My story begins in Kharkiv, a god-forsaken city in Ukraine, four and a half years ago when I “dived” for the first time in my life. That winter evening starts the chain of events that in the end will lead us to the current circumstances. But first things first.
∗ ∗ ∗
While I recline on the sofa sipping Jack and Coke, my drunk classmates are passionately discussing completed exams on the opposite side of a large folding table. Sitting to the left and kissing a girl unknown to me, is Alex, our host.
I hear bursting laughter from the smokers on the balcony. Stupid pop track is playing loudly from the speakers.
For some reason one of my classmates, being clearly drunk and befuddled, shouts over all of that noise that he had too much so he’s gonna relieve himself. He tries to get out of the chair, loses balance and leans over the table. As if in slow motion I see it collapse and everything fall down. Someone’s glass drops on the floor and explodes to the myriad of shards. I hear a scream but it takes some time for me to process what happened. Only in a couple of seconds my eyes finally focus and I realize that a huge fragment of glass is piercing the shin of Alex’s girlfriend.
She reaches for the shard. I try to stop her, but it’s too late: she extracts it with a groan, and a stream of dark red blood starts flowing from the leg. Alex tries to pinch the cut. The girl squeals and cries. Someone says that she has to pour alcohol over the wound. Meanwhile, I just sit in a stupor and try to understand why the table collapsed at all.
A picture appears in my mind. Some of the guys head to the balcony to smoke, and one of them accidentally kicks the table leg while passing by.
I not only see it, but also hear Alex telling them: “...and close the fucking door when you smoke, it stinks.”
I even start smelling the cigarettes, and my mouth fills with the taste of cheap whiskey. I hear a punk-rock band singing some bullshit about a ghost ship with cannibal rats, and I can swear that this song has already played at the beginning of the party, before my friend’s girlfriend asked us to turn on something less noisy.
Sensations flood my mind and overwhelm my perception. For a moment I feel like I cannot breathe. Eyesight becomes fuzzy and I lose sense of direction as if I dived deep under the water.
I come to my senses, and half a minute passes before I finally comprehend that the sun has not set yet, the table is safe and sound, and Alex is sitting next to me, stroking his girlfriend’s thigh not embarrassed by the presence of other people even a little. She laughs as if nothing happened although I remember her being covered in blood and screaming in pain just a minute ago.
Seems that I stare at her too blatantly, so she catches my eye, makes a displeased face and removes Alex’s hand.
I don’t understand what’s going on.
Well…
I do understand, but the reality is too incredible to be true.
Suddenly I realize that everything can go back to what it was any moment now. Without much of a hesitation I lean under the table and check it out. Table leg got out of the groove after being kicked, so I put it in place and gently pull the tabletop to check that it’s stable. Then I think for a second, pour myself a full glass of whiskey and drink it up.
How do I go back? As soon as I think about it, the bizarre feeling returns leaning heavily from all sides, and I black out.
“Hey, bro, did you fall asleep?” Alex asks, and his voice brings me to life. I wake up ending my “dive” and coming back to reality. However, things are different now. The party never stopped in this version of reality, and I’m much more drunk than I was.
Drunk. And scared as hell.
∗ ∗ ∗
Of course, the events of that fateful day were not random. I figured out my newfound abilities pretty quickly. In a way, I was lucky to face all of this timey-wimey stuff being not sober. Guess that I fully grasped the absurdity of what had happened only the next morning, when everything already seemed retrospective, and I was able to analyze the extraordinary culmination of the previous evening rationally.
At first I needed an extremely clear memory to “dive” into the past. It was perfect if I remembered not only the events I wanted to revisit, but also background noises, smells, tactile sensations.
Over time, I learned to come back to literally any moment I had at least slightest recollection of. However, there were a number of nuances.
Changing reality came at a price. I quickly found out that when I woke up after the “dive” I usually had an awful migraine. Moreover, the longer I stayed in the past and the further I went back in time, the worse I’d feel when I returned.
Besides, whenever I was “diving” into the past, in reality it looked like I fell asleep for a second. I put two and two together and acquired a habit to “dive” at night lying in bed after taking a couple of pills of aspirin. Thus I was able to continue to sleep after returning to the present.
