A new investigation by Hristo Grozev, Roman Dobrokhotov, Michael Weiss, Fidelius Schmidt and Nikolai Antoniadis reveals how Russia's new top-secret special operations unit "Center 795" was compromised by an unexpected lapse - the use of automatic translation in communication between agents. The investigation, published in The Insider in collaboration with Der Spiegel, traces how the elite structure created after the start of the war in Ukraine for operations such as sabotage, kidnappings and political assassinations was exposed after the arrest of Russian officer Denis Alimov in Colombia.
“Center 795“, which appeared after the start of Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine and consists of elite units from the GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate) and the FSB (Federal Security Service), was created as a top-secret and completely autonomous organization, whose task is to carry out the most important operations - from military missions in Ukraine to political assassinations and kidnappings abroad. The Insider was able to identify all the key leaders and sponsors of the center, determine its location and indicate its main areas of activity. One of its employees has already been arrested in Colombia on charges of organizing the kidnapping of opponents of the regime. He was caught because he communicated with an agent using Google Translate.
When Denis Alimov walked through the arrivals hall at Bogota's El Dorado International Airport on the morning of February 24, 2026, he looked like a middle-aged Russian tourist trying to escape the harsh Moscow winter - a graying goatee, a light duffel bag, a connecting flight via Istanbul and a reservation at a beach resort in Cartagena.
Within minutes, Colombian immigration authorities were handcuffing him. An Interpol Red Notice, activated upon his arrival at the request of federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, awaited him at the exit. Alimov is accused of orchestrating the attempted assassination of two prominent Chechen dissidents based in Europe, with a bounty of $1.5 million on their heads. It would be paid regardless of whether the victims arrived in Russia dead or simply, as Russian intelligence puts it, "legally deported."
Despite his appearance, 42-year-old Alimov is no ordinary tourist. A decorated veteran of the FSB's elite Alpha unit, he has been a senior operations officer at Center 795 since 2023 - Russia's newest and most secret assassination department, which, according to leaked Russian intelligence documents, was designed to be impossible to detect. Alimov is one of the "star appointees" and for two years has led a global network of agents tasked with organizing the assassinations of the Russian regime's political enemies. But now the agents have failed, and one of them has been arrested. It's time for Alimov to take matters into his own hands.
Equipped with a newly issued non-biometric passport with a fake identity, he chooses a date revered among Russian spies and military personnel - Defender of the Fatherland Day - for his first secret trip abroad. At around 8 p.m., as his comrades cheer an unannounced victory, he checks in for a flight to Istanbul at Vnukovo Airport. In his apartment, his iPhone 16 sits on his desk, vibrating with unanswered greetings.
Less than 24 hours later, Alimov is detained and likely to be handed over to the "main adversary" - as Russian intelligence jargon calls the United States. The FBI has been tracking Alimov for more than a year - in part by reading the Google Translate-assisted message exchange between him and one of the would-be foreign assassins.
► A New Unit Born of Hardship
• The Story of “Center 795“ Begins with Failure
Between 2018 and 2022, the Russian military intelligence agency GRU fell victim to a series of operational blunders linked to Unit 29155 - the secret directorate responsible for the nerve agent attack in the city of Salisbury in the UK, the attempted coup in Montenegro and a series of assassinations and bombings across Europe. Investigators, journalists, and open-source researchers have been able to identify dozens of the unit’s employees by name, photo, and passport number—issued, carelessly and in violation of basic practices, in the same numerical sequence. Its operatives have stolen funds from the service to support their families and lovers and live in luxury. What’s more, they are so seriously compromised that their biometric data is in every customs computer outside of Russia. The unit had become, as one leaked internal assessment put it, “a liability.”
The founding commander of Unit 29155, General Andrei Averyanov, has not been removed. The GRU cannot afford to lose personnel amid the Kremlin's escalating war against Ukraine and the West. In fact, he is being given broader tasks to lead a new Special Tasks Service - the name of the notorious KGB unit responsible for the assassination of Leon Trotsky and Ukrainian nationalist leaders during the Soviet period. But Moscow's calculations had changed. It was decided that Averyanov's unit needed not rehabilitation, but competition.
