Eurasia Press & News
For 10 years now, U.S. diplomats, officials and intelligence officers around the world have been facing mysterious incidents known as the Gagawan Syndrome. It’s like a paralyzing blow to some invisible force that makes them disabled for life: they can’t concentrate, lose balance in an even place, suffer terrible migraines. U.S. intelligence agencies have so far stated that they do not have data on involvement in this other countries, but we were able to find that the time and place of the attacks are correlated with the trips of the GRU-shniks from the military unit 29155. Two victims saw 29155 employees before or immediately after the attack and identified them from the photo. It also revealed that the GRU-related Military Medical Academy studied the clinical effects caused by the “Ghavanian syndrome,” and one of the key members of the group 29155 received a state order for the development of acoustic weapons.
What is the “gavan syndrome”
The Havana syndrome got its name after one of the largest incidents that occurred in 2016 in the Cuban capital. Many U.S. and Canadian employees of the local consulate have encountered a strange phenomenon. They suddenly became ill, they experienced strong pressure (sometimes pain) in their ears, a bout of nausea and panic, a feeling of strange sounds – either loud noise, or a very high sound, similar to the cracking of the grasshass of the grasshasser, after which the consequences pursued them for months or even years: blurted consciousness, problems with concentration, loss of balance in the right place, hyperacous problems with problems. Over time, it became clear that something similar is repeated with American diplomats, officials and intelligence officers around the world, often right in the consulates. Medical tests have in many cases revealed objective evidence of traces of injury in some areas of the brain and thereby exclude psychosomatics. Of the total complaints collected in recent years by U.S. civil servants (more than a thousand), at least several dozen have been well-tested and proven, and they have been around the world – from Europe (including Russia) to Southeast Asia and Latin America, since 2014 and so far. What causes this effect has not yet been established, but the main working version is pulsed microwave radiation.
As we have managed to establish, there is a clear correlation between the trips of the GRU staff from the military unit 29155 and cases of the “Gavan syndrome” in different regions of the world.
Frankfurt, 2014. Identification of Gordienko
Tracking the movements of the GRU-shnikov across Europe is quite difficult, as they usually fly to one country and then rent a car and move to another – so that it is more difficult to calculate their destination. Among other things, it helps them portray tourists, and they prefer to enter the Schengen area through the country that issued a visa to attract less attention. At the same time, they usually fly in groups that replace each other: some monitor the victim and conduct training, others are engaged in execution. In this scenario, everything developed in 2014.
On January 26, 2014, two employees in the/h 29155 – Alexander Mishkin (with a passport in the name of Petrov) and Denis Sergeev (Sergey Fedotov) landed in Prague. Four years from now, they’ll be famous all over the world as the Skripal poisoners in Salisbury, but this time they had a very different task. On the train they reached Munich, where they rented a car on January 30. For two days they disappeared and, judging by the kilometer, went to another city, which is unknown (in this radius could be, for example, Frankfurt). Immediately after their return, they moved back to Prague and on February 2 flew back to Moscow. It was probably the first reconnaissance of the area.
A few months later, the main stage of the operation began. On September 25, the same Denis Sergeev flew from Moscow to Milan (he then had a fresh Italian visa), at the same time with him, but Yegor Gordienko (Georgy Gordishkov) – remember this name, he will still play an important role in this story. Both of them will take the train immediately to meet in Geneva. There they rented a car again, this time for five days (where they drove – again unclear). On the other days, they also clearly did not sit in the city (although for the legend they were booked nearby courses of English – which Russian does not fly to Geneva for a couple of weeks to tighten the knowledge of English). They booked a hotel right at Geneva airport, allowing them to move from there to any Schengen destination, leaving no trace (most European airlines do not even require an identity card on domestic Schengen flights). They returned to Moscow on October 13 – again with different routes.