It’s only natural that at the beginning I abused this ability a lot. Got a tricky question in the exam? Why worry if you could study it later and “dive” into the beginning of the test. Tired after a hard day? “Dive” into the last-year holidays in Greece and swim in a warm sea for hours before going to bed.
In the first six month I turned my life from good to almost perfect. Only the love life didn’t yield under my luck.
At the very next party, right after I discovered my new power, I tried to hook up with Nika, the girl who studied on another program in my university. By that moment we were already close friends, and to be frank I liked her a lot. She was cute, with short black hair, deep-blue eyes and constant wide smile, but her appearance was not what attracted me. She was much smarter than literally anyone I knew, and that was the best thing about her. Seemed like she knew the answer to any question. She had a well thought-out point of view on any topic, and despite the fact that sometimes we disagreed and argued about different things, it was always kinda fun to spend time with her.
Of course, I thought that Nika liked me too. That evening I was hoping to finally move our relationships to the next level, but nothing went as planned.
At some point we had a bit of a fight. Since I’d just got a taste of my new power, I felt omnipotent at that moment (to be fair, whiskey also helped this illusion a little), so naturally I “dived” five minutes back in time and tried to avoid the confrontation. But something went wrong. As soon as I changed the subject, Nika looked at me strangely (I’d even say nervously, but once again I was a bit drunk, so I might be wrong) and awkwardly interrupted our conversation. She left the party soon after it, and I told myself that most likely I did something stupid because of the alcohol.
Next morning I wrote her to say sorry (as it often happens I wasn’t even sure what I was apologizing for). Nika answered that everything was fine, but she was clearly not in the mood to chat.
Actually, after that day she was never in the mood to chat. With me, at least.
I tried going back in time to fix whatever broke between us again and again, but it was all for nothing. After that day Nika shut me out completely. All my attempts to talk to her either in the past or in the present were futile. After a couple of months I became annoyed by it and finally stopped.
However, this fiasco didn’t decrease my intention to use time travel as a silver bullet for any problem at all.
I didn’t hesitate to change even the distant past. One day my friend reminded me that when I was thirteen I was once beaten by two gopniks (basically, Ukrainian mobsters) who took all of my money. I was eager to test my ability to go so far back in time, so I “dived” immediately and simply changed my route from school to home.
That alteration revealed an interesting effect. After I woke up, I remembered two versions of reality simultaneously. In the new reality I came home unharmed, yet the next morning my classmate Vlad missed the school. Our homeroom teacher looked very depressed. She gathered us after the lessons and told us that Vlad was severely beaten the day before so he was hospitalized with a concussion and broken ribs. In this reality I remembered that I called his parents and visited him in the hospital. He told us that two guys stopped him and asked to “borrow some money for a bus ticket”. Vlad refused, so they knocked him to the ground and kicked him badly. I remembered being scared and being unable to sleep that night thinking that the same shit could have happened to me if I’d taken the usual route home.
In other words, in the past I had some blurry recollections of what I had been doing during the “dive”, but I didn’t have any slightest idea of why I had been doing it or what I had been thinking at that moment. For example, if I “dived” into the past and decided to go to medical college instead of choosing computer science, when I woke up I’d still be studying at my alma mater, because thoughts of the “future me” would not be remembered by the “past me”.
Besides, all recollections of the new version of reality were distant and blurry. They rather resembled a movie I saw than a life I lived through.
The last important limitation of my ability was being able to return to each time point only once. I had a very unpleasant way to figure it out. At the end of the winter I slipped on ice and sprained my ankle. Without thinking twice I limped my way home and “dived”. It was definitely not my day, cause I fell on the very same spot and broke a knee. I “woke up” in pain cursing my own clumsiness and tried to go back in time again. However something went wrong. As much as I tried, I wasn’t able to “dive” neither into the new recollection nor the old one.
This limitation completed the set of rules I discovered. Apart from that nothing restricted me, so I experimented with reality for the time being, until one of my “dives” shook my confidence.
On that ill-fated day two years ago I decided to test the extents of my ability. Searching my memory, I found that I miraculously remember a moment of twenty years ago, when I was only two and a half.
That winter our family was moving from a tiny one-bedroom apartment (the five of us lived there! Can you imagine?) into a bigger one two blocks away. It was freezing cold and we didn’t have a car, so my parents were moving our belongings on a sled.