The new unit was created by order of the Russian General Staff in December 2022 and is designated Military Unit 75127 (a duplicate of the number of a previously defunct unit located near the Chinese border), with the internal designation "Center 795". Unlike Unit 29155, which is embedded in the GRU hierarchy, “Center 795“ was created as a completely separate structure, reporting directly to the Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov. The Center's mandate is broad - not just assassinations, but what Russian military planners call a “full cycle of operations“ - intelligence gathering, surveillance, sabotage and, when necessary, assassinations. All this - within the framework of a single command. “Center 795“ is designed to function as a shadow army. By June 2023, it will be almost fully staffed.
• The camouflage of the “Kalashnikov“
To provide the unit with cover, its architects chose not to place it within the existing bureaucratic structure of the GRU. Instead, it is embedded in the Kalashnikov Concern, the famous Russian arms manufacturer, a private company in which a blocking minority stake is reserved for the state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec. The officers are on the payroll of Kalashnikov. Their base of operations is the Patriot military-industrial complex outside Moscow, where Kalashnikov maintains a two-story administrative building known as TMU-1. The training activities of the new covert operation are disguised as “test firings” – a seemingly legitimate practice related to Kalashnikov’s public arms-making activities.
The ideological architect and chief supporter of the unit, according to two sources familiar with the matter, is Andrei Bokarev. He is a billionaire arms dealer, best known as the controlling owner and president of Transmashholding, one of the largest railway and defense conglomerates in Russia. Less well known is his closer relationship with Kalashnikov.
In 2014, Bokarev and a business partner acquired a 75% controlling stake in the concern, which until then had been owned by Rostec, the Russian state-owned defense and industrial giant. Four years later, faced with the prospect of Western sanctions, Bokarev reportedly gave up Kalashnikov. What happened to his shares after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is not publicly known, but the financial trail suggests that he simply restructured his investments to hide his ownership.
Bokarev's tax returns for 2019-2021 show a continuous stream of income coming from “Kalashnikov“. He is also currently listed on the payroll of a company controlled by Alan Lushnikov, who is the nominal president of “Kalashnikov“ and a self-proclaimed major shareholder. Lushnikov is a frequent guest on Bokarev's private jet, with their last joint flights dating back to late 2025. Bokarev's influence over “Kalashnikov“s strategic direction is therefore almost certainly not diminished.
The funding model for “Center 795“ mirrors one established by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, the catering magnate turned mercenary leader who died in a suspicious plane crash in August 2023. Under state contracts concluded through “Kalashnikov“ and “Transmashholding“, Bokarev funnels some of his income from both into special state projects. While Prigozhin“s wealth has built the private military company “Wagner Group“ and funded the Internet Research Agency (better known as the "troll farm" in St. Petersburg), Bokarev's finances were directed to "Center 795".
The agreement was originally intended for the CEO of "Rostec" Sergey Chemezov. He is one of the most influential figures in the Russian security system and among the most trusted people of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Their closeness dates back to their joint work for the KGB in Dresden in the 1980s - a relationship that has outlived the Soviet Union and survived decades of reshuffles in the Kremlin.
Through “Center 795”, set up in a “Kalashnikov” building, Chemezov has acquired something he has long lacked: his own private army, commanded by a trusted former FSB agent who joined “Kalashnikov” in 2019. The two oligarchs have developed a close relationship. Chemezov is a regular visitor to Bokarev's birthday parties, and their families have traveled together on Bokarev's private jet. This symbiotic arrangement has since become quite complicated.
When “Center 795” was established in late 2022, its mandate was shaped around supporting Russia's military effort in Ukraine through combat intelligence, special operations, and sabotage behind enemy lines. That alone is hardly remarkable. Every major beneficiary of the Russian state is expected to contribute to Putin's "special military operation," and every major concern, from Gazprom to Lukoil to Rusal, is under pressure to assert its own private military capabilities.
Supporting the homeland in times of war is simply the price of doing business. But carrying out political assassinations in Western Europe is something else entirely.
According to a source close to Chemezov, operations of this kind - targeting Kremlin critics on foreign soil - were never part of his understanding of the unit's powers, but by the time the assassination operation that led to Alimov's arrest was underway, the new powers of "Center 795" could not be overturned. For Chemezov, whose carefully cultivated reputation as a relative moderate within the security forces requires distancing himself from the Kremlin’s most extreme measures, exposing the unit’s Western activities presents a particular liability that his enemies or business competitors in Russia are well positioned to exploit.