Sergeeva and Gordienko are replaced by the next group. First arrive Ivan Terentyev (Lebedev) and his assistant Nikolai Yezhov (Kononikhin), who arrives in Vienna on October 11. A little later, on the 15th, they are joined by Danil Kapralov. From 17 to 24 October, Alexander Kovalchuk joins the group. By the way, all the above-described persons, except Mishkin, in a year will take part in the poisoning of Bulgarian gunsmith Emeliana Gebrev “Novichok” and then they will act in the same way, replacing each other with a shift method.
The operation is set off on November 3, when all three members of the group 29155 fly at the same time, but through different airports: Yezhov from Vienna, and Terentyev and Kapralov from Geneva. It is clear when booking the hotel of Capralov and on the dates of booking tickets, it becomes clear that they knew about the planned November 3 departure.
And on November 4 in Frankfurt, employees of the American consulate faced a series of strange attacks. One of the victims (named him / Taylor) felt / and he was bad right in the consulate: strong pressure in the chest, then in the neck and head, the head circulated, threw in the pot, began to ulcify, the heart began to fight furious, the hearing seemed to be turned off, only a loud and high sound was heard in the head. A few seconds later, Taylor lost consciousness.
Taylor recalls that a few weeks before the incident (he/or does not remember when) he/a drew attention to the suspicious man of strong addition and high growth, which walked around a residential complex intended for the employees of the consulate and photographed the territory. Taylor asked, “and what he’s doing here, and he, answering something with a strong accent, he’s gone.
When, through the intermediaries The Insider, 60 Minutes and Der Spiegel showed Taylor a photo of Yegor Gordienko, he/he answered/a confidently: Yes, this is him, I now have goosebumps on the skin when I look at this photo.
It's him, I have goosebumps on my skin when I look at this photo!Maybe it’s just a coincidence? Could the victim/s y/la have known? But such coincidences will continue almost every year with increasing frequency.
China and the Rally “Silk Road” 2016-2017
The Insider has already talked about the large-scale GRU project – the Silk Road rally, the route of which took place from Kazan through the countries of Central Asia to China. The rally was used as a cover for the transfer of agents, cargo transportation and legalization of work abroad.
In 2016, the rally for the first time begins not only in Central Asia, but also in China. And it is then, since the summer of 2016, American diplomats begin to report on strange health problems.
The organizer of these rally Bulat Yanborisov, who maintained constant contact with all key employees of the group 29155, arrives in China in May 2016 to prepare for the event. (it is worth noting that before the poisoning of Gebrev, he also flew to Bulgaria at the same time with the same “Gorshkov” and “Fedotov” a few days before his first poisoning.)
And on July 6, 2016, a group of agents 29155, consisting of the same military doctor Alexander Mishkin (Petrov), Alexei Kalinin (Nikitin), Alexey Tolstopytenko (Timura Nozirova) and Roman Puntus (Patov). Three days later, the rally started, and a convoy of trucks moved towards China. The group’s trace is lost for some time, but on July 25, Mishkin returns to Moscow by plane from China and immediately after returning goes to St. Petersburg – there is a constant contact of Mishkin, Sergey Chepur, Professor VMedA and the head of the Research Test Institute of Military Medicine, which in the GRU is responsible for testing the effects on the body of various types of poisonous substances and other weapons.
It was this summer that strange incidents with employees of American consulates were noted in China. The first victim was an IT specialist from the State Department, responsible for the storage of secret information and worked in Shanghai. His symptoms also appeared suddenly: on June 12, he began to have a strong dizziness, it was difficult for him to keep balance, even getting out of bed was a problem. Sometimes he just fell on the go on the street, problems with short-term memory began. After a few months, the symptoms began to go, but in 2018 he again began to lose balance in the right place. After several months of examinations, the official verdict of doctors became only “unknown environmental impact” that caused a traumatic brain injury.
In 2017, GRUs from the in/h 29155 continued to use the rally as a way to get to China. In the photo below, for example, in the background, Sergei Andreenko smiles – he joined the riders under the guise of an auto mechanic and entered China on July 12, 2017, and returned by plane from Xi’an to Novosibirsk on July 23, 2017.
