "Popov". Therefore, we became interested in this record, ”the investigators write.

However, the address of this person for 2011 turned out to be even more interesting - “Matrosskaya Tishina, 10” with the clarification “Military unit 48427”. This number referred to the 218th separate special-purpose battalion, subordinate to military intelligence.

The missing link between "Popov" and Moiseev was found in an up-to-date version of the Moscow traffic police database, where Moiseev is listed as the owner of a newer car of the same brand that he owned in 2011. This database lists Moiseev's contact phone number, which is identical to "Popov's" phone number in his car record.

In addition, a new address of Moiseev was found in the latest database - in the same residential complex where Alexander Mishkin, suspected of poisoning the Skripals, got an apartment. The exact address made it possible to obtain information about the owners from the Russian real estate database. According to this database, at this address there is an apartment of a similar area to Mishkin's apartment and with a similar form of acquisition: the transfer of ownership without any mortgage directly from the city of Moscow to Moiseev's wife and children.

Moiseev's travels

From 2011 to 2013, "Popov" often posted photos on social networks, mainly from Central and Western Europe, where he allegedly attended conferences on the maritime theme. His VK account was deleted in March 2017 after he was put on the wanted list by Interpol. One of the photos published in 2012 was taken in Warsaw. During this period, GRU Colonel Eduard Shishmakov, accused jointly with Popov, served as deputy military attaché at the Russian embassy in Warsaw. Also during this period, a Polish officer was reportedly recruited by Russian military intelligence, for which he was subsequently sentenced to six years in prison.

After examining Russian ticket booking databases from 2013 to 2016, investigators reconstructed Moiseev's travel itineraries prior to his last trip to Belgrade in October 2016. In particular, he repeatedly flew to Georgia, Bulgaria and Greece.

In early June 2014, "Popov" also visited Moldova. Local media reported that "Popov" could take part in planning acts of sabotage of the then-prepared signing of an association agreement between Moldova and the EU. It was reported that it was planned to destabilize the country according to the Ukrainian scenario with the help of local formations trained in the GRU camps in the Rostov region. Databases reviewed by Bellingcat show that Popov was accompanied in Moldova by another person whose name and date of birth are missing from Russian databases. This suggests that this person also traveled under a false identity.

Moiseev indeed traveled to Rostov on numerous occasions, including in the company of Ukrainian pro-Russian separatists.

Moiseev’s last trip under the “Popov” legend was to Serbia in October 2016, the same time frame as the alleged plot to destabilize neighboring Montenegro after the October 16, 2016 presidential election. It is known that on December 20, 2016, he flew from Belgrade back to Moscow. He may have arrived in Serbia by car or non-commercial aircraft. A few months before the trip to Serbia, Moiseev visited Rostov.

It is not known what kind of tasks he could perform in Georgia, Bulgaria and Greece. During his trips to Bulgaria in 2015, at least two Serbian formations settled in the country, trained in GRU camps in the Rostov region and took part in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. One of them, Bratislav Zivkovic, was expelled from Romania in 2017 on charges of spying for "foreign military intelligence."