The Insider and Bellingcat revealed the identity of the GRU employee, who lived in Europe for almost 10 years

She opened a jewelry boutique in Italy, headed the charity fund and made friends with many NATO officers

The Insider, together with Bellingcat , Der Spiegel and La Repubblica, has published an investigation about the GRU employee who lived in Europe for almost 10 years. She launched her fashionable brand of jewelry, became part of the social life of Naples and headed the branch of the Lionʼs Club charity organization, which was created by NATO officers. "Medusa" retells this text.

To Maria Adele Kufeldt River, she is Olga Kolobova, the investigators drew attention to at the end of 2021. Then they found that the owner of a special series passport, which is used by GRU employees, is a person named in any Russian database. The Insider later found that this woman was given at least three Russian passports - one internal and two foreign ones. All these documents fell into the range of numbers of documents used by GRU officers.

As the investigators found out, in August 2005, Maria Adela Kufeldt River tried to obtain citizenship of Peru. Then she, together with lawyers, presented a birth certificate for 1978 issued in the Peruvian town of Caliao, and a baptism certificate in the local church, issued two weeks after birth. During the audit, it turned out that the document is fake: the indicated church was built in 1987, nine years later than “Baptism”.

Despite the failure to get Peru citizenship, Maria Ala continued to use the legend of her South American origin. She told friends that she was born in the hookah, her father was a German, and her mother with Peruvka. Father threw them and mother raised her alone. In 1980, mother and daughter went to the Soviet Union for the Olympic Games. But the mother had to urgently return home, and she left Maria Adel to the care of a certain Soviet family.

In 2006, a year after an unsuccessful attempt to get Peruvian citizenship, Maria Ala received a Russian passport. According to the cover, she then worked as a “leading specialist” at Moscow State University and lived at the address in Moscow, where, as journalists established, other people actually lived, who did not know anything about her. The Insider notes that the first Russian passport of Maria Adeles belonged to the same series that the GRU issued at least six other employees. Among them, Sergei Lutenko, one of the alleged poisoners of the Bulgarian gunsmith Emelyan Goebrev, and Alexander Kovalchuk, suspected of involvement in the poisoning of Sergei and Julia Skripal .

In Europe, Maria Ala supposedly appeared in the period from 2009 to 2011. This is evidenced by photographs of other people on social networks on which it is captured. In Malta, she made friends with Marseille D`lji Smith, a former editor of the publication Cosmopolitan. According to Smith, Maria Ale then told her that she was studying hemology in Paris, but often happens in Malta, where her friend lives.

The first data on international trips that journalists were able to discover were dated October 2011. Then Maria Ala made the first of many trips by train from Moscow to Paris. The passport, on which she traveled at that time, was issued in August 2011. His number was only one digit from the passport number Denis Sergeyev, the alleged participant in the poisoning of the Skripals.

Maria Aleya told reporters about this period of the life of Maria Adele by Marseille D`Arji Smith. According to her, Maria Ala at first studied hemology at the university in Rome, and in February 2011 went to the UK as part of a training trip. In October 2011, she moved to Paris to get a master's degree in the field of management. Italian immigration data obtained by La Repubblica confirm the memoirs of D`Arji Smith. They show that Maria Ala first traveled along short -term French visas, and in September 2011 she received a student visa. Smith recalls those years that Adela asked her to introduce some English politicians or lords, but the matter did not go further than the conversation, writes The Insider.

In 2012, Maria Ala married a man who had Italian, Ecuador and Russian citizenship. Only his initials - D. M. This man was born in Moscow in the family of a Russian mother and father from Ecuador. He received a Russian passport at the Russian Embassy in Ecuador shortly before the wedding. A year later, he went to Moscow, where he died in July 2013 at the age of 30. The cause of death is "double pneumonia and systemic lupus erythematosus." Close friends of the man said that they did not know anything about this marriage and did not hear about any Maria Adele. One of them also noted that his friend was diagnosed with lupus erythematosus less than two months before his death.

Shortly after the death of her wife, Maria Alaus registered the company Serein Srl in Italy, the purpose of which was the production and trade of jewelry and luxury goods. The Insider writes that this brand sold cheap jewelry purchased in Chinese online stores.

Maria Ala settled in a suburbs of Naples and, as notes The Insider, "became an integral part of local social life." She opened a boutique of jewelry and luxury items, later turning it into a fashion club, and then headed the branch of the Lionʼs Club charity organization.

The Lionʼs Club branch, located in Naples, was created by NATO officers, with whom Maria Aleya managed to build a very close relationship. According to the memoirs of Lieutenant Colonel Torsten S., an officer of the German Bundeswehr, the head of the Naples Lionʼs Club recommended Maria Adele as a person who could revive the organization’s work.

Journalists interviewed three acquaintances of Maria Adeles associated with NATO. They said that at that time she talked with many NATO employees, made friends with a number of officers and often talked with them on social networks, and some of these ties were romantic. In 2018, she volunteered to pay the membership dues of all participants in the Lionʼs Club department so that it would not close.

One of the people close to Maria Alea, Colonel Shelia Bryant, was considered, at that time, general inspector of the US Navy in Europe and Africa. Bryant told reporters that the story of Maria Adela seemed to her confusing and unconvincing: "Why can someone throw her child in the Soviet Union?" The source of her income also raised questions: “She opened the store and often changed expensive apartments, despite the fact that the origin of the money was unclear.”

Shelia Bryant said that Maria Adela talked with American, Belgian, Italian and German employees and NATO officers. She attended many events organized by an alliance or US armed forces, including the annual NATO balls and the US Marine Corps.

In addition, writes The Insider, Maria Ale has regularly traveled to Bahrain since 2013, where she managed to establish good contacts-in December 2014, a photograph was published on her company on her company on Facebook , which shows how she gives cufflinks to the then prime minister of the country, Prince Khalifa Binman al-Khalifa.

The work of Maria Adela in Europe ended shortly after the publication of the investigation of The Insider and Bellingcat, which mentioned a series of GRU passports. In September 2018, she, without explaining anything to her friends, flew to Moscow. Two months after the departure, she published a post in which she said that she had cancer, and that her hair began to grow again after chemotherapy. The last time, Maria Alaus made herself felt three years later - on December 4, 2021, she wrote to Marcel D`Ari Smith.

Dear, dear Marseille! There are many things that I cannot (and I can never) explain! But I miss you very, very, very ...

In Russia, Maria Ala-already like Olga Kolobova-bought the Audi car of the last model and acquired a small studio in the prestigious area of ​​Moscow, and then-a 100-meter apartment in the elite residential complex "Seliger City" worth about 600 thousand euros. The Insider writes that Olga Kolobova promotes content in support of the war from the Putin Friends group in her classmates account. According to the legged data of the Yandex.Sa service, she ordered food to the Russian Pension Fund address.