Was there a boy, or rather, “Gordon”?

In April 2018, the British tabloids The Sunday People and The Sunday Mirror published articles that named one of the possible participants in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

In the same place, along with the deep cover officer of the Russian foreign counterintelligence in Latvia, who was identified in the publications, acting as “Mikhail Savickis”, his operational pseudonym “Gordon” was also announced. In both articles, a heavily retouched image of the designated character was given. This “portrait”, which was soon picked up and advertised by many Russian media with great enthusiasm, for some reason was dubbed nothing more than a “identikit”. The last, to put it mildly, inaccuracy gave rise to many further misinterpretations, arguments, and even “investigations”, which, with clearly undisguised sycophant subservience, allegedly carried out by almost all pro-Kremlin publications. But more than others, the odiously famous TV programs “60 Minutes” (with its permanent hosts – Russian State Duma deputy Yevgeny Popov and his wife Olga Skabeeva), “Results of the Week” with Irada Zeynalova, “Man and the Law” with the host, and part-time long-time sexot Russian FSB Alexei Pimanov, as well as Russia Today, Sputnik and others.

It’s time to put everything in order and really disappoint the inventors of frankly false and misinformation “news” from the Russian media.

To begin with, I’m not giving a “fitted sketch” at all, but a real real photograph of the one who was called “Mikhail Savickis” in the publications of British newspapers and a secret agent of the Russian FSB under the pseudonym “Gordon”.

I want to clarify right away that the Russian media deliberately distorted the essence of the concept of “secret agent” when translating from the original English text into Russian. As you know, the British “super-spy” James Bond is also often called a “secret agent”. The latter does not literally mean that “Agent 007” was someone’s informant. Not at all, because in the film, and in real life, the one whom the British call a “secret agent” is in the official service – he is an operational officer of one or another special structure, special service.

I am sure that this is well known to the Russian media structures listed above, which are controlled by the FSB and the SVR. All their “investigations” and searches for traces in the anals of the former Latvian KGB secret agent with the pseudonym “Gordon” or “Mikhail Savickis” who was related to the committee apparatus were initially meaningless and doomed to a deliberately predictable failure. Well, there was no agent with the pseudonym “Gordon” in the agent apparatus of the secret informants of the Latvian office, nor a person with the first name and surname Mikhail Savitsky – Savickis, who was recruited as an agent of the Latvian KGB. For such a simple reason that such a person in real life did not exist at all. The fact is that when the British newspapers published articles about “Gordon” and Mikhail Savickis, they were not talking about the Soviet KGB at all, but about its “glorious successor” – the Russian FSB.

What does Gordon and Mikhail Savickis have to do with it? Everything is simple! “Gordon” was not at all and never was a pseudonym of a certain secret informant of the Latvian KGB, since it was not a pseudonym, but an unspoken, nowhere advertised call sign within the FSB itself, which made it possible to operate with this operational “nickname” during contacts and in operational reports, . provided as a result of top secret work in the interests of the Russian special services in Latvia, which was carried out, in particular, in the early 90s of the last century. For this simple reason, the call sign “Gordon” has never been called anywhere and to anyone, except for the FSB itself.

Exactly the same was the case with the name and surname of Mikhail Savickis-Savitsky. A person with such setting data existed only “on paper”, since a passport with such a first and last name was made by one of my former subordinates, first in the Latvian KGB, and then after 1991, who worked in the interests of the Russian FSB in Latvia. This was done in accordance with the top secret personal instructions of the former head of the KGB Directorate and a little later, the FSB of Russia for the Krasnodar Territory, Lieutenant General Yuri Chervinsky (now deceased).

So, who really was this “Mikhail Savickis – Savitsky”, he is also – “Gordon”? Everything is very simple – a person who used the installation data of Mikhail Savitskis – Savitsky, who was also known to a strictly limited number of senior officials of the Russian FSB in the central office in Moscow under the operational call sign “Gordon”. This is a former operative officer of the Department for Combating Organized Crime of the KGB of the Latvian SSR Captain Silonov Gennady Valerievich, born in 1963. Who, not pretending, but in reality, until a certain time was my direct subordinate, who actually acted from the position of an “illegal spy” in the interests of the Russian FSB in the territory of Latvia. And who, apparently, after my break with the FSB, which happened in the first half of 1995, took my place and headed a deeply clandestine group operating independently in Latvia, which carried out the entire “spectrum” of operational activities – from collecting and transmitting the most valuable espionage information , until the “cleansing” of those who were either “objectionable” or, for one reason or another, “undesirable” for the Russian special services, or dangerous for the personal financial Russian oligarchs, who settled in Latvia with all the conveniences.