For some reason a single evening was imprinted on my memory: kids’ sled packed with books tied with twine; me, sitting in the back and holding the stack with my hands; mom, wearing a red jacket, pulling the sled through the creaky snow glowing in the light of street lamps.
This scene was so vivid in my mind that without further delay I “dived”.
Yet that “dive” was different from the others. Probably, it was somehow related to the kid’s brain being not ready for an adult’s consciousness. Anyway I lost control of my mind and body completely: it was like a dream. And what I saw was nothing like what I remembered.
∗ ∗ ∗
I am sitting on a pink plastic sled and holding a bunch of books in front of me. The sled glides smoothly through the snow leaving a clear trace of the runners behind. My mom is pulling it. My dad is walking next to her. He has large bags with houseware in both hands. I look at them and see something breathtaking: there are crystals flying in the air above their heads. My father’s crystal is large, but it’s dirty and turbid. My mother’s crystal is tiny and resembles a piece of cracked glass.
I raise my head and see a crystal above me as well. It’s not that big, but it’s beautiful. It looks like an iridescent diamond of perfect shape. It’s translucent and (it doesn’t even make any sense but I am sure of it) extremely dense.
“Well, that’s because you’re still a kid – you are pristine, aren’t you?” This thought comes to my mind for some reason. Somehow I am confident that every person has a crystal like that.
Parents talk to each other, and despite the fact that I recognize that they are talking in Russian, I cannot understand half of what they are saying.
Everything seems so surreal, but at the same time my child’s brain somehow perceives the reality as completely normal.
Finally, we arrive at a building where our new apartment is located. With a bit of nostalgia I look at the communal courtyard where I spent (or will spend, depending on how you look at it) most of my childhood. I see a small tree sprout near the wall – in the present it almost covers the window of my parent’s room. I see a rusty old Soviet-era playground that will be demolished by tenants of our block several years later. At last, I notice Uncle Misha, an old schizophrenic living next door. He sits on a bench out in the cold and mutters something under his breath. I recall him treating us, kids, with candies and telling us strange anecdotal stories that supposedly happened to him. I also remember him dying of a heart attack and his corpse lying on the very same bench for hours covered with a bedsheet until the ambulance finally arrived.
Mom says something to me, and I hardly make out that they are going to get the stuff to the apartment, and she wants me to stay alone with the sled for a minute.
My parents enter the building, while I stay outside. Out of sheer boredom, I stare at Uncle Misha. He looks the same as I remember. He is wearing a dusty and ragged coat. In addition, he has dirty gray hair and a constant idiotic facial expression. Suddenly I realize that when I was a kid I considered him a funny old lunatic, but from my adult point of view he virtually looks like a hobo.
All of a sudden, the old man turns to me. He looks at me for a second, and something inexplicable happens. Dull half-smile is replaced by a crooked grin. His gaze becomes cold and stern.
“I know that you are watching, boy” he says in a calm and confident voice. “Your past is my future. Perhaps, I should look after you a bit. And when you are fixed, you’ll understand me. For now you go away.”
As soon as he finishes this speech, I am thrown to the present. I wake up with an unbearable headache and feel sick for the rest of the day.
When I finally come to my senses, for the first time in years I start thinking about the simple fact that I might be not the only time traveler.
In a few more hours I suddenly realize that Uncle Misha had no crystal.
∗ ∗ ∗
I have never “dived” to the early childhood years since that day. Moreover, I restricted myself to using the ability only when it’s really necessary.
Even so, at some point I faced an obstacle. Apparently, there were some events that I couldn’t change after all.
∗ ∗ ∗
Max is one of my oldest pals. We went to school together, and although he moved to Kyiv to study at university, we still remained good friends.
On Sunday, June 23rd, his father sends me a friend request on Facebook. I know him well, so I answer with a stupid waving hand emoji. He stays silent for a minute. Then he coldly tells me that last night Max died under unclear circumstances.
At first I simply cannot comprehend it. I sit in shock, and strange thoughts cross my mind. I think that it must be a lie. I open our Facebook chat and check that Max was online eighteen hours ago. Well, it can’t be right. Maybe, someone hacked his dad’s account to prank me. It can’t be real that Max was alive yesterday and now he’s gone, can it?
Turns out that it can. My brain finally processes this fact, and I cry like a baby.
