Previously, the assassination of a high-ranking enemy officer required significant human and material resources. Now killers only need a smartphone.
July 9, 2023, in the Russian city of Krasnodar. A man in his forties with an athletic appearance goes for a morning jog. He started later than usual because he called his parents. It runs next to the Olimp sports complex and follows the usual route. He doesn’t notice the shadow that has been following him ever since he got out of his car and is getting closer. Very corpulent, this is not another jogger, but a Ukrainian partisan in action. Once within a safe distance, he draws his gun and fires two bullets into the runner’s back, who collapses. The gunman turns him with his foot and finishes him off with two bullets in the chest, then he flees on foot and mixes with the crowd on Krasnodar’s main arteries.
This jogger wasn’t just anyone. This is Stanislav Rzhitsky, former commander of the Kilo-class submarine, the Krasnodar, and deputy chief of the Krasnodar city mobilization department. A veteran of the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine. How could a Ukrainian partisan, isolated throughout Russian territory, organize an assassination attempt against a high-ranking officer in the Russian Navy? The answer is simple: Strava Sport.
Stanislav Rzhitsky was a man of his time. He had a smartphone on which, like any good jogger, he had the famous Strava running app, which was very popular with Russian armed forces. Above, he publicly shared the routes of his morning jogs.
Itinerary by Stanislav Rzhitsky, on Strava Sport. © Telegram BAZA
This information was therefore visible to all and accessible through a simple search on social networks. The shooter only had to perform this simple operation to know the routine of his target. But why would a Ukrainian partisan want to kill a Russian submarine commander? The answer is simple: revenge. Then, on July 14, 2022, on the orders of Stanislav Rzhitsky, Krasnodar fired its Kalibir ballistic missiles at the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia. Many Ukrainian civilians and soldiers were killed in this attack.
A few hours after the death of Stanislav Rzhitsky, General Budanov, head of the Ukrainian military intelligence agency HUR MO, liked Stanislav’s daily commute to work in the Stavra Sport app…
It should be noted that these barrel applications were banned within NATO armies as they were used by some members of the alliance’s special forces. Result: Several bases were compromised and the lives of some soldiers were in danger