New from @bellingcat: We figured out that whole Navalny poisoning thing. An FSB team trailed him since 2017 -- including to Tomsk in 2020 -- that included Novichok, chemical weapons experts.

We worked with investigative partners @CNN (https://t.co/OqHbuglzDQ), @the_ins_ru (https://t.co/LIknsacbkH), and @derspiegel on this investigation. More to come!
Let's meet the crew!

Stanislav Makshakov, who coordinated the whole operation. He reports to General Kirill Vasilyev, director of the FSB Criminalistics Institute.
Oleg Tayakin, cover name Oleg “Tarasov”. A senior member of the FSB squad, typically coordinating other officers and operating primarily out of the central office at Akademika Vargi 2a. He worked as a surgeon before joining the FSB’s Criminalistics Institute.
Alexey Alexandrov, cover name “Alexey Frolov”. Graduated medical school in Moscow in 2006, worked as an emergency & military doctor doctor before joining the FSB in 2013. He was present at both 2020 poisonings, one suspected by Navalny + wife in Kaliningrad and the other in Tomsk
Dr. Ivan Osipov, cover name Ivan “Spiridonov”. Medical doctor by training. His social media presence disappeared in 2012, which is likely when he joined FSB.
Konstantin Kudryavtsev, cover name Konstantin “Sokolov”. Served at a chemical warfare military unit in Shikhany. Graduated Russia’s Military Chemical-Biological Defense Academy before joining the FSB’s Criminalistics Institute.
Alexey Krivoschekov, worked at the Ministry of Defense prior to joining the FSB in or around 2008.
Mikhail Shvets, cover name Mikhail “Stepanov”. His registered address is at 116 Trubetskaya St, Balashikha – the address of FSB’s Center for Special Operations. Telephone metadata shows that he splits his time between working at the special operations base and the Vargi 2a lab.
Vladimir Panyaev, served in FSB’s border service, then co-founded a company selling anti-bacterial lamps. Likely coincidentally, lives in the same apartment building as Navalny. After the Tomsk poisoning, his address registration was changed to that of the FSB HQ, Lubyanka 1.
We detailed our methodology in how we found all these people and conducted the investigation here: https://t.co/KYlVYdFiz5

More from Science

1. I find it remarkable that some medics and scientists aren’t raising their voices to make children as safe as possible. The comment about children being less infectious than adults is unsupported by evidence.


2. @c_drosten has talked about this extensively and @dgurdasani1 and @DrZoeHyde have repeatedly pointed out flaws in the studies which have purported to show this. Now for the other assertion: children are very rarely ill with COVID19.

3. Children seem to suffer less with acute illness, but we have no idea of the long-term impact of infection. We do know #LongCovid affects some children. @LongCovidKids now speaks for 1,500 children struggling with a wide range of long-term symptoms.

4. 1,500 children whose parents found a small campaign group. How many more are out there? We don’t know. ONS data suggests there might be many, but the issue hasn’t been studied sufficiently well or long enough for a definitive answer.

5. Some people have talked about #COVID19 being this generation’s Polio. According to US CDC, Polio resulted in inapparent infection in more than 99% of people. Severe disease occurred in a tiny fraction of those infected. Source:
Hard agree. And if this is useful, let me share something that often gets omitted (not by @kakape).

Variants always emerge, & are not good or bad, but expected. The challenge is figuring out which variants are bad, and that can't be done with sequence alone.


You can't just look at a sequence and say, "Aha! A mutation in spike. This must be more transmissible or can evade antibody neutralization." Sure, we can use computational models to try and predict the functional consequence of a given mutation, but models are often wrong.

The virus acquires mutations randomly every time it replicates. Many mutations don't change the virus at all. Others may change it in a way that have no consequences for human transmission or disease. But you can't tell just looking at sequence alone.

In order to determine the functional impact of a mutation, you need to actually do experiments. You can look at some effects in cell culture, but to address questions relating to transmission or disease, you have to use animal models.

The reason people were concerned initially about B.1.1.7 is because of epidemiological evidence showing that it rapidly became dominant in one area. More rapidly that could be explained unless it had some kind of advantage that allowed it to outcompete other circulating variants.

You May Also Like

Still wondering about this 🤔


save as q
“We don’t negotiate salaries” is a negotiation tactic.

Always. No, your company is not an exception.

A tactic I don’t appreciate at all because of how unfairly it penalizes low-leverage, junior employees, and those loyal enough not to question it, but that’s negotiation for you after all. Weaponized information asymmetry.

Listen to Aditya


And by the way, you should never be worried that an offer would be withdrawn if you politely negotiate.

I have seen this happen *extremely* rarely, mostly to women, and anyway is a giant red flag. It suggests you probably didn’t want to work there.

You wish there was no negotiating so it would all be more fair? I feel you, but it’s not happening.

Instead, negotiate hard, use your privilege, and then go and share numbers with your underrepresented and underpaid colleagues. […]