Buried in the BBC writeup of the Russian-sponsored arson attack on Keir Starmer's home is the following nugget. The attackers' handler, Evgeny Lyukshin, the son of a Russian diplomat, studied at Moscow State University's diplomatic academy, which has a Rybar-run media school. Ryber is a sanctioned organization which seeks "to sow discord, promote social division, stoke partisan and racial discord, and encourage hate and violence," according to the U.S. government.
Tutors at the media school's program on "information warfare" include SVR illegal Colonel Andrey Berzukov, or "Donald Heathfield," as he was known in Cambridge, Massachusetts, before the FBI arrested him as part of Operation Ghost Stories.
Another tutor is Sergey Nalobin, formerly the first secretary in the political section of the Russian Embassy in the UK, but so much more than that, too. Nalobin's father's was a general in the KGB who then went on to serve as Alexander Litvinenko's boss in the economic crimes division of the FSB. Nalobin's brother was also FSB. So, well... yeah.
When he was stationed in London, Nalobin (seen at right with Boris Johnson) helped found a pro-Russian front group called Conservative Friends of Russia, to which
@lukeharding1968 and I devoted some attention fifteen years ago. Sir Malcolm Rifkind was the honorary president at one point before he cottoned onto what he'd signed up for and quit.
Nalobin's diplomatic credentials expired and he was subsequently posted to Tallinn. (My informed guess is the Estonians let him in to keep an eye on him.)
Looks like Sergey's time in the West wasn't wasted, however.
He's now helping to instruct a bright young generation of Russian operatives how to foment race war and remotely recruit gig saboteurs from an elite institution of higher learning in Moscow. A whole gaggle of Tories can say they knew him when...
bbc.com/news/articles/c8r2l3ā¦