Feels like hours pass. At last I stop weeping. Automatically I wash my face, take the pill and go to bed. Last morning comes to my mind, and I “dive”. At once I call Max and tell him an improvised story about a surprise visit. I say that I am coming to Kyiv on the evening train, so he’d better meet me at the station.
“Sorry, buddy, I can’t,” Max interrupts me. “I got stuff to do today. Gonna come home around midnight. When do you arrive? Eleven p.m.? Perfect. Come to my house right away, make yourself at home. Sorry, gotta go right now. Ping me in messenger,” he hangs up.
When I “wake up”, I realize how stupid I was. Returning to the previous day without any plan, I messed up a lot, cause now I cannot visit this time period again.
During the next few days I carefully find out the details. His father tells me that Max went to an abandoned building with his friends. Apparently, he fell through a decrepit floor and landed on a metal carcass. Doctors say that he died instantly without any pain or agony, but that is little comfort. I know that I must do something to save him from this tragedy.
Next time I plan everything beforehand. In April I give Max a birthday present – tickets for a concert of his favorite DJ who’s gonna perform on the evening of June 22.
I wake up. There’s no need to check – I already know that for some reason Max preferred an abandoned house to the concert.
Over the next week I am making several more attempts. I even make an unexpected discovery. Apparently I can return to the same point for multiple times, if some of the later changes led me to being at a completely different place at this period of time.
I “dive” one month backwards and arrange my visit to Max on that fateful weekend.
When the date finally comes, we meet in Kyiv and spend the Saturday morning together. He introduces me to his new girlfriend, Natalie.
During lunch my friend surprises me with a question.
“Hey, are you still interested in all that paranormal stuff you were keen on at school? Creepy threads and the like,” asks Max. “My friends and I… We are going to check this abandoned building near the River Port. There’s a room with real X-files-level shit. You’re gonna like it.”
“Do I? Max, we are not kids anymore. What could be so interesting there?” I answer with a poker face. However, my heart is pounding in my chest, since I understand that if I do nothing, that little trip will cost my friend his life.
“Come and see,” Natalie says much to my annoyance. I am going to tell them everything I think about their idiotic adventurism, but Max starts talking.
“Do you remember my university friends you met at my birthday party? Last year we were doing, ahem, a bit of an urban exploration, so to speak. Visited some of the popular places. You saw my photos from the Soviet medical lab, right? Well, at the end of April we got into this house near the River Port. Nothing special. Typical pre-revolutionary building, 120 years or so. Actually, I was there once before, a long time ago, right after I moved here from Kharkiv, but I don’t remember much, so it was fun to come there again, you see. So we checked the roof, took a bunch of photos, that’s pretty much it. However, on the way down we saw a strange room. It had all the walls covered in text, like if somebody wrote on the wallpaper with a pen. At first we thought that someone crazy did it. Maybe a junkie. There was a lot of different stuff, but mostly some kind of diary entries. The dates were going from 2013, so we thought that it was written by vagrants that used the house as a shelter for winter or something like that. What’s strange is that there were notes related to global events. Something like ‘Portugal vs France 1-0’. That's the UEFA-2016 finals for you, in case you don’t know. We wouldn’t pay attention if Natalie hadn’t noticed an inscription in the corner that said ‘March or April 2019, the cathedral burns’. Now guess what! It was only a few days after the fire at Notre-Dame de Paris. Why would some junkies write about it? Fuck it, they couldn’t write it, cause when we came to this room there was a thick layer of dust on the floor. Nobody was there for months. Nobody could have written it, buddy.”
Max stops to catch his breath, and I say:
“Well, it is kinda creepy, but it can be just a coincidence, right?”
My face is still showing complete lack of interest, but inside I am frightened, because my mind quickly gives me an alternative explanation. And I don’t like it.
“Just wait for it. I haven’t finished yet,” Max impatiently continues. Usually he’s less talkative, but now I clearly see his excitement. “We took some pictures of those writings and forgot about it for a while. In a couple of weeks Natalie reminded me about it, and I decided to sort out those records. First thing that struck me was that every note corresponded to an actual event that happened. I know what you’re thinking. You wanna say that it’s some kind of a sick joke, right? Now then, one of the writings said that there will be protests in Hong Kong at the beginning of June. You can imagine how stunned I was when I opened the news two weeks ago. That’s where the interesting part starts. The last record is June 22nd, 2019. It’s today, by the way. It says ‘entry point’. Do you get it?”