Meanwhile, Americans reporting strange health incidents are becoming more and more. In the summer of 2017, several victims appear in Guangzhou: some of them say they have heard a strange high sound, unlike anything they’ve heard before. Victims also complained of dizziness, humidized consciousness, headaches, loss of short-term memory, insomnia and nausea. One of the victims reported that she could suddenly lose balance and sometimes felt sharp pressure in her ears. As a result, the US State Department had to evacuate more than ten employees from Guangzhou.
There were similar incidents in Beijing in 2017. At least one U.S. civil servant, an employee of the Department of Commerce, reported strange sounds and sudden health problems – nausea, loss of balance, pain in the ears.
Information about Chinese incidents is clearly incomplete, there may be more cases than we know today, as well as more trips of the GRU staff could have been, so it is difficult to make any comparisons of specific episodes with the travel of 29155 members to China. Perhaps, thanks to this investigation, other victims will tell about their history, and this will allow to establish a complete picture.
Tbilisi, 2021. Identification of Albert Averyanov
Joy (wake to call her that) moved from the United States to Georgia in February 2020, along with her husband-diplomat and son. They settled in Tbilisi in a house on a quiet street near the embassy. Joy, a doctor by training, worked in a private American clinic.
On October 7, 2021, she was waiting for her son to return from school and washed her laundry on the second floor. When she took out the laundry from the washing machine, turning to the window, she suddenly felt something like a powerful sound wave that pierced the head on the left side, filled it with all-absorbing noise and responded with a terrible headache. Joy came out of the room and went into the bathroom, where the sound seemed to have disappeared from her head, and she vomited. She called her husband, soon he was accompanied by security officers at the embassy.
Waiting for her husband, Joy looked out, noticed a strange car there, which I had not seen on this street, and photographed her. Near the car, she saw a tall blond man of lean physique. There was a girl next to him, they were very well dressed, as if they were going to a wedding or a performance. When the man saw Joy photographing him, he quickly got into the car.
From that day on and until now, Joy experiences severe migraine attacks every day (which she has never had before). Her consciousness is terrible, it is difficult for her to find the steps when she goes down the stairs, the coordination of movements was disrupted, problems with the vestibular apparatus began. She often rings in her ears, and has hearing problems. The dizziness was so strong that sometimes it was even hard for her to turn in bed. The hearing became supersensitive, and even the sound of the air conditioner for it sounds like a roar of an aircraft engine.
At Johns Hopkins University, Joy was diagnosed, later confirmed at the University of Los Angeles: the two-way divergence of semicircle canals is a very rare disease. It may be congenital, but then the disease would have been manifested long ago, or may have been the result of an injury, but Joy had no injuries. She had to have surgery and insert metal plates on either side of the skull. This alleviated the symptoms, but did not remove them completely.
American investigators failed to determine what caused the incident. However, as The Insider found out, by a strange coincidence at that moment in Georgia were employees of the GRU from the unit 29155.
On September 30, 2021, General Andrey Averyanov, head of the military unit 29155, went on a working trip. Simultaneously with him, his son Albert Averyanov, whom his father took to his unit a few years ago, flew out of Moscow. Albert, despite his young age (then he was 21 years old), has already received serious experience: while still a student of the Moscow State University, in 2017 – 2018 he was informally trained in Geneva under the supervision of the above-mentioned Yegor Gordienko, who then worked in Geneva under the guise of the second trade representative of Russia in the WTO. After that, Albert became an active member of the group (as seen from his calls and fellow travelers), although, unlike the rest, continues to lead a completely public lifestyle, flies abroad under the real name, chases with friends in football for the Evian team (29 goals in 60 matches), rides girlfriend Nastyu on his Mercedes-Benz ML/GLE – hardly any of his fellow students guessed his life. At the time of the events described, Albert has just graduated from the Master’s degree of the Faculty of Global Processes of the Moscow State University (theme of the thesis and themicalization and institutionalization of the global level of migration processes management.”
On that day, General Averyanov turned off the phone, and it is difficult to trace his further route, it is known only that he reappears in Moscow on October 10, when his son.
