Over the two year period of its activity, InformNapalm team has been able to collect a large body of evidence showing that in the pursuit of its imperial goals Russian political and military leadership repeatedly uses the same dirty tricks, reusing the same resources. Russia managed to provoke several conflicts immediately after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and today it is adding new elements of hybrid warfare to its existing arsenal and sharpening its dubious skills in the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. In this report we will show you how a Russian contract soldier of the 7th Military Base in Gudauta (Abkhazia, Georgia) managed to squeeze into one year both the “Rostov” and the “Syrian business trips”.

Applying OSINT (open sources intelligence) methods and analyzing the VKontakte social network, we identified the profile that belongs to a Russian contract soldier of the 7th Russian Military Base in Gudauta (Russian-occupied Abkhazia, Georgia).

Personal data: Ivan Yurievich Ivanov, born April 30, 1995 in Spirovo village, Tver Oblast. “VKontakte” social network: (archives 1 and 2, album, contacts); OK social network (archived profile, album, contacts); phone numbers: +79040175152, +79407231467, +79407274240; Skype: ivan3549. Wife: Svetlana Minina; her social networks profiles: “VK“, “OK“.

Ivan Ivanov was drafted into the Russian Army in 2013. After his training at the Russian Air Force training center in Yaroslavl, where he specialized in “the operation of the 22T6 transloader of the S-300/S-400 long range surface-to-air missile systems”, he was assigned to the group of air defense missile batallions of the 7th Military Base, 49th Army (military unit 09332) of the Russian Southern Military District in Gudauta (Abkhazia, Georgia). Just before the end of his one year compulsory term he signed a three year contract at the same unit, presumably at the reconnaissance unit of the 4th mechanized rifle battalion, which is staffed by contract servicemen, in order to be used in a battalion tactical group. Currently Ivanov still serves in the same unit.