First published in Russian and Norwegian.

Two Russians with experience in the GRU special forces and Wagner group were aboard the tanker Qendil, which was delivering Russian oil to India. In December 2025, Ukraine struck this ship in the Mediterranean Sea. The “security guards” (as they are listed in the crew manifest) may have been engaged in espionage in European waters.

“This will not lead to the expected result, will not disrupt any supplies in the end, but will only create additional threats. Our response will definitely follow,“ Vladimir Putin said during a press conference on December 19, 2025. Shortly before the event, Ukraine attacked a ship of the Russian ”shadow fleet” in neutral waters of the Mediterranean Sea for the first time. Drones struck the tanker Qendil.

Ukraine has been systematically striking Russian facilities involved in energy exports. Until recently, the targets were oil refineries, but at the end of November 2025, explosions occurred on two tankers of the “shadow fleet” in the Black Sea. Since November, tankers in the Black Sea have been repeatedly fired upon. Qendil was the first ship to be hit in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Dossier gained access to the crew lists and discovered that the Qendil’s crew included Russians with a military background. On the penultimate voyage, there were not only crew members from China, the Philippines, Myanmar, Indonesia, and Bangladesh, but also two Russians. They boarded the ship before it left the port of Ust-Luga on September 6. Their names are Alexander Malakhov and Viktor Alexandrov. Opposite their names in the ship’s documents is the note SECURITY.

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The ship has repeatedly delivered oil to the Indian port of Sikka. To do this, it must pass through the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aden, where ships can be threatened by Somali pirates and Yemeni Houthis, so the presence of security on board could be quite logical. However, on previous voyages along the same route, the ship was not accompanied by armed personnel. They were not on board on December 19, when the Qendil was attacked by Ukraine. This may mean that Malakhov and Alexandrov’s mission was not related to protecting the tanker.

Malakhov and Aleksandrov are not sailors. They are the only ones on the crew list who do not have a diploma number or the qualifications required to serve on the ship. However, the documents contain their dates of birth and passport numbers, which allowed the Dossier to reconstruct some details of the men’s biographies using various leaks of personal data.

Malakhov was born in 1975 in the city of Serafimovich in the Volgograd region. He lived in the Rostov region for a long time, where he served in the 22nd Separate Guards Special Purpose Brigade, which is subordinate to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU). Since at least 2013, he worked for the company that operates the Rostov-on-Don airport. In 2018, Malakhov was an inspector at the aviation security center. At the end of 2023, he resigned, and in February 2024, according to data on his movements, he flew in from Syria. It is unknown what Malakhov was doing in a country popular with Russian mercenaries. If he had served in the armed forces, the Federal Tax Service databases would have contained relevant records of payments, but no such records were found. One theory is that he served in a private military company.

Another tanker guard, Viktor Aleksandrov, was associated with mercenary structures. He was born in Crimea in 1965 and lived in Yekaterinburg for a long time. In the early 2000s, he was convicted of robbery. He was an active client of microfinance organizations, and in the mid-2010s, he ended up in the bailiffs’ database due to loan debts. He worked as a security guard for a short time and then joined the Wagner Group. He had been in Syria since at least 2017, and according to the state border crossing database, in 2020 he traveled to his place of service on a Ministry of Defense Il-76 transport plane with the registration number RF-76731. Russia uses this aircraft to transport military personnel, equipment, and ammunition.

Documents from the Wagner PMC state that Alexandrov was a member of the sixth assault squad, was a BMP mechanic-driver, and used the call sign “Katso.” In February 2019, he was dismissed: on February 26 and 27, he consumed alcoholic beverages with his colleagues, then left the unit’s location in a service vehicle, drove to Palmyra, and then returned. On the way back, still intoxicated, the Wagnerites disarmed pro-government Syrian soldiers at a checkpoint and demanded that a Syrian general (whose name is not mentioned in the materials) be summoned to them. For this offense, Alexandrov was blacklisted, but apparently did not remain there for long: in 2020, he was again listed as a member of the Wagner Group.

Since 2015, Aleksandrov has been actively traveling to Ukraine. In total, he has crossed the border of this country more than 200 times, including after the start of the war, and, judging by the entry points, visited the occupied territories. Aleksandrov and Malakhov did not respond to questions from Dossier. Professor Kari Aga Myklebost of the Arctic University of Norway said in an interview with NRK that Russia uses a “shadow fleet” for reconnaissance, and that the route passing Yemen and Somalia provides a convenient excuse to deny the fact of espionage.

