{"id":7650,"date":"2016-02-12T11:44:47","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T11:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/informnapalm.org\/en\/?p=7650"},"modified":"2016-02-12T11:44:47","modified_gmt":"2016-02-12T11:44:47","slug":"feb11-donbas-antiair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/informnapalm.org\/en\/feb11-donbas-antiair\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Russian Maintainers Unmasked the 21st Brigade in Donbas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conducting the OSINT activities aimed at detection and identification the Russian servicemen involved by the military command of the Russian Federation in carrying out combat missions against Ukraine, the InformNapalm international community’s volunteers revealed anti-aircraft gunners from the 21st separate motorized rifle brigade, who had passed through the so-called ‘Rostov-Ukrainian assignment’. It is interesting that in this identification we were helped by the representatives of the Russian defense industry, which successfully unveiled the military unit’s equipment deployed to Rostov Oblast from Orenburg.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The study of open sources and geolocation investigation near the base camp of the aimed at Ukraine Russian troops in the vicinity of the ‘Kuzminskiy’\u00a0training range\u00a0(near Chkalov farm, Myasnikovsky raion,\u00a0Rostov Oblast) resulted in discovering of a\u00a0photo of a civilian<\/a> standing in front of\u00a0a white pick-up truck having 4 ‘Tor’ anti-aircraft missile system\u00a0in the background. The picture was uploaded to the album of some Dmitry Torkhov<\/strong> (archive of profile<\/a>, album<\/a>, contacts<\/a>) on February 5, 2016. Dmitry is an employee of a maintenance and repair team from ‘Kupol’ [Dome] electromechanical plant in Izhevsk (Russia), where the abovementioned anti-aircraft complexes are repaired.\u00a0This is evidenced by notes\u00a0on pages of Torkhov’s few friends and colleagues. For example, his partner Dmitry Ozhegov<\/a>\u00a0has\u00a0photos of the same ‘Nissan’ vehicle, and there are plenty of colleagues from JSC ‘Kupol’ in his contact list<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Note: The 'Kupol' plant<\/a> is a Russian research and development enterprise located in Izhevsk. It is one of the biggest plants of the Russian defense industry and is included in the JSC 'Almaz-Antey' Concern as one of the main manufactures of 'Tor-M2E' anti-aircraft complexes.<\/em><\/pre>\n
\"tori\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Presence of ‘Tor’ systems means presence of their crews. Thus, the InformNapalm reconnoiterers focused efforts on finding and identification of these crews’ members. The deep research of social profiles of the Russian servicemen\u00a0spotted near ‘Kuzminskiy’ training range\u00a0resulted in finding a soldier assigned from Orenburg, who uploaded a geotagged photo<\/a> from October 21, 2015 (the geotags of the ‘Kupol’ plant representative and the 21st brigade’s soldier were almost exact<\/em>).<\/p>\n
Note:\u00a0the 21st separate guards (heavy) motorized rifle brigade (military unit No. 12128, Totskoye, Orenburg Oblast, Russia) consists of: command unit, 3 motorized rifle battalions, 2 armored battalions, 2 self-propelled howitzer divisions, anti-aircraft division<\/strong>, recon battalion, drone company, engineer battalion, NBC protection company, supply company, signals battalion, training company, electronic warfare company, commandant's service company, medic company. Unit's equipment: x84 T-72B3\/BA tanks, x132 BMP APCs, x6 BM-21 'Grad' units, x36 2S19 'Msta-S' 152mm guns, x12 2S34 'Khosta' 122mm SP guns, x12 9P149 'Shturm-S' SP anti-tank missile systems, x12 9A331 'Tor-M1'<\/strong> units<\/strong>, x6 9A34(35) 'Strela-10' AA units, x8 2S6M 'Tunguska' AA complexes, x27 9K38 'Igla' AA systems.\r\n<\/em><\/pre>\n
\"tegi\"<\/a><\/p>\n
The assigned person appeared to be Evgeny Snigirev<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>(archive of profile<\/a>, album<\/a>, contacts<\/a>), a serviceman from the anti-aircraft division of the 21st separate motorized rifle brigade (military unit No. 12128, Central Military District, Totskoye, Orenburg Oblast).<\/p>\n
\"snigirev\"<\/a><\/p>\n
In the result of studying the contacts of our figurant, we were able to identify the\u00a0anti-aircraft gunners from Orenburg, which have passed through the ‘Ukrainian assignment’:<\/p>\n