On the phone of his son, it is clear that on September 30 he flew to Tashkent, where he called the Uzbek mobile number the next morning from the airport. This call was the last one that Albert will take over the next 10 days. 40 minutes after the call, at 8:40 a.m. on October 1, the flight Tashkent – Tbilisi departed from the airport.
After that, Averyanov Jr.’s phone is in roaming, but without access to the network. Nine days after the last call from Tashkent and just two days after the incident with Joy – October 9, Albert Averyanov again turns on the phone in Tashkent (p kindly welcome to Uzbekistan, which he receives at the same moment) and the next day returns to Moscow.
When Joy was presented a photo of Albert Averyanov, she immediately recognized him:
When I saw this photo, I immediately had a spontaneous reaction, I became ill. I can’t be 100 percent sure that this person is this person, but he’s very similar. Even to this day, looking at him, I feel the same intuitive reaction.
Even now, looking at his photo again, I feel the same intuitive reaction!Albert Averyanov in a conversation with The Insider refused to comment on his involvement in the incident.
Strange coincidences: Belgrade and Hanoi, 2021
As can be seen in the example of the attack in Tbilisi, the group’s 29155 employees prefer not to fly directly to the destination country so that operations are more difficult to track on flights. However, comparing the working missions from Russia of the GRU teams with the episodes of the “Gavan syndrome” can be found interesting coincidences.
For example, in 2021, before the incident in Tbilisi, General Averyanov and his team make several more working trips, which each time coincide with the episodes of the Ygavan syndrome. So, on the evening of July 17, 2021, Andrey Averyanov, Roman Puntus and Vyacheslav Dolganov go to Dushanbe and return to Russia in early August. It is unknown where they were going, but the next morning, July 18, a flight departed from Dushanbe to Belgrade, and on July 26, an incident occurred with a CIA employee stationed in Serbia, formerly working in the department that was engaged in Russia.
As is known from the description of American sources familiar with the situation, in the evening she was at home and fed the baby when she felt what she describes as a ray. She lay down on the floor and then moved to another room. It is claimed that, according to her description, the effect was narrowly oriented and from under the action of this “ray” could be able to get out, taking a few steps away. According to the source, she is sure that the child also felt it. She was evacuated, and like the rest of the victims, she was diagnosed with a brain injury.
And on August 8, Averyanov, Dolganov and Puntus have a working trip again, and again through Dushanbe. They only return in two weeks. It was these days, around August 15 and 21, that two serious incidents with American citizens in Hanoi occurred.
In the area of August 15 (the date is known approximately, but can not differ significantly) injured 11 people – two employees of the Embassy, five representatives of the Ministry of Defense and several special forces. According to our sources, one of the victims said that the symptoms were preceded by a feeling of deafening noise – as if from a vacuum cleaner or a jet engine, after which he had squeezed the chest, erroneous consciousness. The other felt as if he was instantly submerged for hundreds of feet, followed by a strong dizziness and panic attack.
According to our sources, a few days later there was a new incident: early in the morning on August 21, a CIA officer who previously worked in Ukraine, woke up from strange sensations. At first, he heard some low-frequency sound, and then as if there was an explosion in his head. He was one of the few who underwent a medical examination shortly before the incident, so doctors could compare the indicators of biomarkers in the blood before and after the incident and fix neural damage (more on which biomarkers help to identify brain damage below).
Before the attack, he ran through the ultramarathons, and after it he could barely walk longer than 15 minutes and, according to his own feelings, functioned 35% because of the stagnant consciousness. Official diagnosis: neural network dysfunction and persistent disaufortomas as a result of brain injury.
Since it has not yet been possible to establish where the Averyanov group fled from Dushanbe in July and August, and unlike Tbilisi and Frankfurt, no one identified them on the spot, there is no direct evidence of their involvement in these incidents. However, it is interesting that the operations of the group 29155 are synchronized in time with episodes of the “Havan syndrome.”