The special services of Ukraine and Western countries have already reported on mercenaries who were on board the tankers of the “shadow fleet.” CNN, citing sources in intelligence agencies, wrote that the crews of several ships were reinforced with employees of Moran Security, a company linked to the Russian military. The mercenaries may be engaged in espionage in European waters and launching drones over military facilities, as well as monitoring the crews of ships, which mainly consist of non-Russian citizens.

Alleged mercenaries from Moran Security with Russian citizenship (there were no other Russians there) were part of the crew of the tanker Boracay in the summer and fall of 2025, CNN reported. The ship was off the coast of Denmark at the time when drone flights forced authorities to close Copenhagen Airport. The ship was subsequently detained by the French navy, and the captain was charged with refusing to follow instructions. The Dossier obtained the Boracay crew lists and confirmed CNN’s information: there were indeed Russian citizens on board. One of them, Alexander Tishchenko, flew to Syria; another, Stanislav Babichev, served in military unit 71628 (part of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Ministry of Defense) and then served in the Russian Guard.

The original piece was published on the Dossier Center website on December 11, 2025.

The Dossier Center has discovered one of the most secretive structures in the Russian army — the Special Strategic Communications Service, or Service K. Officers from this unit are responsible for the “nuclear briefcases” and accompany the president, defense minister, and chief of the General Staff everywhere they go so that, if necessary, they can contact the troops and transmit orders to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Dossier reveals who is in this group of military personnel, what experience they have, and how much they are paid for one of the most responsible jobs in the world.

“You can see that <...> senior officials from leading NATO countries are making aggressive statements about our country. Therefore, I order the Minister of Defense and the Chief of the General Staff to put the Russian army’s deterrent forces on special combat duty,” Vladimir Putin ordered on February 27, 2022, a few days after the start of the war in Ukraine.

Since then, the command posts of the Strategic Missile Forces, the Northern and Pacific Fleets, and the Long-Range Aviation Command have been operating in an enhanced configuration, and there has been no announcement of the cancellation of the presidential decision. On the contrary, Russia has amended its doctrine to allow for the use of nuclear weapons in very vague circumstances — in response to a “critical threat to sovereignty” — and is testing missiles that can carry nuclear warheads and threatening to use them. At least once since the invasion began, there was a possibility that Moscow would use tactical weapons of mass destruction — against the backdrop of the Russian army’s retreat in the Kherson region, said former CIA Director William Burns.

It takes only minutes from the order to start a nuclear war to the launch of missiles. A small, secretive group of officers who are with the head of state around the clock play a key role in this process. They are the ones who must connect Putin with the troops and convey his order to strike. They are colonels and captains first rank of the Service K.

This article is a continuation of a series of publications about the people who are close to Vladimir Putin on a daily basis and are involved in governing the country in one way or another. The Dossier Center has already written about the employees of the Presidential Security Service, who accompany the Russian leader everywhere and are responsible for both his protection and his daily life, and about his aides, many of whom eventually receive government posts.

Among Putin’s entourage, one can also notice officers carrying special suitcases. Dossier studied photos showing the head of state with these people and identified the military personnel using facial recognition technology. The names of their colleagues, as well as details of their biographies, financial situation, and travel routes, were discovered by examining public data and various leaks. In addition, Dossier obtained several internal documents from the Service K from a source close to this unit and confirmed their authenticity by comparing the information with data from open sources and checking the metadata of the files.

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The Doomsday Suitcase

In 1941, the headquarters of the Western Front was located in Vlasikha, near Moscow, from where Georgy Zhukov commanded the defense of Moscow. In 1958–1964, the headquarters of the newly formed Strategic Missile Forces appeared at this location, with a four-tier bunker — an entire underground city.

In 1986–1987, a new 12-story bunker was built two kilometers away. Information is sent here from all Strategic Missile Forces units, from mobile ones (such as Topol-M and Yars) to stationary silo-based ones, which include the latest development, the Sarmat complex. The missiles themselves are not launched from here; this is done by unit commanders. But they receive their orders from the Central Command Post, which is responsible for a significant part of Russia’s nuclear triad — 1,254 warheads out of 4,309 in service or in reserve, according to expert estimates.

The CCP is designed to operate in post-apocalyptic conditions: autonomous power supply, ventilation system, rooms designed to withstand direct bomb hits, doors between compartments weighing several hundred kilograms to protect against blast waves, food supplies, and equipped units where officers live in peacetime: the shift starts on Tuesday and only comes up to the surface on Friday.

Officers are selected from among the military personnel of the Central Command Post for what is probably the most secret structure — at least within the Strategic Missile Forces. It is so secret that even its name has only appeared twice in open sources: in a presidential decree on dismissal and in a list of General Staff employees published by Ukrainian hackers. Neither document provided any details.