• Army Start-up
The head of the unit, an informal politburo consisting of the General Staff and two billionaires involved in arms production, has been appointed Denis Fisenko. He is a 52-year-old veteran of the “Alpha” unit, whose biography is a concise history of post-Soviet Russian military power. A three-time recipient of the Order of Courage, Fisenko is also the Russian champion in live-fire marksmanship among special forces units, and the author of the FSB’s special operations training manual. What sets him apart from conventional Spetsnaz commanders, however, is his subsequent corporate career. Between 2019 and 2023, he was deputy general manager of the Kalashnikov concern for special projects, overseeing 1,200 employees and managing, among other portfolios, the ZALA Aero division, which produces drones currently used by Russian forces in Ukraine. He has also flown with Bokarev on his private jet and is certainly a personal acquaintance and confidant of the billionaire. Fisenko is exactly the kind of officer the new unit requires – a trusted man with the operational instincts of an elite commando and the administrative fluidity of a corporate executive.
The latter quality is demonstrated in its full glory in the PowerPoint presentation announcing the unit’s structure to its Kremlin sponsors. Packed with infographics, organizational charts, growth projections, and icons of tanks and drones, it is indistinguishable from a slide show in a Kalashnikov boardroom. It is also unexpectedly informative. Western intelligence officers and investigative journalists, including the authors of this investigation, received it within months of its creation. The presentation offers a glimpse into the entire anatomy and organizational structure of Putin’s new top-secret assassination squad.
“Center 795“ has approximately 500 officers, divided into three directorates - Intelligence, Assault, and Combat Support. The Combat Support Directorate includes an arms department, an air defense unit, and an anti-tank division, reflecting the unit’s design as a stand-alone military force with equipment that includes T-90A main battle tanks and Smerch multiple launch rocket systems. Since its inception, the unit has also been designed to conduct cyber operations, electronic intelligence, and information operations – in theory, a full suite of modern hybrid military capabilities, united under a single command umbrella.
The organizational chart of “Center 795“, which can be seen in a January 2023 staffing spreadsheet obtained by The Insider, reveals a “full cycle“ of activities designed to circumvent the bureaucratic and security vulnerabilities that have previously compromised other GRU operations. By appointing high-ranking veterans of the elite “Alpha“ and “Vympel“ of FSB operatives such as Denis Fisenko and Nikolai Zryachev, who possess “proven experience”, the Kremlin created a hybrid structure capable of seamlessly transitioning from covert intelligence (12th Department) to heavy kinetic strikes (1st to 6th Department).
The inclusion of internal artillery divisions and armored units equipped with “Smerch” multiple launch rocket systems, D-30 howitzers, and T-90A tanks shows that the unit was not intended only for minor sabotage, but was prepared for high-intensity, independent military engagements without the need for external support. Leaked correspondence between members of the Center confirms this task: in the early months and years of the full-scale war in Ukraine, the Center sought to obtain intelligence on the location of Ukrainian elite troops and foreign instructors, as well as the concentration of dangerous HIMARS rocket launchers, with the aim of targeting them with missiles or drones.
Furthermore, the organizational structure and selection of personnel indicate that the unit’s goals were clearly related to transnational repression and targeted neutralization, carried out under the guise of corporate denial. The assignment of specialists in radio intelligence (13th Department) and unmanned reconnaissance (14th and 15th Departments) together with specialized sniper teams (19th Department) allows the unit to detect, track, and eliminate targets of interest. By embedding these capabilities within the Kalashnikov concern, the unit effectively uses civilian manufacturing infrastructure to conceal its training and logistics, turning the Patriot park headquarters into a secure, isolated hub for both the war in Ukraine and assassinations around the world.
Not everyone in the Russian intelligence community is impressed, however. A GRU source told The Insider: “You can’t cram all the specialties of the GRU and the FSB into one 500-person structure. It doesn’t work that way. There are reasons why the General Staff Directorate employs thousands of people. Without scale, you can’t maintain true specialization, you can’t handle truly complex tasks. Fisenko may be an excellent manager and a superb marksman, but he has no experience leading special operations in hostile countries.
Neither Fisenko nor Bokarev responded to a request for comment for this investigation.
“Center 795“ has approximately 500 officers, divided into three directorates. The organizational chart, confirmed by staffing tables and a separate internal organizational chart obtained by The Insider, describes a fully autonomous combined arms formation capable, in theory, of conducting independent military and intelligence operations without external support.