Oh, I get it. I definitely get it better than Max himself, but instead of telling it to him I say:
“I get that you want to prank me.”
“C’mon, buddy, how long have you known me?” sincerely says Max. “I’m serious. That’s some real shit. Alright, whether you are joining us or not, we’re gonna go there this evening and see what happens.”
I bring up a few more unconvincing arguments against this expedition, but deep down I already know that I’ll join them anyway. I need to see it with my own eyes, because the most obvious explanation of all this stuff is that it’s written by somebody who literally knew the future. Somebody who “dived” into the past and left those notes for an unknown reason.
At last, I halfheartedly agree, and in a couple of hours we meet Max’s friends at the nearby metro station. After a short trip we arrive at the River Port and finally at half past seven we find ourselves at our destination.
The building doesn’t look welcoming at all. Two-story house has crumbling brick walls covered in weather-stained yellow paint. Broken windows are menacingly grinning with glass shards. One of the walls is dangerously leaned to the inside.
We pass to the entrance hall through the door covered in graffiti tags, and up the ramshackle stairs to the second floor. Everybody is a bit excited, but also nervous, because nobody knows what to expect.
Max goes first. He opens the door to the corridor of the second floor and invites us inside, but nobody rushes in. I realize that despite the bravado they are actually a bit scared of what comes next, so I shrug and come in. Max stands right behind me.
It more or less matches my expectations. Bare walls, high ceilings typical for pre-war buildings, cracked floors and tons of dust. When I step forward, floorboards suddenly creak under my feet, and I freeze in fear remembering the cause of Max’s death.
At this point I question my own sanity. I knew that this house killed my friend in each version of reality, but I still came here. What was I thinking? It was clearly a terrible idea. Nevertheless I decide to go to the end. I need to get the answers.
I go straight through the hall and enter a room. It has clear signs of the previous visit. There is a ragged table surrounded by piles of debris and a couple of empty cans.
“Well, everything is fine… I guess. Looks exactly as we left it,” hesitantly says Max coming inside. His friends enter the room after him. “Let’s unpack here.”
One of the guys opens his backpack and takes out several beer bottles. Natalie gets out a blanket.
“Like a picnic,” I comment.
“Yep. We might be staying here till midnight if need be,” answers Max. “Alright, let me show you the second room. The one with the records”
We go to the next room, and I am shocked with what I see. Every inch of the walls is covered with words. I turn on the flashlight on my phone and come towards the nearest note.
“I don’t know how I got here and I don’t know how to come back. I feel stupid writing it here to prove myself that it’s real,” I read and see the problem right away. There is a detail that Max forgot to mention for obvious reasons, and it makes me mad. “Dude, are you kidding me? Did you think that I’ll buy this bullshit? We spent so many years at school together and you honestly thought that I wouldn’t notice?”
“What are you…” Max tries to say something, but I don’t stop for a second.
“How much time did you waste on this shit?” I shout.
“What do you mean?” he asks with genuine surprise.
“I recognized your handwriting, you blockhead,” I answer angrily, but then doubt sneaks up on me. If it’s all a dumb prank designed by Max, then what was he doing in the same place at the same time in all the other versions of reality?
While I’m thinking, Max takes a closer look and amazedly says: “Now that you mention it, that does look like my handwriting. But I didn’t write it, I swear. C’mon, see for yourself, these writings are extremely old. How could I do it? Unless you think that I did it during the first visit to make fun of you in six years,” he laughs and goes to the next inscription. Sudden revelation strikes my mind. I turn to my friend, but before I am able to say anything, he giggles nervously and says: “Now that’s just plain creepy. Listen to this one: ‘Max, do not worry, everything is going to be fine’. Damn.”
Next few seconds are forever imprinted in my memory.
His face becomes peaceful. His eyes close. I take a step towards Max, and at the very same moment he falls on his back. When his body touches the floor, I hear a loud crash, and a section of the floor breaks underneath him.
I stand at the edge of the gaping hole and see a puddle of blood spreading beneath my friend's dead body. I hear screams and loud footsteps, but for me it makes no sense to stay here any longer.
I wake up.
∗ ∗ ∗
That “dive” brought me down completely. It was unbearable to wake up over and over again knowing that once again I wasn’t able to save him. I finally gave up.
