A Russian colonel has lost a laptop containing intel on military topics after a night of heavy drinking, according to Russian news platform Baza.
Baza, which often posts leaks from Russia's security and intelligence services, wrote on its Telegram channel that Colonel Alexander Kuzivanov, captain of the 1st Rank and head of ESIMO research center, got "brutally" drunk at a place called Beavers and Ducks on the evening of May 18 while celebrating the 70th birthday of a colleague, another colonel.
The bar, based in Pyatnitskaya Street, is quite a well-known place in Moscow.
According to Baza, Kuzivanov blacked out after the second bottle of an unspecified alcoholic drink, and later woke up in his apartment as his wife tried to shake him off his hangover. It was the wife, says Baza, that reconstructed the events of the previous evening.
Likely after leaving Beavers and Ducks, Kuzivanov felt sick on the streets, where passersby called an ambulance. Medics then brought him home.
Baza says that only later the colonel realized that he had lost his laptop, which contained "notes and plans for articles on military topics." Kuzivanov then denounced the loss of the laptop to the police, telling them the articles were for the "Great Russian Encyclopedia" and did not contain any sensitive military information.
ESIMO, the Center for the Unified State System of Information on the Situation in the World Ocean of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, is in charge of constructing civilian ships and studying the oceans and its use for military and civilian purposes.
The news site did not report on the whereabouts of the laptop, which is believed to be still unknown. Newsweek has contacted the Ministry of Industry and Trade for comment.
The incident, which was not cited by any other Russian news media or by Russian authorities, is the latest of a series of blunders linked to Russian officials since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
Some were just as absurd as the one reported by Baza, like showing a picture of Bonnie and Clyde in a slideshow on Russia's Victory Day celebrating Soviet citizens who fought against Nazi Germany during World War II.
Others were far more serious than the one allegedly involving Colonel Kuzivanov. Military blunders have plagued the Russian campaign in Ukraine, starting from the strategic mistake made by the Kremlin when it assumed Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops into their country.
There were reports of Russian troops, afflicted by low morale and supply shortages, who allegedly sabotaged their own equipment to get out of fighting.
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Giulia Carbonaro is a Newsweek Reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on U.S. and European politics, global affairs ... Read more
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