The Intelligence Directorate, the largest in the unit, oversees nine departments covering the full spectrum of modern surveillance. Its 11th department deals with open-source intelligence — social media monitoring, commercial satellite imagery, public databases. The 12th department, the most sensitive, manages human agents abroad; it is composed almost entirely of veterans of Unit 29155, the GRU assassination directorate whose operatives poisoned Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. The 13th Department deals with signals interception, operating a full range of electronic intelligence equipment, including satellite interception stations. Departments 14 and 15 conduct optical reconnaissance at the operational and tactical levels, respectively, using Orlan and Eleron drones as mechanisms for receiving visual intelligence. Three parallel ground surveillance teams - Departments 16, 17 and 18 - provide physical confirmation before the strike, operating with identical equipment so that each can cover any target without the others knowing. Division 19, the Sniper Division, is located within the Intelligence Directorate rather than the Assault Directorate, a structural choice that suggests its primary role is not battlefield fire support but targeted killings.
The “Sturm“ Directorate consists of 4 combat application departments, each containing 4 autonomous strike groups. The architecture is designed around a single principle: no group knows what the others are doing. A compromised cell cannot carry out a parallel mission. The inclusion of FSO (Federal Security Service) presidential guards - specialists in close protection and parachute drops - as well as Spetsnaz graduates in a third of these departments shows that the unit has air infiltration ambitions that go beyond anything Unit 29155 has ever had. At the same time, some of the independent cells employ former members of Unit 29155 in command positions.
The “Combat Support“ Directorate is where the unit's conventional ambitions become visible. Its five departments - armored, artillery, medical, demining and air defense - are complemented by five specialized sections covering anti-tank operations, maintenance, reinforcement and logistics. The inventory includes T-90A main battle tanks and 300mm Smerch rocket systems. The medical department is headed by another former employee of unit 29155, a military doctor who studied at the Kirov Academy in St. Petersburg with Alexander Mishkin, of Salisbury fame, and specialized in diving traumatology.
The selection process is rigorous, with approximately a third of candidates rejected because they "have not proven themselves in a unique way". For the select few who make it through the selection process, the pay is unmatched in the Russian military: each earns about $7,800 a month at the level of department head, while Fisenko's income is closer to $40,000 a month, or half a million dollars a year, based on leaked tax documents.
At the same time, “Center 795“ is granted the authority to recruit officers from various other branches of the army, the GRU, the FSB, the Rosgvardiya (the Russian National Guard), and even the FSO, the Kremlin's elite security forces - not necessarily with the consent of the respective agency. “Center 795“ thus enjoys a relatively higher status in the internal hierarchy of the Russian special services.
This civilian approach to the recruitment process is not accidental. This is the mechanism by which the highest-ranking figures in the unit enter it without leaving a military footprint. Drozdov, the chief of staff, and Radkevich, the intelligence chief, both passed through “Kalashnikov“ on their way, but were never connected to the Russian military or security services. Both are veterans of the “Alpha“ unit of the Belarusian KGB - probably a deliberate recruitment by allied intelligence services, whose employees have no Russian institutional history and are not subject to vetting by foreign counterintelligence or investigators.
► “Center 795“: A Look Inside
The staff of “Center 795“ is composed primarily of officers from the FSB Special Operations Center (not to be confused with the similar Averyanov organization), rather than officers with career experience in the Ministry of Defense. The majority of them were from the FSB's "Alpha" team, but the recruitment network is wider. Among the senior figures in the unit are veterans of an even more obscure background: the "Alpha" unit of the Belarusian KGB. Fisenko's deputy, Dmitry Drozdov, served in Belarusian intelligence under the pseudonym "Dmitry Zaplavnev", while the head of the intelligence directorate, Sergei Radkevich, operated there as "Sergey Bashkhimdzhiev". Both ended their careers in Belarus around 2017 and moved through corporate roles at "Kalashnikov" before arriving at Center 795.
According to the personnel table, Fisenko’s senior deputy is Lieutenant General Alexei Ilyushin. His CV, attached to the PowerPoint presentation, is that of a multifaceted personality: he speaks four languages (including Danish and Norwegian), writes textbooks for Russian military academies, is the author of a dictionary of military terminology, developed a program for recruiting future GRU personnel in Russian universities, and conducted numerous “intelligence and information gathering missions” while working in Russian embassies. His career abroad ended when the DGSE, France’s foreign intelligence service, caught him overstepping the bounds of intelligence gathering under diplomatic cover. In 2014, while based in Paris, he tried to bribe a person close to then-President François Hollande to obtain compromising personal information about him. Ilyushin was immediately declared persona non grata. Between this infamous escape from international espionage and his appointment to “Center 795“, he somehow positioned himself as an expert in nanotechnology and claimed to have led projects to develop “new lithium-ion-based energy storage systems“, as well as “terahertz radiation sources for detecting and neutralizing explosive devices“.
