Danish Oliver Alexander exposes Russian false flag operations from the comfort of his living room
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Kasper Junge Wester and Peter Ernstved Rasmussen
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6 September 2022
Oliver Alexander works with Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and has followed the war in Ukraine intensively. Photo: Lene Færch Overgaard
INTERVIEW: Open source intelligence is a well-established discipline that social media has made even more widespread than before. One of the foremost in the discipline is the Danish Oliver Alexander. For him, the so-called OSINT work is a hobby, which he has become so good at that the established intelligence environment now follows his work.
If you are even moderately interested in what is happening on the battlefield in Ukraine - and have a Twitter account - you have probably come across the name Oliver Alexander. In record time, he has become an established name within what is colloquially called OSINT -
Open Source Intelligence - or simply: intelligence from open sources.
Oliver Alexander is 28 years old, lives in Aalborg and works daily with financial analyses. However, it is his unpaid side job of obtaining freely available intelligence about the Russian military in particular that has made him a name outside the country's borders and contributed to the fact that he has today been used as a source in hundreds of news articles. Oliver Alexander only started dealing with OSINT three or four years ago and has only had his Twitter account since December 2021. Yet in the intervening period he has gained more than 48,000 followers, many of whom are established names in the intelligence community or government authorities.
He clearly remembers the revelation that was to turn out to be the starting point for "internet fame", he tells Frontlinjen on Radio4:
"Some of the first things that got a lot of
traction were some videos from a few days before the invasion, where the Russians claimed that a Ukrainian mortar attack had broken the leg of a man in Donetsk. They showed a video of him, and on it you can see that he's missing a leg, yes, but he already had a prosthetic. The Russians simply removed the prosthesis and pretended that he had lost his leg in the attack. I had got hold of an uncensored version of the video, where they then officially uploaded a version where they had censored his legs. I then posted it, and it was shared several thousand times and picked up by various media.'
The Russians' operational security is lagging
When Oliver Alexander works with OSINT today, he relies both on social media such as Twitter and Telegram, but he has also built up a network of sources close to the battlefield. In addition, there are satellite images that can be purchased through various services and used for what is technically known as
geolocation . However, it is to a large extent the warring parties' own photos and videos that drive the work, he says.
"There are many different channels that have appeared in different places in Ukraine and Russia, where they post things. There are pro-Russian channels and there are pro-Ukrainian channels. There are also many mercenaries from the Wagner group (private Russian army, ed.) who have Telegram channels where they post things.'
Perhaps they should – at least for their own sake – be careful with that. In any case, the lax handling of operational security must give rise to deep frowns on the part of Russia's military leadership. It has cost the lives of Russian soldiers several times. However, for the Ukrainians and the international OSINT community, including Oliver Alexander, the waste is a gift.
"It was, among other things, on one of the Wagner group's channels that pictures were posted of a headquarters that they were out visiting, and where they had come to leave the address in the picture. Two days later the building was hit by a Ukrainian HIMARS missile,' says Oliver Alexander, whose work for the same reason mostly revolves around Russia's actions.
"That's where most people get posted. OPSEC (
Operational Security , ed.) on the Russian side is incredibly bad compared to what it is on the Ukrainian side. The Ukrainians are better off not posting pictures of their positions. The Russians still do that constantly, and it was a big problem for them throughout the war.'
About his approach, Oliver Alexander says that he attaches great importance to his credibility and takes pride in not passing on loose rumours, which one or the other party might be interested in passing on.
"I try to deal with the facts and the things I can verify through video, satellite photos, or whatever else I can get my hands on. I stick to the things that I know something about and can confirm. I try to stay away from the stories that are a little too good to be true - on both sides - until I know more.'
Intelligence agencies follow in the OSINT environment
It is not only the internet's amateur detectives who have taken an interest in Oliver Alexander's work. Both Danish and international media have continuously disseminated information that he has provided. Oliver Alexander himself estimates that he figures in 7-800 articles distributed in all kinds of media over large parts of the globe.
But also among the agencies that deal with intelligence work professionally, OSINT and people like Oliver Alexander can be relevant to follow.
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"Things that happen in the OSINT community are also used by the intelligence services. You can see this especially if you follow the British Ministry of Defence. It puts out an update every day with things that happened in the last 24 hours of the war. If you follow along, you often notice things that have been found on satellite photos that people have bought or gained access to and thereby found, for example, a new bridge that the Russians have built over the river. It usually pops up the next day in these reports.'
Oliver Alexander has also experienced seeing his own findings figure in the British Ministry of Defence's daily updates.
"There are some different things where I have come up with some things together with some people, which have then been brought up later. I can't confirm if it's something they happened to come up with at the same time, or if it's our information they've used. In any case, it has come after it has been published by us.'
Hvis man er bare moderat interesseret i, hvad der sker på slagmarken i Ukraine – og har en Twitter-konto – er man formentlig stødt på navnet Oliver Alexander.
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