142020.12

CNN-Bellingcat investigation identifies Russian specialists

At about 9 a.m. on August 13, a 33-year-old Russian woman named Maria Pevchikh checked in for a flight from Moscow to the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. She was not alone.

Trailing her to Domodedovo airport that morning was a member of an elite unit of the Russian Security Service, the FSB. Oleg Tayakin, a slim, balding man with blue-green eyes, remained at the airport until Pevchikh left.

Pevchikh was traveling in advance of a visit to Siberia by Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, whose anti-corruption campaign she leads.

This image of Maria Pevchikh leaving her home for the airport and her flight to Novosibirsk was aired on REN TV and other Russian media.

The Navalny team is constantly watched by the FSB in Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union's secret police force, the KGB. But Tayakin is no ordinary agent. He belongs to a small team specializing in toxins and nerve agents. That very morning, several of its agents were on their way to Novosibirsk, two hours ahead of Pevchikh. They knew that Navalny, a thorn in President Vladimir Putin's side for nearly a decade, would arrive in Novosibirsk the next day.

Exactly one week later, Navalny would be fighting for his life -- his body ravaged by the nerve agent Novichok, his organs shutting down. He collapsed on a flight from Tomsk, the last stop on his Siberian trip.

Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, photographed near law enforcement officers at his Anti-Corruption Foundation in Moscow last year, is always under surveillance.

CNN joined an investigation by the group Bellingcat that has pieced together how the elite FSB unit followed Navalny's team throughout its August trip to Siberia.

The investigation also found that this unit has followed Navalny on more than 30 trips to and from Moscow since 2017.

In recent years the online investigative outfit Bellingcat has identified the Russian military intelligence agents sent to England to poison former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, and a Russian agent accused of murdering a Chechen activist in Berlin. Bellingcat helped uncover the pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine responsible for shooting down the MH-17 airliner in 2014.

Russia has denied involvement in every case.

By examining thousands of phone records along with flight manifests and other documents obtained by Bellingcat, this joint months-long investigation has identified the agents involved, as well as their backgrounds, communications and travel. The investigation also involved German magazine Der Spiegel and Russian online publication The Insider.

CNN showed photographs of several of the agents to Navalny last week, during an interview at a secret location in Germany, where he is still recovering.

He said he did not recognize any of them, and then paused.

"I have a very strange feeling when I watch their faces," Navalny said, adding it was "absolutely terrifying" to find out he'd been followed for so long.

The shadows and their masters

Bellingcat and CNN have established that the FSB's toxins team comprises six to 10 agents, including qualified doctors, toxicologists and paramedics.

The FSB agents trailing Navalny -- in their late 30s and 40s -- usually traveled in groups of three, taking parallel flights as they tracked Navalny. More recently they began using burner phones.

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