This unit is the Special Service for Strategic Communications of the President of the Russian Federation (SSSC), or military unit 26299, abbreviated as Service K. The military unit is registered in Moscow at 19 Znamenskaya Street. It can be assumed that the letter “K” stands for “Kazbek,” an automated system for controlling strategic nuclear forces. The most famous part of this system is the “Cheget” terminal, also known as the “nuclear briefcase.”

Development of the Kazbek began in the USSR in the 1970s, when the US deployed missiles in Europe. “The goal was to link together our entire vast nuclear missile arsenal and centralize its control. And there was an important reason for that. At that time, the Americans were deploying their missiles (Pershing) in Europe. Their flight time to the USSR was reduced from 14 to 5 minutes,” explained Valentin Golubkov, one of the system’s creators.

It was assumed that in the event of a conflict, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union might not have time to reach the command post to give the order to launch a retaliatory strike, so Kazbek had to provide the head of state with encrypted communication with the nuclear forces: in such a case, the order to launch missiles could be given from anywhere in the world.

If the country is attacked, satellites and other systems that detect ballistic missile launches and explosions on Russian territory transmit a “missile attack” signal. This activates Kazbek and enables the control system to be switched from standby to combat mode. (Probably, the “missile attack” signal is not so necessary if the nuclear forces are already in combat mode. And, apparently, this is exactly what Vladimir Putin did when he announced a special duty mode at the beginning of the war in Ukraine.) The president then uses the Cheget terminal to contact the defense minister and the chief of the General Staff, each of whom has their own “nuclear briefcase,” as well as the National Defense Control Center, and gives a preliminary command, which results in the commutation of all links in the nuclear forces. Only after this can an order be given to launch a nuclear strike. The sanction is given first and foremost by the president, but confirmation must come from the other two terminals. The order is then transmitted down the chain of command to the combat crews.

The Cheget missiles only went on duty under Yuri Andropov in June 1984.

“A briefcase was brought to Brezhnev in the Kremlin, I think in 1982. They came to the reception room. They said, ‘He’s busy, wait a moment.’ And someone suggested, ‘Let’s check how the system works right here in the reception room.’ They turned on the briefcase, but it didn’t work! They frantically moved it to the windowsill, and it started working a little. Everyone turned pale... But then the attendant announced, ‘Sorry, the general secretary won’t be seeing anyone today. You are free to go.’ We were lucky. It turned out that the entire Kremlin was surrounded by a continuous screen. It was powerful protection against eavesdropping. You have to select the radio frequency and tune in,” recalled Valentin Golubkov.

According to the developers’ plan, senior officials should not be left alone with the Cheget. The terminal is operated by officers from Service K, who also carry it and are ready to defend it with weapons if necessary: for this purpose, they are issued with a PSM pistol and eight rounds of ammunition. There are always at least two officers, each with a briefcase: one main and one spare in case of malfunction. At official events, they wear Navy uniforms, but contrary to popular belief, this does not mean that the servicemen themselves are from the Navy. This tradition was established on the initiative of the wife of the first president of the USSR, Raisa Gorbacheva, who saw that the American leader’s briefcase was carried by officers in naval uniforms.

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In reality, sailors are in the minority in the Service K. Dossier found 53 people who have been associated with this unit since at least 2021. To do this, Dossier used not only searches for individuals, various leaks, and open data, but also internal documents of the Service K obtained from a source. These include several questionnaires from the personal files of military personnel, applications for the renewal of security clearances, duty rosters compiled after the start of the war in Ukraine, travel documents, and other materials. There are only three people associated with the fleet: First Rank Captains Stanislav Gromov, Evgeny Shikhov, and Dmitry Shumeiko (First Rank Captain corresponds to the military rank of colonel).

In addition to the three captains, there are 35 colonels, 14 military personnel whose rank is unknown (but who are most likely also colonels or captains), and one major general.

The latter is Alexander Bulanov. He was born in November 1953 and was head of the Special Strategic Communications Service until December 2010, when he was relieved of his duties and dismissed from the army. Bulanov probably returned to service and now oversees the SSSC at the General Staff. This follows from both the service documents available to Dossier and the list of General Staff employees published by Ukrainian hackers in June 2022.

The immediate commander of military unit 26299 is Colonel Andrei Zhuravlev. In the past, he himself was on combat duty and, for example, accompanied Putin during his visit to Japan in December 2016. The other servicemen hold the positions of officer operators and are divided into groups of about 10 people, each with its own commander. Dossier was able to establish the names of two of them: Sergei Vetoshkin and Sergei Khapersky.