The connecting force between the FSB-dominated unit and the GRU's institutional networks is the 12th Department - the operational intelligence department, headed by Anatoly Kovalev, a GRU officer whose travels and communications indicate previous service for Unit 29155. Under Kovalev are Andrey Isaenko, Evgeny Mamedov and Denis Belov, all based at the GRU headquarters on Khoroshevsky Road.
Denis Alimov, who is now in a Colombian prison cell, coordinated its work within the 12th department. However, as his leaked communications show, he had something of a special agent status, reporting directly to Nikolai Zryachev, a veritable Forrest Gump of Russian intelligence who served in the GRU airborne division before being recruited by the FSB’s “Alpha” and subsequently by the “Kalashnikov” concern. Since 2023, Zryachev has been given a new, hybrid role as deputy commander of “Center 795”.
► From Balashikha to Bogota
In the early 21st century, Alimov served in the OMON – the Russian riot police – in the southwestern Russian city of Stavropol before transferring to the “Alpha” unit of the FSB at the Special Tasks Center in Balashikha, a suburb on the eastern outskirts of Moscow, around 2008. This is the same facility where Vadim Krasikov, the assassin who killed Chechen dissident Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin’s Tiergarten park in 2019 and was later returned to Russia from Germany as part of a U.S.-brokered prisoner exchange, received his training.
Within the “Alpha” unit, Alimov worked under the direction of Deputy Chief Yuri Vasilievich Polishchuk, focusing on internal tasks in close cooperation with the FSB’s Second Service, which specializes in counterintelligence. He also maintained close contacts in the “Anti-Terrorism” directorate, including with officers working in the North Caucasus region. Leaked Telegram communications reviewed by The Insider clearly place Alimov in the Alpha circle: he regularly celebrated the unit's unofficial annual day, a tradition shared among active members and veterans. He also maintained direct personal relations with Ramzan Kadyrov, the warlord and president of Chechnya.
In 2023, after his transfer to "Center 795," Alimov was initially tasked with relatively routine internal operations - helping Kadyrov find the nephew of a dissident who had disappeared in Moscow and using his former contacts with the FSB to help secure the release of cargo shipments passing between Russia and Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. He filled his otherwise ordinary workdays with obsessive exercise and steroid use. Open-source data shows that his phone number was involved in several Telegram group chats focused on muscle building via anabolic steroids, which was not without its obvious drawbacks. Among the questions Alimov posted on the channel was: “How to continue muscle growth while getting rid of side effects like man boobs?“.
By 2024, the scope of his non-fitness pursuits had expanded significantly. Alimov was building a recruitment network for operations in Ukraine and simultaneously seeking proxy agents abroad. A key source of candidates was his own catalog of Chechens he had personally imprisoned for alleged involvement in armed groups in the Caucasus. Many of them had suspended or suspended sentences, making them, according to Russian intelligence, ideal candidates for placement abroad, their ideological history providing plausible cover as political refugees. Leaked correspondence suggests that at least some of these initiatives were successful: one former fighter with ties to the anti-Kadyrov Chechen diaspora in Europe, Shamsudin A. (The Insider is not revealing his last name, as we cannot be sure he was aware of the objectives of the mission he was tasked with), obtained a passport and left Russia, initially for Istanbul. His trail is lost after that.
By the end of 2024, Alimov's focus had shifted decisively to dissidents perceived as enemies of the Russian state. Based on his history of persecuting Chechen separatists, most of his designated targets were members of the Chechen diaspora in Europe who sought independence from Russia and were critical of Kadyrov. A central focus became the Zakayev family, whose head of the family, Akhmed Zakayev, is the acting prime minister-in-exile of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and a prominent enemy of Kadyrov.