Mysterious License
As is often the case in the GRU, the conspiracy failed the accounting department. On December 12, 2019, GRU Colonel Ivan Terentyev (along by Ivan Lebedev), Deputy Averyanova in the military unit 29155, sent a letter with “explainments” to the head of the Russian presidential administration for anti-corruption Andrei Chobotov. In the letter, Terentyev explained why he did not include 100 thousand rubles in the declaration of admission, which he was to submit as part of his promotion to the office of the President (illuminated in the investigations of The Insider, Terentyev could not continue operations in Europe, and he was sent to the honorary exile as the chief federal inspector for the Sakhalin region).
Terentyev was not just a spy, but a highly qualified military engineer who combined the work of the deputy commander of the sabotage group with research work in the Ministry of Defense (he co-author of dozens of scientific papers, such as the Critical assessment of the effectiveness of shooting underwater, taking into account the dynamic stability of the system of “arrows” – weapons – Wednesday). However, the 100 thousand rubles, which were interested in the anti-corruption department, were paid for another, namely, for work for the Fund for Advanced Studies, engaged in “development and creation of innovative technologies” in the military sphere. The Anti-Corruption Department demanded to report on what the work was done for the FPI, and Terentyev asked his assistant, Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Yezhov (also Nikolai Kononikhin, appointed chief federal inspector for the neighboring Sakhalin Magadan region), to send a copy by e-mail to the Kremlin. Yezhov sent a contract that said that Terentyev, as the winner of the competition, transferred his “Individual” work to the Foundation. The anti-corruption agency was not satisfied with this unsubscribe and asked to tell in detail what the essence of this work was.
And then Yezhov sends out a document from which it follows that Ivan Terentyev handed over to the Fund “Individual work” called the potential for non-lethal acoustic weapons in military (fighting) actions in the city.
What kind of “Acoustic weapons” was developed by Terentyev? If there was a weapon that used sound waves, we could talk about infrasound weapons, acting at a long distance and designed to cause panic in the enemy, or about the waves of the audible spectrum, producing a stunning effect. It could hardly be ultrasound, which is quickly absorbed or dissipated. But, perhaps, the weapon was called acoustic for another reason: microwave radiation by the human ear under certain conditions can be transformed into an acoustic signal (s)Frey Effect. . It is this effect that American researchers consider as the most likely candidate for the role of the cause of the “gavan syndrome.”
What causes the “Gavan syndrome” and what about the doctors from the GRU?
The Havarian syndrome is so unusual that for a long time the researchers have generally doubted that it is real: many have been deducted on psychosomatic disorders or misinterpreted side effects of other diseases. But after the time, the data became so much that it became impossible to deny the presence of this phenomenon: out of hundreds of complaints, several dozen well-checked cases were established, where specific brain damage is clearly established.
The U.S. intelligence community has assembled a team of experts that concluded that the Gagavan syndrome is caused by a “unkial combination of characteristics” that cannot be explained by known environmental or medical conditions and can be caused by external irritants. However, in March 2023, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) published a report calling it “very unlikely” that the “Gavan syndrome” was caused by exposure from a foreign adversary. This assessment shocked hundreds of former and current diplomats, intelligence officers and members of their families who believe otherwise. Many of them feel betrayed by their government because they were unable to identify the culprit of their tragedy.
Dr. David A. Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University and co-chair of the expert group, told The Insider that many people had previously brushed aside victims of the Igavan syndrome, writing off their condition for the side effects of depression or other diseases, but (if we are talking about verified cases) in most of their victims before the attack were healthy, not experiencing depression, migraines and anything like that. This is confirmed not only by their testimony, but also by the results of medical examinations, which many of them have been on duty.
Although the fact of brain damage in victims of the “gavan syndrome” is not subject to doubt, it is not clear to the end of what kind of impact this led, notes Relman. One of the options is pulsed microwave radiation, the other option is ultrasound, but in the second case there are many problems: ultrasound is much easier to weaken any obstacles, such as a thick wall, and the distance to the victim should be much less than when using microwaves.