The usual schedule involves two consecutive days on duty. Operators are not assigned to a specific subscriber; the same person may accompany the head of state and, after a while, the minister of defense. Unlike the employees of the Presidential Security Service, who can reach their destination by civilian transport, SSSC officers only use the aircraft of the Rossiya special detachment.

Real colonels

In theory, the United States could kill the Russian president, the defense minister, the chief of the General Staff, and their entire entourage, including officers from the Service K, bomb the Defense Control Center, the Strategic Missile Forces headquarters in Vlasikha, and the secret bunkers created to house backup command posts in case of World War III, and strike nuclear force bases — but Russia will still be able to strike back, even if there is no one left in the country’s leadership to give the final order.

The Perimeter system, also known as the Dead Hand, is designed to guarantee inevitable retaliation. It was adopted at the end of the Cold War and was essentially a backup communication channel. Perimeter is activated before the start of hostilities and monitors signals from sensors that are supposed to detect nuclear explosions on the country’s territory. If such signals are received, the system checks for communication with the command. If communication is established, Perimeter shuts down after a while — there is someone to give the order for a retaliatory strike. If there is no communication, Perimeter concludes that the apocalypse has come. After that, the system allows command missiles to be launched, designed to transmit the signal directly to the launchers. Upon receiving such a code, the surviving crew of the Yars mobile complex or the crew of a nuclear submarine hidden from radar in the Arctic ice must strike the enemy’s territory.

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In addition to retaliation, Perimeter had another purpose — to cool the hot heads of Soviet politicians. From the moment of launch of nuclear warheads to the destruction of targets on the territory of the USSR — a few minutes. But the system for detecting the launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles is imperfect and can mistake a civilian rocket for a threat. In the event of such an error, Moscow would not have time to analyze the situation; it would be necessary to strike while the opportunity still existed. The Perimeter system, activated in advance, allowed time to assess the situation, because politicians could be sure that even if they died, a retaliatory strike would still be launched.

Presumably, the 1231st combat control center in the village of Kytlym in the Sverdlovsk region is also responsible for Perimeter. Roman Manzaev worked in this unit and later transferred to the Service K. However, most of his colleagues also came from units associated with nuclear weapons, albeit not as exotic ones.

Officers of Service K Yuri Tyurin, Vladimir Poleshchuk, Lev Kirsanov, Vladimir Korobushin, Evgeny Ovsyannikov, Evgeny Orzhekovsky, Maxim Pchelintsev, Sergey Spiridonov, and Evgeny Zykov previously served at the Central Command Post of the Strategic Missile Forces. The Central Command Post of the Strategic Missile Forces is military unit 33925.

Vitaly Kopylov, Valery Kuchin, Mikhail Sirotkin, and Oleg Busorgin were assigned to the 882nd Central Communications Node of the Strategic Missile Forces; Sergey Vetoshkin was assigned to the Main Headquarters of the Strategic Missile Forces; and Evgeny Ovsyannikov and Alexander Popovsky were assigned to the Central Computing Center. The 882nd Central Communications Node is part of 33790, the RVSN headquarters is part of 25516, and the RVSN central computing center is part of 77866. All of these units are also located in Vlasikha.

Many of them worked at the National Defense Control Center on Frunzenskaya Embankment in Moscow. Among those who served there were Evgeny Ovsyannikov, Evgeny Zykov, Eduard Kaznacheev, and Alexey Sushchinsky. Alexander Ryabogin served in the 14th separate command and measurement complex, which monitors space objects and is likely responsible for detecting enemy ballistic missile launches. This is military unit 26178. Most likely, Anton Mineev, who was registered in Noginsk-9, where the Main Center for Space Situation Awareness is located, was also involved in this.

Perhaps the most unusual career path belongs to Captain First Rank Yevgeny Shikhov. He started in the Black Sea Fleet and commanded a missile battery on the cruiser Moskva, which participated in the capture of Zmeiny Island in February 2022 and was sunk in April. By that time, Shikhov had long since left the fleet and had been a member of the crew of the Il-80, the General Staff’s air command post, also known as the “Doomsday Plane,” for more than 14 years. It is designed to command troops, including nuclear forces. In 2014, Shikhov received the medal “For the Return of Crimea,” and in 2017, he transferred and began carrying the “nuclear briefcase.”

Despite his unique experience and responsibility, the Service K pays about the same as other contract military personnel. Before the war, salaries did not exceed 140,000-150,000 rubles per month. After the invasion of Ukraine began, incomes rose. Documents available to Dossier show that at least one military officer who does not hold a command position began to receive up to 260,000 rubles.