► The Asset, the Reward, and the Remittances
To execute the operation on Western soil, Alimov needed a local operative, someone with mobility in Europe and no obvious ties to Russian intelligence. He found one in Darko Durovic, a Serbo-Croatian speaker living in the United States (his exact origins remain hidden in court documents). The indictment suggests that both primary targets hailed from a “republic” within Russia, a term that refers to several regions, including Chechnya. Federal prosecutors allege that Alimov recruited Durovic as his primary field asset for the operation.
The financial terms were clear. During a meeting in Moscow in October 2024 – held with considerable symbolic audacity in a restaurant within walking distance of the FSB’s Lubyanka headquarters – Alimov handed Durovic a $60,000 advance payment and promised another $1.5 million for each target successfully “deported to Russia.” Dudovich was told that if the operation was successful and other targets were identified, a third wanted person, dead or alive, could carry a reward exceeding $10 million.
► The Fatal Language Mistake
“Center 795“ was created at considerable institutional expense to be “isolated” – sealed against the kind of electronic intrusion that had compromised previous Russian intelligence operations. Its commanders took precautions: encrypted messaging apps, pseudonymous identities, separated communications. What they failed to take into account was the language incompatibility of their own operatives.
Alimov spoke Russian. Durovich spoke Serbian. Neither spoke the other's native language to a level sufficient for operational communication. Their solution was simple and, as it turned out, disastrous: They used Google Translate, converting Durovic’s Serbian field reports into Russian for his supervisor, and Alimov’s Russian instructions back into Serbian for the agent.
The messages themselves were transmitted via encrypted applications that the men thought were secure. But Google operated through servers in the United States, which were fully within the scope of an FBI surveillance warrant. Armed with a court order, investigators were able to access the log files of these translations directly from the service provider, reading the contents of the entire operational communication stream in plain text in real time, even when Alimov and Durovich believed they were protected by end-to-end encryption.
The surveillance footage, parts of which are cited in a new, declassified indictment from a U.S. grand jury, sometimes resembles an absurd document: two operatives from Russia’s top-secret assassination unit plotting a contract killing using a consumer translation tool, their every instruction and status report preserved in clear, time-stamped records on the servers of an American company. As a source close to the investigation later noted, it was even better than wiretapping, because it arrived transcribed.
For example, on November 28, 2024, regarding one of their “projects”, Durović sent a message to Alimov stating: “I can't confirm the location in New York right now because I'm in Montenegro. I'll be back in New York around December 20th and I'll try to find him in New York... [He] tries to give the impression that he's always in the EU to cover his tracks, but in reality he's in the US most of the time. This is the information I've received from my contacts”.
Earlier that month, Durović even used search engines, presumably to research what to look for as a murder weapon – “Glock 17“, “Glock 21“, “Glock 22“ – and where in Podgorica, Montenegro to get a “Glock 22“.
Another, separate “project“, Durovic wrote to Alimov on December 19, concerns a victim who spends his time in “a white villa, near the sea... surrounded by a white fence/wall, and on the gate there is some Islamic sign“. The problem was finding which villa it was, as there were several matching that description. “I believe we will find him soon, he can't move all the time. He will relax and fall into the trap at some point“.
Durovic also sought help from an unnamed accomplice based in the United States. On Christmas Eve 2024, he sent him a message: “I have people who would pay a lot of money to have this guy and others like him arrested and handed over to them. Right now, I have 3 or more people wanted for arrest... For each person, we get 1.5 million US dollars. We need an associate who won't ask for much, but will provide us with this information, and once I confirm the location (I'll check it myself), we'll get the money.“ The potential subcontractor asked Alimov to repay an advance to finance a “hunting team“.
To his accomplice, Durovich praised Alimov: “He has very good connections... one of the closest people to an important government official“. He was most likely referring to Alimov's closeness to Kadyrov, evidenced by the orders he carried out for the strongman's clan.
According to the US indictment against him, Alimov provided Durovich with a package of technical intelligence information, including IP addresses and European phone numbers previously used by one of these targets.
The use of Google Translate is not Durovich's only operational failure. He made two trips to Russia in July and October 2024, trying to disguise his destination by booking fake holidays in Turkey while heading to Moscow on connecting flights under his real name. Each time he returned to the United States, he was questioned by FBI special agents who had access to airline records. He categorically denied having visited Russia. The lies were transparent and aggravated the charges against him. However, the FBI decided to wait – continuing to monitor him and read his virtual diary in Google Translate – before finally arresting him in March 2025.