It has been experimentally shown that pulses of a certain type can damage the neurons and myelin shell of neural cells, adds Relman, while traces (markers) of these damages can then be detected in the blood: for neurons, it is an NEFL protein (thin polypeptide neurofilment), and in case of damage to the myelin shell of the GFAP (glyan phyl acidic protein). It is only necessary to test these markers immediately, preferably in the first day, and not all victims managed to do such a test. It is desirable that the victim also have blood tests taken before the attack, so that the comparison of biomarkers was more correct, and such cases even less.
According to the expert group’s conclusions:
Electromagnetic energy (especially pulse signals in the radio frequency range) plausibly explains the key characteristics, although some white spots remain. (...) Using non-standard antennas and methods, signals could be distributed by air for tens and hundreds of meters and - with some losses - through most building materials. (...)
An external electromagnetic or acoustic stimulus, regardless of frequency, can reach the inner ear and other parts of the brain that the expert group evaluates play a key role in the symptoms caused and affect them. The external auditory can act as a waveguide, directing external energy to the inner ear and brain.
The expert group heard the testimony of several people who accidentally were exposed to electromagnetic signals. Although these cases were not controlled by experiments, they provide interesting evidence that such stimuli may have significant clinical effects. However, they also suggest that different people may experience the same type of stimulus in different ways, which may explain some of the observed heterogeneity in the studied cases where such effects have emerged. In addition, exposure to higher power appears to cause symptoms other than those of less intense exposure, suggesting that more than one variable or biological mechanism may occur. Finally, the effects of electromagnetic exposure can build up over time (e.g., for several hours) and can also cause sudden acute symptoms. However, the group emphasizes that the confirmation or refutation of any of these preliminary observations will require systematic research.One of the most studied cases of the effects of the Yogavan syndrome was the Joy case, where two clinics independently diagnosed the bilateral divergence of semicircle canals (Minor syndrome). This is a bone defect in which tiny holes are formed in the semicircle canal of the inner ear. Among the key symptoms are hyperacroupia (when a person hears even their blinking or movement of the eyeballs during reading), the loss of balance, tinnitus, which patients describe as a whistle-hundle or sound similar to the cricket or grasshound (which was said by many affected by the “gavan syndrome”), blured consciousness and migraine.
The syndrome of Minor is an extremely rare and poorly studied phenomenon, which in Russia almost no one studied, except … the Military Medical Academy named after Kirov (VMEDA), whose professor is the GRU doctor Sergey Chepur, a permanent consultant of General Averyanov, and a graduate of which is Alexander Mishkin. It is in WMEDA that Alexander Kovalchuk (Kalinin), who arrived in Europe in 2014 during the Frankfurt operation, is working now. WMEDA and the Institute of Military Medicine, headed by Chepur, are the main polygons where the GRU explores the effects of their drugs and tools on the human and animal body.
It was Sergey Chepur, as a specialist in cholinesterase inhibitors, who was and remains a key consultant on Novichok for the GRU-shnikov from group 29155, in the telephone conversations of General Averyanov Chepur – one of the main interlocutors. He studied Chepur not only biochemistry, but also, judging by his publications, the effects of radiation on the brain.
One way or another, it seems like an amazing coincidence that at the same time that Joy in Tbilisi was attacked, which led to her Minor syndrome, this rarest syndrome was investigated by doctors closely associated with General Averyanov and his team.
Causes and Consequence
Why would the Kremlin need such attacks? No one knows the exact answer, but it is clear from conversations with diplomats that this strategy has had an effect: many employees do not want to work in the Russian direction, understanding that they can become disabled and at the same time not even get the right help – because many of the victims faced the fact that their complaints were being attributed to mental disorders.
Now, after our investigation has been found many direct indications of the connection of incidents with the operations of the military unit 29155 of the GRU, the American authorities can rethink their attitude to the “Gavan syndrome” and begin a full investigation of the incidents. The victims themselves hope for this – not only because they do not like when they are made of crazy, but also because they understand that if the US authorities do not respond to these incidents, they will continue.
It is difficult to say exactly, but attacks on diplomats during the performance of their duties, especially on the territory of embassies, can not be left without serious consequences.
