Last week a video was anonymously leaked online and claimed to show a GRU officer, who was named in the leak as Colonel Kleban, paying off members of the Serbian military in Belgrade. ‘nightingale’ were able to identify images of Kleban online in his full military regalia and think it’s clearly the same person, but if that’s not enough, Bellingcat think so too: https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1196183790831443971. And if that wasn’t enough, even the Serbian security services have since publicly confirmed that the video is genuine and Kleban is a GRU officer.
So… who is this Kleban guy? Kleban has been Deputy Defense Attache to Serbia since October 2015, but his recent 15 minutes of fame are a small drop in the ocean of Russian operations against the countries of the Western Balkans. In October 2016, the GRU organized, financed and facilitated an attempted coup in Montenegro. We previously shared with you some details of GRU operations and their use of local proxies and this was no different. The GRU used 10 Serbian gang members and Montenegrin opposition politicians to do their dirty work.
A recent New York Times article tied this attempted Coup to the secret GRU unit 29155, headed up by Major-General Andrei Averyanov. 29155 being the same unit responsible for the 2018 Salisbury nerve agent attack. Bellingcat did some further research on this secret unit and its Commander which can be found here: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/10/14/averyanov-chepiga/
Two GRU officers from unit 29155 were tried “in absentia” and sentenced following the attempted coup: Eduard Shishmakov and Vladimir Popov, both charged with terrorism and criminal conspiracy. They were sentenced to 15 and 12 years respectively. Bellingcat subsequently revealed the true identity of Popov as Vladimir Moiseev. Among this trial, which was the largest in Montenegrin history, a former Serbian Gendarmerie Commander (Bratislav Dikic) was also charged with terrorism and sentenced to 8 years. This is, we believe, the first time two serving GRU officers have been sentenced under these charges in a NATO country. Go Montenegro!
But Kleban and Shishmakov are not the only Russian GRU officers present in the Balkans. ‘nightingale’ can exclusively reveal that Kleban is also closely associated with another GRU officer in Belgrade: Colonel Sergei Vladimirovich Parubin, who is currently listed as the Assistant Military Attache in Belgrade. Here they are both seen attending an event at the school at the Embassy of Russia in Serbia.
‘nightingale’ have been looking at GRU activity in the Balkans for a while now and this Parubin guy seems really interesting to us. We’ll be back soon when we’ve done some more research on him and can share more details with you.
