InformNapalm volunteer intelligence community received CYBINT data from the Ukrainian hacktivist group 256 Cyber Assault Division with the personal information of the famous Russian Z-volunteer Alexander Ivanov. He belongs to the so-called “Kremlin pull of volunteers” whom Putin’s propaganda uses to create an image of “national unity” around the war against Ukraine. Ivanov is a member of the ruling United Russia party. He is also often involved in crowd scenes during public events with the personal participation of Putin. Ukrainian hacktivists have monitored Ivanov’s correspondence for almost 3 years and passed the retrieved information to the Ukrainian uniformed agencies. 

As the target has become less interesting in operational terms, a decision was taken to make some of the data public and expose a predatory trend. The information obtained proves that this Russian Z-volunteer is trying to acquire real estate in occupied Ukrainian cities, in particular, in Mariupol. At the same time, local residents who lost their homes as a result of Russian aggression are left homeless. Also, during the analysis of Ivanov’s correspondence, it becomes clear how the Russian machine of repression and propaganda works to create the image of a “people’s war.” 

Kremlin’s Z-volunteer

Meet Alexander Ivanov.

He resides in one of the remote areas of Moscow – Kosino-Ukhtomsky District. He runs a business doing disinfection and decontamination of premises in Moscow (the company is fictitiously registered to his relative). It also operates a pick-up outlet for a popular marketplace.

Publicly, Ivanov is known primarily as a “neighborhood activist” supporting “Russian guys at the front” and calling on other residents to do the same. This is the image that Russian propaganda is carefully cultivating through regional media.

In 2023, he received a party ID for Putin’s United Russia party, so now he is not just a neighborhood activist. Now he belongs to the Kremlin pull of Z-volunteers. Ivanov is even periodically invited to events with Putin, where he takes pictures with their leader from a distance, which clearly demonstrates that leader’s “accessibility.”

Ivanov’s visits to the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine

Hacktivists gained access to Ivanov’s personal data back in 2022. It became immediately clear that he often visited the occupied territories of Ukraine under the pretext of “helping the Russian army units deployed there.” The peak of such visits was in 2023.

His passion for video filming and photographing everything around him became a source of valuable information about Russian troops and the situation in the occupied territories. Among other things, Ivanov visited Cuban mercenaries serving in the Russian army helping the hacktivists identify some of their personnel and locations.

In addition, Ivanov recorded the fire damage of Russian materiel. For example, a private video below shows a destroyed Russian S-300 launcher in the summer of 2023: with an exclusive commentary from the author of the video: “our S-300 aerial defense launcher destroyed by the Ukies, our enemies.”

In another video, Ivanov recorded the scale of the destruction of Mariupol.

All this data, much of it operationally valuable, was immediately transmitted to units of the Ukrainian forces.

Housing issues

However, the purpose of Ivanov’s visits was not only delivering aid to the Russian military and filming the destruction of the Russian military hardware in the fields. His personal archive contains a screenshot of a letter from the commander of military unit 49881 to the heads of the occupation administration of Mariupol with a request to allocate an apartment in the city to the volunteer organization Russia Will Live [Rus.: “Будем жить Россия”].

Russia Will Live is Ivanov’s vehicle to collect donations for the Russian army; he also runs a channel with this name on Telegram.

The letter regarding the apartment in Mariupol demonstrates that Ivanov needs the “volunteer organization’ not only to collect letters of gratitude.

He has real estate interests not only in Mariupol, but also in Luhansk area.

Here, Ivanov also has patrons at a fairly high level. He enjoys support both from the command of the Russian Armed Forces and from the Russian occupation administration. These connections are converted into numerous awards and letters of gratitude for this member of United Russia, a matter of envy for any other ordinary non-party Z-volunteer.

In Luhansk, Ivanov’s main partner in 2023 was Oleg Popov, a former member of the so-called “LPR People’s Council” and former head of the “LPR State Security and Defense Committee”. Popov came to visit Ivanov several times, and he reciprocated the visits. It was Popov who handed over to Ivanov the published letter of gratitude from the so-called “head of the LPR People’s Council” Miroshnichenko.

In a correspondence with Popov in September 2023, Ivanov jokingly talks about the need to get an apartment in Luhansk. Then he clarifies that “in Mariupol the process was facilitated by the administration.”

It is not known from the messaging whether Ivanov’s Luhansk scheme succeeded, but very soon he had to look for another high-ranking contact. In December 2023, Popov was eliminated in a car explosion.

Ivanov’s housing whims look especially cynical, considering that for three years Russian occupation administration has been unable to provide housing for local residents whose homes were destroyed by the Russian artillery shelling, air and missile strikes. At the same time, such practice is just another manifestation of the Russian general policy towards squeezing out the local population from Ukrainian lands and replacing it with ethnic Russians.

“National unity”

Ivanov’s data also provide insight into how Putin’s regime controls society at the grassroots level. People like Ivanov serve as a substitute for a genuine civil society. His task is to grant the whims of the authorities in local communities.

For example, during elections. There is ample evidence that any election in Russia is a sham. Everything from presidential elections to the lowest local level remains under the Kremlin’s tight control. It is no wonder that Ivanov’s archive contains a reporting photograph of the ballot and a shot confirming that it ended up in the ballot box.

In addition, Ivanov has an overseer at the highest level. Since this Z-volunteer is engaged in “helping the army”, his overseer in the relevant line. This is Sergei Khrulev [Rus.: Хрулев Сергей Анатольевич], deputy chief of staff at the Russian parliamentary Defense Committee.

