The work of GRU agents from military unit No. 29155 in Europe was coordinated by Nikolai and Elena Shaposhnikov, a family of Russian emigrants with Czech citizenship. This is stated in the investigation of The Insider.
According to journalists, this unit is involved in a series of explosions in European Union countries. The first of these occurred in 2011at a warehouse in Bulgaria, where ammunition intended for sale to Georgia was delivered.
The military unit was headed by General Andrei Averyanov in 2008. For his sabotage, he assembled a group of 70 people. Among them, in particular, were “Ruslan Boshirov” (Anatoly Chepiga) and Alexander “Petrov” (Mishkin), who are associated with the poisoning of former GRU colonel Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, British in early March 2018.
According to The Insider, Nikolai Shaposhnikov is a former military man who took part in the war in Afghanistan. From 1987 to 1989 he served in Czechoslovakia. When Shaposhnikov returned to the USSR, he was expelled from the CPSU for “repeated theft of gasoline and batteries from the army,” and was soon dismissed from service.
After this, the former military man went to Czechoslovakia and asked for political asylum there. As proof of his dissent, the man presented documents confirming his expulsion from the CPSU. In August 1991, the authorities of the newly formed Czech Republic granted Shaposhnikov refugee status, and soon his wife Elena and two small children joined him.
According to investigators, after several refusals, the family received Czech citizenship — Nikolai in 1999, and Elena five years after her husband. In the early 2000s, Shaposhnikov began collaborating with Peter Bernatik, the general director of Imex. The latter company, among other things, managed the warehouse where the Bulgarian dealer Emelyan Gebrev stored weapons.
According to investigators, the Shaposhnikov family, despite their modest official income of about $650 a month, was actively buying real estate in the Czech Republic and Greece. One of the family's villas — on the Greek peninsula of Chalkidiki — was used by saboteurs as a safe house.
The Shaposhnikovs, according to journalists from The Insider, purchased this house in 2009 for 275 thousand euros. The family has lived there permanently since 2010, occasionally coming to the Czech Republic. According to investigators, frequent guests of the villa were members of military unit No. 29155. For example, General Averyanov could visit Halkidiki in 2013 and 2014. Elena Shaposhnikova actively corresponded with him by email.
Between 2012 and 2018, four members of the GRU unit flew to Thessaloniki, an hour’s drive from the villa, for example, Alexey Kapinos, whom the Shaposhnikovs, according to The Insider, called investigators a “family friend.” According to investigators, Elena and Nikolai conveyed information to General Averyanov about the planned deliveries of weapons, after which they could be disrupted for various reasons.
Another proof of the Shaposhnikov connection with the GRU is the presence of Russian passports from the range of numbers reserved for saboteurs from unit 29155. Elena, according to The Insider, used her document to travel to Russia twice — in December 2015 year and December 2017. Her first trip coincided with the dates of awarding the title of Hero of Russia to GRU employees who participated in the poisoning of Bulgarian businessman Emelyan Gebrev and in explosions at military warehouses in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.
Nikolai Shaposhnikov, as investigators write, recently abused alcohol and died in February of this year.