One last time I returned to the beginning of June only to take a vacation and fly to Turkey in order to basically get drunk every day for the next two weeks. In the end I not only missed the news of my friend’s death but his funeral as well.
In all versions of reality everybody considered what happened to be a tragic accident. Even Natalie didn’t make a connection between the writings and his death.
I was the only one who knew the truth. Because in the final moments of his life Max “dived”. I suppose that he traveled to his memory of the very same abandoned house in 2013. Scared, confused, he didn’t know better than to write his last monologue to leave a proof to the future self. At some point, he probably realized that he was stuck in a time loop. That’s when he wrote the last message: “Max, do not worry, everything is going to be fine”. Maybe, he thought that he’d be stuck in this time branch forever. Perhaps thinking that he’d gotta live through the next six years again, he tried to leave as many notes about the future as possible, before he forgot something important. Or maybe he expected to come back to our time so he wrote these notes out of pure fatalism. To close the loop, in a manner of speaking.
Either way he couldn’t know that at the same moment he became unconscious for a second and his body was already falling from the four meters height. His fate was sealed. He was never meant to come back.
And I couldn’t change it.
I considered myself to be almost almighty. I thought that I could sculpt the reality as I please. And yet my godlike powers were not enough to save my friend from death.
Was it the end of my problems? Nope, it was just the beginning.
Part II

[Alfa-Bank (Mikhail Fridman) - - -> NTechLab/FindFace http://archive.is/41bFq- - -> Trump Tower...]
[“Someone high in the Russian government wanted a communications channel between the Kremlin and the Trump Transition Team.” – TIME (2019)]
TIME—Questions Remain About Putin's Request for a Back Channel to the Trump Transition
(5/21/2019) ”A few weeks before Donald Trump became president, Russian banker Petr Aven, a billionaire oligarch with Moscow’s Alfa Bank, pulled aside Washington lobbyist Richard Burt at a corporate meeting in Luxembourg with a sensitive request.
Aven told Burt that ‘someone high in the Russian government’ wanted ‘a communications channel between the Kremlin and the Trump Transition Team’ according to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s recently released report. Aven wanted Burt, a former ambassador who had helped Trump’s campaign, to work on setting it up.
Burt later told Mueller’s team that the request was, in the words of the report, ‘outside the normal realm’, even for Burt, a well-traveled Washington insider who had worked with Aven for years. It looks even more remarkable now.
The ‘high’ Russian official was none other than President Vladimir Putin, Mueller’s team would later learn. Amid what Mueller called a ‘flurry of Russian activity’ during the Trump transition, the Aven outreach is the only publicly known instance in which Putin, a onetime KGB spy, was personally involved in directing Russia’s clandestine efforts with the incoming administration.
The surreptitious contacts involving Putin, Aven and Burt as described in the Mueller report contradict repeated assertions by Alfa Bank that it had no contacts with Trump or people around him. At the time of Trump’s election, Alfa Bank was at the center of a mystery over an unexplained surge in computer traffic from Moscow to the Trump Organization in the midst of the 2016 presidential campaign. Computer analysts concluded that Alfa Bank had developed a covert communications channel to the Trump Organization.” http://web.archive.org/web/20190731064842/https://time.com/5592739/donald-trump-petr-aven-alfa-bank
[In late July 2016 NTechLab conducted the first test of FaceN biometric algorithm on members of the public at the annual Alfa Future People Festival (Alfa-Bank), a Burning Man style event in Russia. NTechLab used the image database to demonstrate the use of FindFace software for potential clients/investors.
In late July 2016 an independent team of data scientists were monitoring server traffic at Trump Tower in the wake of the DNC data breach. The hackers found something that has never been fully explained or understood since—data of an unknown and suspicious nature being transferred to a Trump Tower server. Upon close investigation the source of the anomalous communication was traced to a server inside Russia belonging to Alfa-Bank...]
