In December 2025, Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff’s Operational Training Directorate, was killed in a car bombing in Moscow. A Russian man who left the country in 2022 and now coordinates a network of volunteers tracking Russian military personnel says he helped prepare the killing. His role is detailed in the BBC documentary ”Traitors, Patriots, Spies: Shadowmen Helping Ukraine Inside Russia.”
The film introduces the man as Foma. His face is hidden — viewers see only his silhouette and hear his voice. The filmmakers say that in early 2022, Foma warned Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the HUR, about Russia’s planned invasion. He then fled Russia, and the Ukrainians helped him settle in Warsaw. He now lives in Poland.
Foma says he coordinates a network of about 30 people operating in Russia, Ukraine, and several European countries. He says he also maintains ties with sources in Russia’s intelligence services. According to the film, years of working among Russia’s elite gave him a unique network of contacts and a steady flow of inside information.
Foma says his network gathers intelligence on where storage depots and headquarters are located, where units are stationed, where generals live, where officers working at those headquarters live, where strategic bomber pilots who attack Ukraine live, and who gives the orders.
The HUR confirmed that it had worked with Foma, the investigative outlet iStories reported.
One scene shows Foma training volunteers to conduct surveillance in Moscow. He tells them not to bring a phone. He also warns that if they are caught, they face terrorism charges and 25 years in prison.
In the film, Foma says he wants Russian soldiers and officers who order the shooting of prisoners and the rape and murder of civilians to think long and hard before giving such orders, to be scared, and to stop. Those who turn into animals and those who kill people, he says, need to be punished.
The next segment covers the December 2024 killing of General Igor Kirillov, head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Protection Troops. Foma told the BBC that he was not involved in that killing but confirmed that his network passes information about Russian military personnel to Ukraine. He insists the people his volunteers follow are war criminals.
Sarvarov was killed a year after Kirillov. When the BBC filmmaker asked Foma about Sarvarov’s killing, he said: “Keeping track of him took quite an effort. He lived alternately with his mistress and his colleague. Covered his tracks and constantly changed his schedule.” Foma stresses, however, that his group does not take part in the killings themselves.
A man using the same pseudonym has appeared as a military expert on The Breakfast Show’s morning broadcasts since mid-September. On September 19, after regular military expert Yuri Fyodorov left the channel, The Breakfast Show founder Alexander Plyushchev wrote that the morning show would have a new military commentator: Foma, co-founder of the Telegram channel Volya, who appears on camera with his face hidden.
The BBC film does not explicitly link Foma to Volya. But Agentstvo journalists noticed that several shots show him sitting in front of a computer monitor displaying Volya’s donation page on Patreon.
Plyushchev told Agentstvo that he contacted Foma while looking for a replacement for Fyodorov. “All I knew about Foma was that he did analysis on Georgian political scientist Gela Vasadze’s show and ran the Telegram channel Volya… We understood the risks of having an anonymous commentator, but we decided to try it, since he was providing commentary rather than serving as a source. Foma is now one of four military commentators who regularly work with The Breakfast Show,” Plyushchev said. Agentstvo received no response from Foma, who had been sent an editor’s contact information.
Russian military personnel and attacks
- At least six assassination attempts have targeted Russian generals away from the front line over the past two years — three of them fatal
- ‘A war criminal and a legitimate target’ Russian general assassinated in Moscow accused Kyiv and the West of secret biolabs, drone-delivered mosquitoes, and engineered pandemics
- A spy inside Russia’s army. The Wall Street Journal tells the story of the lieutenant who helped Ukraine kill hundreds of his fellow soldiers.
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