Khrulyov’s curatorship is a separate phenomenon in the picture of Russian Z-volunteering. He is a career military man who built his career in the financial service of the Russian Ministry of Defense. In other words, he managed the budgets of whole military units.

It turns out that Ivanov, who collects donations from his neighbors “for rubber boots, medicines, cars and drones,” works under the leadership of a man who is supposed to provide all of this from the bottomless Russian military budget.

Ivanov puts forward proposals for uniting Russian society around the Kremlin’s leadership and propaganda cliches about a “just war.” But it looks like a significant part of the Russian population is well aware of the crimes of their own country, and helps “our guys on the front lines” only grudgingly and under duress.

Ivanov’s own habits helped us understand this. He took screenshots of any important message exchange on his phone, especially if the interlocutor disagreed with him or expressed an opinion contradicting the official Kremlin line.

Here are some examples. Ivanov wanted to buy an anti-drone gun for the Russian army, but found that the prices for it were rather inflated. He reproached the seller, but got a rebuff about the injustice of the aggressive war that Russia is waging.

Another dialog took place with an employee of the school where Ivanov once organized a fundraising for the needs of the Russian army. As of 2024, the teacher refused to organize another fundraising, saying the “people were ready to help with household items at the outset, and not much” but not anymore.

The Russian authorities are masters at creating a fictitious reality. One of such fakes is the “national unity” around the goals of the so-called Special Military Operation. This is evident from the private correspondence of Z-volunteer Ivanov, who does not hesitate to grab a few scarce apartments in occupied Ukrainian cities. The talking point about the “infinite and invincible Russian army” is also a part of the Kremlin’s fake reality.

Read more publications based InformNapalm on the data from Cyber Resistance hacktivists

• European sanctions disrupt state contract of Russian MOD to supply Granat-4 UAV system
• Hacking the Infocomms Department of the Russian Ministry of Defense. Katyusha and the secrets of General Konashenkov
• Hacking a Russian war criminal, deputy commander of the OMON of the Krasnoyarsk Krai
• Hacking a Russian war criminal, commander of 960th Assault Aviation Regiment
• BagdasarovLeaks: hacking ex-member of the Russian State Duma Semyon Bagdasarov. Iranian gambit
• Hacked: Russian GRU officer wanted by the FBI, leader of the hacker group APT 28
• Hacking “James Bond”: medical service commander of 960th Assault Aviation Regiment doxed key personnel of his own unit
• Hacking Andrey Lugovoy, member of the Russian State Duma, First Deputy Head of the Security Committee
• Ukrainian hacktivists acquired first-ever photo of the GRU hacker unit commander wanted by the FBI for meddling in the U.S. election
• New evidence of collaboration of former Slovak Justice Minister Štefan Harabin with the Russian Federation
• Hacking Colonel Leonid Rusin, ex-commander of Russian AWACS unit
• Ukrainian hackers posted lists and documents of the Russian 72nd Motorized Rifle Brigade (TOP-10 files)
• Economic summit Russia–Africa 2023 databases hacked by Ukrainian hacktivists
• Hacking Lieutenant Colonel Kasatkin, Russian war criminal, head of Combat Training of A-50 early warning aircraft, military unit 41520
• BabakovLeaks: hacking Alexander Babakov, Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Duma
• Cuban mercenaries continue to join the ranks of the Russian Armed Forces. Evidence of new recruitments of Cuban citizens
• Hacked: Russian pilot reveals schemes for weapons supply from Iran, South Africa and Mali to Russia
• CYBINT investigation: how the Orlan-10 manufacturer imports parts bypassing sanctions
• Hacking assistant to vice-speaker of the Russian State Duma: agents of influence in Serbia and media campaigns in the EU
• Hacktivists uncovered new classified documents from STC, Russian manufacturer of Orlan-10 drones
• CYBINT. Hacking Russian UAV manufacturer. Part 1: who assembles Geran-2?
• AlabugaLeaks. Part 2: Kaspersky Lab and neural networks for Russian military drones
• AlabugaLeaks. Part 3: Albatross, war, NVIDIA, Sony and Saito
• MedvedevLeaks: Blackmail by Dmitry ‘Nuclear Teddy’ Medvedev, Aggressive Russian Actions in the Arctic, and Rosatom
• Russian MOD officer conducting PSYOPS via Facebook in France
• BaumankaLeaks. Part 2: secret details of the “contract of the century” for the Supply of S-400 missile systems between Russia and India
• Sanctions at work: $6 million to maintain Russian Su-30SMs stranded
• Hacking Kadyrov’s network of representatives: untouchable Chechens, raped Russians and lucky Milchakov
• Leaked documents reveal how Ukrainian ex-official helps Russia circumvent sanctions
• Russia building its navy despite sanctions: hacking of the 243rd Military Representative Office of the Russian MoD
• 256 Cyber Assault Division and InformNapalm blocked a scheme for supplying sanctioned military equipment to Russia via India

Compiled specially for InformNapalm readership. Distribution and reprint with reference to the source is welcome! (Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0) . Subscribe to InformNapalm social media pages.

InformNapalm does not receive any financial support from any country’s government or large donors. Only community volunteers and our readers help us to maintain the site. You can also become one of the community volunteers or support InformNapalm with your donations:

• Patreon
• BuyMeACoffee
• USDT TRC-20: TUbRscbCFns4kvWbUnQRBow9ajxSXwxFJU
• Ethereum: 0xf8979c0e0f82EaF1E79704Eb10b750906868cb72
• Bitcoin: bc1qj6nmqwc75tkwv5zuq4x8ljq94xwqp2msf5kyv3