Russian cruise missiles repeatedly hit non-military facilities in Ukraine. A team of journalists wants to know who is responsible for the attacks. During their investigations, they track down a previously secret unit of the Russian military.
Since the beginning of the war, Russian missiles have repeatedly hit civilian targets in Ukraine. The research network Bellingcat, together with "Spiegel" and the Russian exile medium "The Insider", has now uncovered a previously secret group of military officers who are said to be responsible for the attacks in six months of work. Bellingcat calls the unit "remote control killers".
As a result, most of the men and women in the comparatively small unit have an IT background. Some of them are said to have been stationed in Syria from 2016 to 2021 and directed Moscow's missile attacks from there. According to Bellingcat, the unit reports to the "General Staff Chief Computing Center" (GWC). Locations are the Defense Ministry in Moscow and the Admiralty Headquarters in St. Petersburg.
According to the research, the unit is responsible for programming the missiles and is divided into three subgroups. Each of the subgroups is responsible for one of the three missile classes that Russia is using in Ukraine. These include Kalibr cruise missiles fired from ships, land-based Iskander missiles and Kh-101s fired from aircraft.
At the head of the unit is said to be Lieutenant Colonel Igor Bagnyuk. The Syrian veteran receives orders from the Russian military leadership for the planned targets and then passes them on to his subordinates. The IT experts would then take care of programming the missiles and entering the target coordinates.
In the week before the war's heaviest wave of attacks on October 10, journalists noted increased activity on Bagnyuk's cell phone. He called his engineers eleven times the night before, while there had been almost no communication for weeks before - and no intensive rocket attacks either.
Bellingcat contacted several people from the group. When asked how he sleeps at night after work, one responded, "Be professional. Ask me specific questions." But when asked why they were killing so many civilians, he didn't want to answer.