► The Revelation
Alimov's arrest at El Dorado Airport on February 24, 2026, appears to be the result of intertwining investigative threads. The FBI's indictment refers to a European law enforcement partner that cooperated in the investigation at the same time as Colombian authorities. A clue to how this cooperation began may lie in Alimov's phone contacts, which include Dejan Berić and Davor Savićić, Serbian recruiters of mercenaries for the Russian army in Ukraine who have long been on the radar of Western intelligence agencies. Alimov may have met Durovic, who has dual Serbian-Montenegrin citizenship, through these recruiters, and Durovic himself was the subject of a pre-existing surveillance operation. What remains less clear is why, a full year after Durovic’s arrest, Alimov felt it was safe to travel abroad.
The files reviewed by investigators show that he attempted to purchase a prepaid phone in Russia just a day before his departure, as if a last-minute purchase of a disposable phone could undo the months of exposure that had already accrued. He traveled on what appeared to be a vacation itinerary, with a reservation in Cartagena – a cover consistent with the operational activities of the officer corps of “Center 795”. That was not enough. Colombian immigration officials, acting in coordination with Interpol, detained him upon his arrival from Istanbul.
In addition to the charges of conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping, Alimov is charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization and conspiracy to finance terrorism. Each of the main charges carries a potential sentence of life in prison. He remains in Colombian custody pending extradition proceedings.
► Consequences
The exposure of “Center 795” will certainly create lasting problems for Russian intelligence services, and they cannot be managed through reassignment or denial. The unit’s organizational architecture – its embedding in “Kalashnikov”, its reliance on “Rostec” infrastructure, its use of the “Patriot” fleet as an operational base – has already been fully documented in Western court documents and the work of open-source investigators. Fisenko and the other commanders of Center 795 have not been publicly identified. Their names, corporate history and operational roles – documented by The Insider through leaked materials, corporate registry entries, military records and intercepted communications – will make it significantly more difficult for them to continue operating in the same mode. The entire unit has been compromised by the careless actions of a single operative.
For Chemezov, exposure carries its own risks. After years of cultivating the image of a pragmatic technocrat skeptical of the invasion of Ukraine (and of the backroom lobbying efforts aimed at removing him and his family from the U.S. government’s sanctions list), his name is now associated with an operation targeting dissidents in Western Europe—the very kind of activity he claims he never sponsored. Chemezov’s enemies in the Russian establishment understood this vulnerability. But did the leak that enabled this investigation occur in the atmosphere of institutional jealousy that surrounded “Center 795“ from its inception - from Averyanov's camp or from somewhere else in the security service, where the unit's ambitions have generated as much resentment as admiration - is a matter of speculation.
In the years since Unit 29155 was exposed, Russia has tried at least twice to build an infrastructure for subsequent assassinations capable of operating below the threshold of visibility for Western intelligence. Each attempt has failed because of a different version of the same problem: not because of the sophistication of its adversaries, but because of the convenience of its own operatives. Unit 29155 was compromised because its employees did not deal with the basics: real passports, real names, hotel records that matched airline records. "Center 795" was supposed to be different. It had the corporate camouflage, the division into units, the newly invented false identities. What he failed to overcome were the difficulties in communication due to the language barrier and the fact that the easiest way to solve these difficulties was through servers in California.
The failure to arrest Alimov during his first trip is not the first - and certainly not the last - failure of an endeavor that betrays the inability of Russia's most secret military unit to remain isolated. A few months ago, the existence of this unit became public knowledge in Russia itself, thanks to a lawsuit filed by a former member of the Center against Fisenko for his illegal dismissal. The court sided with the operative and ordered his reinstatement, along with "compensation for moral damages". Although the lawsuit filed against "Center 795" at the Odintsovo Military Court (where the unit is located) was quickly erased from the judicial system, it remains available on various Russian aggregators that automatically collect new case records.
As Alimov awaits his extradition from Bogota, the apparatus he helped build - the tanks, the drones, the sniper teams, the carefully constructed cover for the "Kalashnikov" - has been exposed. The irony of the failure of "Center 795" is not lost on those who have followed it: a unit designed to be the Kremlin's most untraceable tool of coercion was exposed not through years of patient counterintelligence, not through a defector or a transferred activist, but because two men needed to talk to each other and they didn't know each other's languages. Russia will build another unit. It will be more careful about the translation tools it uses. But whether it will be more careful about the people it recruits is another matter entirely.