In the latter connection, and especially mindful of the “exceptional talents” and “personal interests” of Gennady Silonov in the field of organizing and conducting “clean liquidation” operations, identified “targets”, if I were in the place of the relevant local security and law enforcement structures, I would seriously took a closer look and “tried on” it for possible involvement in some still, apparently, continuing to remain unsolved murders in Latvia.

Everyone can compare the retouched photo published in the British media in April 2018 and dubbed by the Russian press as nothing more than a “fitted sketch” with a real photograph of Gennady Silonov.

A legitimate question may arise, where did I get a photo of Gennady Silonov? The fact is that, being together in Krasnodar at the end of 1991, he, on his own initiative, handed me several similar photographs so that the craftsmen subordinate to the then head of the KGB Directorate for the Krasnodar Territory, Yuri Chervinsky, from the local department of operational and technical measures , produced several “cover” passports for Silonov – documents for various installation data, which he subsequently used many times in Latvia, performing all kinds of tasks – first “curators” from the Moscow “office”, and then the Russian FSB.

By the way, the passport in the name and surname of Mikhail Savitskis – Savitsky was far from the only “cover” document that was at the personal disposal of Silonov, made by Silonov in the department of technical special operations of the office in the Krasnodar department.

Further about Silonov himself. It so happened that somewhere at the end of 1992, our paths in the field of commercial security in Latvia diverged sharply. Gesha began to naturally “rat” behind the backs of other colleagues in our joint commercial structure. Moreover, he began to trade in commercial intelligence information, as they say, “in both directions” – both to the customer-client and to those against whom this information was collected. Which was not only unethical, but truly unacceptable, dishonorable and dangerous. So we parted.

Based on the information that surfaced in early June 2021, it must be assumed that after my complete break with the FSB in 1995, it happened that Gennady Silonov took my place and headed the secret agent network of FSB informants, becoming a kind of “resident “a deeply insidious group of Russian spies, acting against the state interests of Latvia and in favor of the Russian special services. He has managed to achieve significant success in this field – based on the fact that intelligence information of such a caliber as details regarding an important multi-billion dollar project, which is Nord Stream 2, cannot in any way be belittled or assessed as insignificant. Quite the opposite, should be considered equivalent to information of strategic importance.

And further. Shortly after the scandalous events with the attempted poisoning of Sergei Skripal, representatives of the British police wanted to talk to me, namely from the Counter Terrorism Command (CTC) SO15 and related to the London Metropolitan Police. Their jurisdictional area of ​​activity includes criminal investigation and operational support of all serious facts of terrorist activity in the UK. That meeting took place on April 16, 2018 and lasted more than three hours. When the conversation came to an end, one of the employees who spoke to me, consulting the notes in his notebook, asked, “Does the name and surname “Mikhails Savickis” mean anything to me?”

For some reason, he especially distorted his last name, pronouncing it very indistinctly. I was not prepared for such a question and replied that the only person with such a surname who I know from my time in the Latvian KGB is Juris Savickis, now a well-known Latvian “gas” businessman who positions himself as a “personal friend” of Russian President Vladimir Putin. After hearing my answer, the policeman checked his notes again and replied that this was not the person they were interested in.

To be honest, at that time I really just forgot about Geshe Silonov and his second “mask” – “Mikhail Savitsky”. I was no longer interested in the Silons, and enough time had passed to start forgetting all the crap that happened to me a long time ago, in another life. Nevertheless, while driving back home on the way, all the time the thought that I had already heard the name “Mikhail Savickis” somewhere before did not give me rest.

Returning home, I searched through my entire personal archive and eventually found records relating to Gennady Silonov and his various identities, business companies, front companies, informants, and other confidential contacts. Among them were records that confirmed that Gennady Silonov actively used the identity of “Mikhail Savickis” in his previous operational activities, and also that earlier in the Russian FSB his personal secret call sign was “Gordon”.