InformNapalm community wants to outline some ‘cheats’ our OSINT investigators have used in a ‘chess game’ they played with  the Russian special agents who followed our accusatory publications about the Russian servicemen nominated for ‘best leak’ award. Like they say, ‘you cannot hide from InformNapalm’. 

In the end of December, 2015, we published the “Tracking Down the Russian 66th Signal Brigade: from Donbas to Syria” article. The protagonist of the story was Ruslan Skaev, a contract soldier from the 66th separate signal brigade (military unit No. 41600, Stavropol, Russia). As usual, the profile of the subject was cleaned up by the Russian secret services which monitor all our investigations. But regardless of the efforts of the Russian occupants, this kind of wiping out of the information is senseless since all the information and Skaev’s career path is archived in several places and will be reclaimed on a D-day.

Let’s lift the veil on the process of monitoring our ‘guinea pigs’ and their transformation from tough guys into juveniles.

It bears reminding that besides Ruslan Skaev the group picture showed another serviceman from the 66th brigade – Andrei Shulga (archive of profile, album). It seems that the profile of Shulga was deleted because of the shown picture of their departure on the ‘Syrian assignment’ from the port of Novorossiysk and the well-known photo of Ruslan Skaev ‘under the palm’.

As it turned out, coward is coward even in Syria.

We were able to identify Denis Romankov in the photo of Shulga with his comrades. Denis comes from Budyonnovsk (Stavropol krai, Russia) and stands out for a birthmark on his right cheek.

It’s a miracle but the profile vanishes after the publication of the story about the 66th brigade – this confirms his presence in Syria.

Thus, step by step we approach the winner of the title ‘the most secured coward’ of the 66th brigade. And the winner is… Sergey Gusev from Saratov (archive), who has another profile under the pseudonym Sergey Belov (archive of profile, album, contacts).

Sergei Belov/Gusev have been seen not only in the list of contacts of Andrei Shulga but also in the group pictures with him. Right after the publication of our story, Sergei deleted all the evidence of his service in the 66th brigade and friendship with Shulga. But InformNapalm predicted this scenario and saved all the information.

The traces of Gusev’s trip to Donbas have gone from the photo album as well. There were just several pictures from December of 2014, but they were deleted without a second thought.

And it’s not even about the ‘Novorossiya’ badges loved by the Russian servicemen, it’s about the building in background of one of the photos of coward Sergei Gusev.

This building was identified in one of the previous investigations when Roman Rever, a soldier from the 18th brigade (based in Chechnya), took a photo in front of it.

This building belongs to the Donetsk Mine Rescue brigade and is located on Levitskogo street. The photo was made right at the entrance to the territory, on the newly built checkpoint.

InformNapalm team wants to thank the wipers from the Russian special services, the 66th brigade and personally Sergei Gusev for his chicken-heart, since all them drew our attention and let disclose another fact of the Russian military presence in the war conflict in both Syria and Donbas. In result of sophisticated schemes we could identify the approximate disposition of the Russian forces quartered in Donetsk, in the territory of the rescue brigade.

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Original article by Victory Krm, translated by Stepan Grishin