Most of the officers live in Vlasikha, near Moscow, or nearby. Many of them are second- or even third-generation military personnel. The youngest is 39, the oldest is 62, and the average age is 52. None of them were born in Moscow or the Moscow region; all are from other regions, many from former Soviet republics: nine were born in what is now Ukraine, five in Belarus, and one each in Uzbekistan, Georgia, and Latvia. Two were born in the GDR. The only one who stands out from this list is Major General Bulanov: he was born in the Moscow region and is older than his colleagues, at 72 years old.

Their lifestyle is quite modest. Rare vacations with their families in the Krasnodar region, regular mortgage payments, budget cars, almost no savings. According to the Federal Tax Service leak, on average, each officer has saved 400,000 rubles, and only four people have more than a million rubles in their accounts.

Of course, they are all Russian citizens, otherwise they would never have been appointed to their positions. All of them receive the highest level of security clearance, which allows them to access the most classified information available in Russia. Clearances are regularly renewed by the Moscow District Military Counterintelligence Directorate (military unit 14057). Under these conditions, officers have to coordinate literally every step they take outside of working hours: vacations require prior approval of the destination and itinerary; relatives living in other countries, even if it is Belarus, must be reported upon entering service. It is all the more surprising that one of the officers, Evgeny Shikhov, has a sister who has been living in the US for more than 20 years and has obtained American citizenship. The FSB is aware of this family connection, and Shikhov’s sister herself keeps in touch with her brother and periodically visits Russia.

For such a secretive unit, the officers of Service K are too active on social media. Dossier found 12 profiles on VK, nine on Odnoklassniki, eight on the My World website, and two on Facebook. (Some accounts belong to retired officers.) For example, Sergei Marinin has posted several dozen photos on VK, including some from official events and the Kremlin.

Some officers even make specific jokes: Colonel Maxim Pchelintsev chose an image with a large red button and a hand pressing it as his profile photo on VK.

Dossier also found profiles of several military personnel on dating sites, where they are looking for short-term relationships without commitment. Two other officers write comments on Google Maps under their real names, which allows their routes to be traced. For example, one of them was dissatisfied with the work of a grocery store near the Ministry of Defense building on Frunzenskaya Embankment in Moscow. Evgeny Shikhov also revealed his place of service. When he was still part of the crew of the “Doomsday Plane,” he registered on a website for aviation spotters under the pseudonym “Evgeny Krymsky” and published several dozen photos of old combat aircraft and helicopters taken in different parts of the country. Most of the photos are from Crimea and the Chkalovsky military airfield.

For many, if not all, officers, the Special Strategic Communications Service is the pinnacle of a military career. They serve there for a long time, some for 15 years or more, and if they leave the unit, they either retire or go to work for military-industrial complex enterprises, as was the case with three military personnel. They found jobs at the Avtomatika concern, the United Aircraft Corporation, and the V. S. Semenikhin Research Institute of Automatic Equipment, where the “nuclear briefcase” was developed.

*****

Russia may strike first. Even the Soviet nuclear doctrine provided for a counterstrike: it would be launched if an attack on the USSR was only being prepared. In such a case, on the orders of the commander-in-chief and the minister of defense, the National Defense Control Center would generate an “attack” signal, which would unlock the ability to launch missiles. This scheme was specifically designed to prevent a situation where the decision to start a nuclear war would be made solely by the president.

But while preparations for the launch of enemy ballistic missiles can be detected and confirmed with documentation, modern nuclear doctrine also includes a much less reliable criterion. The latest version of the document, dated November 2024, states that Russia is prepared to use weapons of mass destruction in response to “aggression that poses a critical threat to sovereignty and/or territorial integrity.” But what exactly might Putin consider a threat to sovereignty? He has already declared alleged foreign interference in Russian elections, which he learned about from intelligence reports, to be such a threat. And with the start of the war in Ukraine, the number of possible threats has only increased, as Moscow now considers four regions of Ukraine, which are not fully controlled by the Russian army, to be its own territories.

Vladimir Putin himself does not rule out that one day he will have to use the “nuclear briefcase” for its intended purpose. At least, he uses it periodically. “He trains regularly and conscientiously. As do Shoigu and Gerasimov, for that matter. They conduct training missile launches and hit simulated targets,” said Valentin Golubkov, one of the developers of Kazbek. And if the head of state really decides that the time has come to launch a nuclear strike, it is highly likely that only a small number of people will be with him at that moment: personal guards from the Presidential Security Service, aides, and two officers from the Service K. The fate of the whole world may depend on how they behave in a critical situation.