Who was the Russian war blogger “Beliy” killed in the desert?

When the leaders of the Wagner Group fell dead from the skies of Russia about a year ago, one of their main spokespeople-propagandists died a few days ago, 5,000 kilometres from home.

In late July, likely on July 27, in a battle in northern Mali, Africa, between Russian Wagner mercenaries and rebellious Tuaregs, war blogger Nikita Fedyanin (29), nicknamed “Beliy,” (“The white one”) was killed. His rise in the media sphere is of interest to Russian propaganda analysts, as Fedyanin’s Telegram channel, named Grey Zone, was well-known for a long time as one of the primary conduits for messages from Wagner Group leaders Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin.

Grey Zone did not turn away from these men even when they crashed with a plane following their failed mutiny attempt in August 2023. From the standpoint of today’s Russian authorities, such sympathies, even when expressed for the dead, are quite dubious in value. For instance, the header of Grey Zone featured a picture gallery of medals and awards attributed to Utkin.

Mastermind Behind the Private Military Firm’s Messaging

Due to its prominent pro-Wagner stance and information dissemination, Grey Zone also caught the attention of the BBC. In the summer of 2023, the BBC reported that the channel’s leader (not named) was known as “Beliy” or “500th” – 500 is military slang in Russia for a deserter, similar to how 200 signifies a casualty and 300 a wounded soldier.

Grey Zone has been operational since 2019. The channel began attracting more readers after the start of the war in Ukraine, eventually amassing about half a million subscribers. From the end of the first summer of the war, Grey Zone also began posting Wagner’s recruitment ads. In November 2022, it was this channel that posted the infamous video showing the killing of Yevgeny Nuzhin, who was declared a traitor by Wagner, with a sledgehammer.

While other Wagner or Prigozhin-friendly channels went silent after the June 2023 mutiny attempt, Grey Zone continued to broadcast related material.

The last post on Fedyanin’s channel was a photo on July 23, showing a group of armed soldiers in camouflage gathered in front of a tactical armoured vehicle in the desert.

“Attackers from the Wagner Group in front of the Typhoon armoured vehicle in one of the Sahel countries of Africa,” the blogger introduced.

Subsequent posts were likely meant to include pictures from northern Mali’s battlefields and Russian weapons’ victories. Instead, social media was flooded with videos and photos of Wagner fighters’ bodies scattered in the desert, among them the recognizable face of Fedyanin himself.

How was the blogger connected to the GRU?

Russian official media reported the propagandist’s death a day later, and TASS dedicated about 30 lines to him. According to the agency, Fedyanin was in the conflict area because he wanted to produce a series of reports on the Malian army. However, the Russian RT channel reported that Fedyanin was in Mali to investigate rumors that anti-government rebels there were being sent to Ukraine for training, where they were allegedly being taught to operate attack drones.

The website osintbees.com, which covers the Ukrainian information war, indicates that Fedyanin was likely connected to Russian military intelligence, the GRU, as location data mined from the web links him to the GRU’s location at 76B Khoroshevskoye Highway in Moscow. It is not entirely clear what role Fedyanin was trying to fulfill in Mali with the mercenaries – there could have been several.

Interestingly, Ukrainians are not fully convinced that Fedyanin died in Africa. The circulating photo of his body is of poor quality and could therefore be staged.

“But what if tomorrow, somewhere in Chile, a Señor Pedro Gomez appears, looking very similar?” asks osintbees.com, noting that Fedyanin had an outstanding debt of about 420,000 rubles in Russia’s enforcement proceedings.

The crocodile skins have made it home

On the popular Telegram channel ВЧК-ОГПУ, which has over a million followers, an interview with Fedyanin’s mother, Nina Ivanovna, who lives in Lipetsk, Central Russia, was published. In a short audio recording, she mentioned that Nikita Fedyanin was from Lipetsk and graduated with good results from a local university, later obtaining a law degree in Moscow. He wanted to earn a third degree from the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the Kremlin’s aegis, but before defending his thesis, he decided to go to Africa at the beginning of this year.

According to the contract, Fedyanin was not allowed to leave Africa, so his mother visited him there and brought back bags of trophies and purchases, including crocodile skins, to Russia.

About a week before the battle that led to the propagandist’s death, Fedyanin warned his mother that he would be relocating with his unit to a different location and would be out of contact for some time.

“I didn’t like his dangerous activities, but children don’t ask,” said Nina Ivanovna.