Bellingcat has been able to confirm the actual identity of one of the two officers. Following Bellingcat’s own identification, multiple sources familiar with the person and/or the investigation have confirmed the suspect’s identity. When UK police identified Boshirov and Petrov, Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted the pair were innocent civilians. As it is established practice that the awards Hero of the Russian Federation are handed out by the Russian president personally, it is highly likely that Vladimir Putin would have been familiar with the identity of Colonel Chepiga, given that only a handful of officers receive this award each year. Boshirov - or Colonel Chepiga - said he and Mr Petrov were in the sports nutrition business, but were travelling for pleasure. The 39-year-old trained at one of Russia's elite academies and served with a special forces unit under the command of the GRU - Russia's military intelligence service. The specific operations he was involved in are not known; however, a website of a far-eastern branch of a state-run military volunteer organization reports that he received over 20 military awards in the course of his service. Most of the awards are handed out in public ceremonies – and accompanied by a presidential decree, such as the award in 2016 to Russian officers fighting in Syria. He has served in Chechnya and Ukraine and was made a "Hero of the Russian Federation" in 2014. The only region in which Russia was conducting active military operations in secrecy at the time was in Eastern Ukraine, which is the most likely theatre of his mission, as suggested by the secrecy of his award. On its work on the Skripal poisoning, Bellingcat says investigators searched images on several online search engines, contacted former Russian military officers, browsed photos of a military academy yearbook, searched specific terms online, and scoured leaked Russian databases. Bellingcat accepted the working assumption that this person was indeed Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, described in the publication as “Hero of the Russian Federation”. The birth year (1979) of the candidate from the database was one year later than the birth year in “Boshirov”s cover documents, however it corresponded to a graduation year from the military academy in 2001. The passport file contained a photograph – dated approximately in 2003, when this passport was obtained – that strongly resembled a younger “Boshirov” as seen in passport photos released by the UK police, with an even stronger resemblance to the cover identity passport photo published in our previous publication on the Skripal suspects. These demonstrated falsehoods overshadow this man’s – and the Russian government’s – other denials in this respect, and corroborate the UK authorities’ allegations that this individual was a) complicit in the Skripal poisoning and b) acted on orders from a high-level government authority in Russia.
– As the UK has alleged, Ruslan Boshirov is not who he says he is, at least according to an online investigative group. The Guardian reports Bellingcat and investigative partner the Insider say they have identified one of the men accused of poisoning the Skripals with novichok as a colonel with Russia's military intelligence service, the GRU. That man is Col. Anatoliy Chepiga, who fought in the war in Chechnya and in 2014 received the state's highest award: Hero of the Russian Federation. The BBC notes the award is generally given by Vladimir Putin, who has previously stated that Boshirov and companion Alexander Petrov are merely civilians; the men have said they traveled to Salisbury as tourists to see a well known cathedral there. Bellingcat suspects the mission that spurred that honor was a secret one; while most recipients' heroics are described in detail, Chepiga simply received his award "by decree from the Russian president." As for how the alleged identification came to be, Bellingcat explains a source suggested it look at whether the men could have attended the Far Eastern Military Command Academy, which had "the best reputation for foreign-language training and overseas clandestine operations." It came upon a photo that it thought could be Boshirov and continued its web searching, which ultimately led it to Chepiga's name and passport file. A 2003 photo in the file "strongly resembled a younger 'Boshirov.'" The BBC had this to say: "British officials have not commented. The BBC understands there is no dispute over the identification."