The Russian chapter of the “Anonymous International” (ethical) hackers society came to light a few months ago, and their first notable hack was the 3.5 GB mailbox of Col. Igor Girkin. It was only via this hack that we could find conclusive evidence that (a) Girkin was indeed a KGB/FSB colonel, and (b) that his wartime activities in Ukraine are sponsored by oligarch Konstantin Malofeev.

Over the past couple of months the Russian Anonymous have leaked about a dozen other documents, including the correspondence of companies hiring internet trolls to defend Kremlin’s agenda around the world, but also docs relating to internal Russian corruption and politics.

A couple of days ago, Anonymous published an incredible leak. It was a series of analytical reports from the April-June period of this year, produced for Putin’s administration. In total, these reports number hundreds of pages, and I have only gone through 1/4 of of them. One thing that I would like to share immediately is an assessment of the May 2 tragedy in Odessa, as analyzed by Kremlin’s “experts”

But let’s start with a couple of disclaimers. Anything that is “leaked” needs to be assessed for credibility, and that’s not a straight-forward task. There is no “digital signature” that can confirm the authenticity in one easy step. So authentication is always circumstantial.

First, we should look at the credibility of previous leaks from the same source. The Girkin email leaks is not only huge, to the point of being “unfakeable”, but also it is incredibly consistent with all other – independent – sources of information on Girkin. In one word: I vouch for the authenticity of the emails leaks, as my statistics education gives me comfort they are unfakeable.

Second, the internal consistency of these current leaks is intact. They have all the signs of reports, outsourced by the Russian government for assessing local and global events from Russian perspective. Every government gets those, and Occam’s Razor suggests that the chances of someone faking hundreds of pages of internally consistent reports is less likely – by a huge order – than a capable hacking organization getting hold of the real reports.

Last, the fact that these reports are – in all probability – authentic – says nothing about the reliability of their content. Any analytical report is written with an eye to pleasing the employer, and we should keep that in mind when assessing the content matter. It is exactly this bias, however, that makes the excerpt on Odessa even more (shockingly) important to read. In other words: a top-secret report to the Kremlin that does NOT say that the Odessa tragedy was caused by pro-European Ukrainians settting pro-Russian Ukrainians on fire, is more likely to be truthful than a report saying the opposite.

That said, I leave the conclusions to your own assessment (which I would love to hear in the “Reply” section below).

Top Secret Weekly Report on Analytical Political-Economic Processes Period: 19-25 May pages 31-32 “By the latest expert assessments, the bloody events in Odessa were the result of clashes between several Ukrainian political-economic groups for the redistribution of influence in this town… …

According to our experts, in the May 2nd events in Odessa, the following entities took part: (1) a group of soccer fans, controlled by Igor Kolomoisky; (2) members of the Maidan self-defense forces, controlled by A. Parubiy (independent player, yet loyal to Poroshenko), (3) members of U.S. private security forces; and (4) agents-provocateurs controlled by Alexander Dubov. It was exactly the latter who were dressed as pro-Russian activists with the appropriate insignia, including fan badges of the Kharkiv “Mettalurg” soccer team (owned by the fugitive businessman from the Yanukovich family, S. Kurchenko). Initially the plan was only for clashes between the fighters of A. Dubov and A. Parubiy, in order to show who is in charge of the city. The problem was that Timoshenko’s team was not informed that A. Parubiy was planning its own operation, having coordinated it with Kolomoisky, and in this connection had arrived personally in the city. According to our experts’ latest data, in the Trade Union House there was a laboratory for production of narcotics. (Odessa is an important step in the drug-trafficking route from Kosovo and Albania into Europe). It was exactly traces of these chemicals that were found in the course of the investigation, and are currently only referred to as “chloroforms”. In the experts’ opinion, on May 2nd there had been a planned destruction of said drugs laboratory, in the framework of the struggle for control over the Odessa port and the drug traffic channels (it has historically been controlled by the infamous Odessa O.C. figure V. Alperin, who has close ties to Ukraine’s SBU and, tangentially, to the UDAR party). The experts suppose that the team in charge of destruction of the laboratory did not anticipate that – as a result of the clashes in town – people from [pro-Russian protesters] Kulikov Field would be ushered into the building. As a result, the extermination team were forced to exterminate all witnesses. The majority of witnesses died in the building’s basements, and exactly their corpses – by various estimates, approximately 50 persons – were secretly taken out of the building (later these were announced as missing without trace). By our experts’ opinion, it was exactly as a result of the wish to hide the existence of a narcotic laboratory in the Trade Union House that the strange initiative was started to build up an insurmountable concrete fence around the building. The purpose of this construction was to permit the definitive elimination of all evidence of the laboratory, prior to admitting international experts into the building. The experts note that immediately after the tragedy in the Trade Union House, Yulia Timoshenko arrived in Odessa to assess “the political and economic losses”, and in the night of 3rd to 4th of May, there was a raid on the 7th Kilometer Market, which, according to our sources was organized by [then head of Odessa police] D. Fuchedji. On the day after the raid he was removed from office and replaced by I. Katerinchuk, and later, with the assistance of Yulia Timoshenko, he defected to Transnistria and later into Russia, from where he presented compromising statements about the events of May 2 in Odessa.”

I have uploaded the complete weekly analytical report here – feel free to investigate and provide your own opinions (in Russian)