Russia's Secret Assassination Unit Exposed After Operative Used Google Translate
By Bosphorus News Staff
Denis Alimov, a 42-year-old former FSB Alfa special forces veteran, was arrested at Bogotá's El Dorado International Airport on February 24, 2026. An Interpol Red Notice, requested by U.S. federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, was waiting at the gate.
Alimov is accused of orchestrating the attempted assassination of two Chechen dissidents based in Europe. He allegedly offered a $1.5 million bounty per target, payable whether the target was delivered to Russia dead or "legally deported." He traveled on a freshly issued false-identity passport. He faces potential life imprisonment on charges including murder conspiracy and material support for terrorism.
Center 795: The Successor to Unit 29155
Alimov served as a senior operative in Center 795, a clandestine directorate established by a Russian General Staff order in December 2022. The unit was designed as a replacement for GRU Unit 29155, the directorate behind the 2018 Salisbury nerve-agent attack, whose operatives had been identified and exposed by investigators.
Center 795 reports directly to Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. It was built as a self-contained military and intelligence formation capable of surveillance, sabotage, cyber operations, and targeted killings under a single command. By June 2023, the unit had approximately 500 officers.
Corporate Camouflage at Kalashnikov
The unit was embedded inside the Kalashnikov Concern, the Russian arms manufacturer. Officers were listed on the company's payroll. Their base of operations was the Patriot Park military-industrial complex outside Moscow. Training was disguised as routine weapons testing.
The Insider identifies billionaire arms dealer Andrei Bokarev, controlling owner of Transmashholding, as the unit's financial backer. Bokarev previously held a 75% stake in Kalashnikov and continues to draw income from the company. Rostec CEO Sergei Chemezov, one of Putin's closest allies since their shared KGB posting in Dresden, also benefited from the arrangement.
Commanders and Structure
Center 795 is led by Denis Fisenko, a former FSB Alfa veteran and three-time recipient of the Order of Courage. According to leaked tax records cited by The Insider, Fisenko earns approximately $500,000 per year. Department heads earn around $7,800 per month.
The unit is divided into three directorates: Intelligence, Assault, and Combat Support. Its inventory includes T-90A tanks, Smerch 300mm rocket systems, sniper teams, drone units, and signals intelligence capabilities. The Intelligence Directorate's 12th Department, which handles human agents abroad, is staffed almost entirely by veterans of Unit 29155.
A PowerPoint presentation prepared for the Kremlin, including organizational charts and staffing plans, was obtained by Western intelligence and journalists within months of the unit's creation.
The Google Translate Failure
Center 795 was designed to be electronically sealed. Commanders used encrypted messaging, pseudonymous identities, and compartmentalized communications. One gap went unaddressed: the language barrier between operatives.
Alimov speaks Russian. His recruited field agent, Darko Durovic, speaks Serbian. To communicate, they used Google Translate, converting field reports and instructions between the two languages.
Google Translate operates through servers in the United States. The FBI obtained a court order and accessed the translation logs directly from the service provider. Investigators read the entire murder-for-hire plot in clear text, in real time. One source close to the investigation described it as "even better than a wiretap because it arrived transcribed."
The Bounty and the Surveillance Trail
The Insider reports that Alimov met Durovic in Moscow in October 2024, handing him a $60,000 down payment and promising $1.5 million for each target. A third individual was reportedly worth over $10 million, "dead or alive."
Durovic was caught researching Glock pistols online and surveilling targets across Europe and the United States. He was arrested by the FBI in March 2025 after lying about trips to Moscow. Alimov continued operating until his own arrest nearly a year later.
Exposure and Fallout
The investigation reveals for the first time the identities of Center 795's commanders, its organizational structure, its Kalashnikov cover, and its Patriot Park base. All are now documented in Western court filings and open-source records.
The unit also has a domestic paper trail. A former Center 795 member sued commander Fisenko over unlawful termination at the Odintsovo Military Court. The court sided with the operative. The case file was purged from official systems but remains accessible through Russian legal aggregators.
Alimov remains in Colombian custody pending extradition to the United States.
***This article is a news summary based on the investigation "Lost in Translation: How Russia's New Elite Hit Squad Was Compromised by an Idiotic Lapse in Tradecraft" by Christo Grozev, Roman Dobrokhotov, Michael Weiss, Fidelius Schmid, and Nikolai Antoniadis, published by The Insider on March 13, 2026, in collaboration with Der Spiegel. All factual claims are attributed to the original investigators. Full investigation: https://theins.press/en/inv/290235