•Forbes (Russia)—Face to face: Russian face recognition startups go global (12/5/2016) “Most of the usual users got to know the technology of face recognition thanks to FindFace. However, the founders of the company do not hide that the launch of the service was a thoughtful marketing move. The company does not plan to earn the existing part of the revenue from the mass audience. ‘We wanted to show everyone a modern level of technology development,’ [Alexander] Kabakov† explains. ‘Access was paid for not to heavily load our servers, so the revenue from the application is minimal.’ NTechLab also has two solutions: the cloud FindFace Cloud API and the licensed FindFace Enterprise Server SDK. The first commercial contract was signed by NTechLab with Alfa-Bank† and VimpelCom. Visitors to the festival of electronic music Alfa Future People with the help of FindFace could find their photos among hundreds of others by sending a selfie to a chat bot. ‘For three days, the bot received about 12,000 requests, and in response, he sent 30,500 pictures from AFP photographers,’ says Snezhana Chernogortseva, Strategic Marketing Director of VimpelCom.” http://www.forbes.ru/tehnologii/333977-licom-k-licu-rossiyskie-startapy-po-raspoznavaniyu-lic-vyhodyat-na-mirovoy-uroven (http://archive.is/y9gEt) [Translated] †[😐 Alexander (Aleksandr) Kabakov: NTechLab/FindFace founder (2015), VP of Special Projects (social media) at Mail.Ru (2017) during Facebook “image scraping” massive data collection, Agency One digital communications (founding partner, 2010), political scientist, online presidential campaign manager (Prokhorov/“Right Cause” 2012, Putin/“United Russia” 2018) http://bit.ly/2uwKVfb http://bit.ly/2TIDRpC; http://bit.ly/2HVjLWX; http://bit.ly/2JHsVcb]
•The Rachael Maddow Show—New look at Trump Org server mystery suggests avenues of inquiry (10/9/2018) “Dexter Filkins, contributor to The New Yorker, talks with Rachel Maddow about what is known about unusual communication between a Trump Organization computer server and a server at Russia's Alfa Bank, and what more some well-placed subpoenas could find out.” http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/new-look-at-trump-org-server-mystery-suggests-avenues-of-inquiry-1340582467598 (http://archive.is/i5g92)
•Financial Times—Skadden’s oligarch work comes into focus after Mueller charges (2/23/2018) “Mikhail Fridman, the Ukrainian-born billionaire and co-founder of Alfa Group, would rely on Skadden in his battles with the British government and with BP, the UK oil and gas group. Roman Abramovich [http://facebook.com/story/graphql_permalink/?graphql_id=UzpfSTEwMDAwMDQyNTc3Mzc1MDpWSzoyNDAwMTU2MjA2ODk2MjM5], the Russian billionaire, trusted the firm so much that he made the head of its European operations the chairman of Chelsea football club after he acquired the team in 2003. After almost three decades of relationship building and profit making with the toughest businessmen to emerge from the ruins of the Soviet Union, the firm has found itself under the spotlight as the US Department of Justice investigates Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. On Tuesday, Alex van der Zwaan, a former London-based Skadden associate, pleaded guilty in a Washington DC court to lying to government prosecutors investigating the lobbying activities of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates in Ukraine. Mr. van der Zwaan’s prosecution by Robert Mueller, special counsel, is connected to a report Skadden wrote in 2012 for the Ukrainian government as part of a PR campaign allegedly orchestrated by Mr. Manafort. The report continues to haunt the firm six years later. Skadden would advise the oligarch in his successful court battle with Boris Berezovsky, his one-time friend and mentor who fled Russia in 2000 after clashing with Vladimir Putin. Skadden’s fees in the Berezovsky case in 2012 were a reported £35m. Mr. Buck became chairman of Chelsea after advising on Mr. Abramovich’s £140m takeover in 2003. Mr. Buck, now retired from Skadden, declined to comment for this article. He once rejected the label of ‘Abramovich’s right-hand man’ and instead called himself ‘the little-toe-on-the-left-foot man’. The firm also forged a relationship with Mikhail Fridman, acting for the AAR consortium that included Mr. Fridman and German Khan, a Russian-Ukrainian billionaire, in its battle with BP in 2011. Skadden later represented Mr Fridman when the UK government forced his L1 investment vehicle to sell gasfields in the North Sea. The firm gained a reputation for handling knotty and difficult corporate deals. Pavel Malyi, the firm’s first hire in Moscow who later served as chief financial officer of Sibur, the gas processing and petrochemical company, said Skadden would be his first call for tricky transactions in Russia. A lawyer who saw the firm’s litigators in action called them ‘tough, smart and savvy’. But Skadden’s involvement in Ukraine’s turbulent politics proved less sure-footed. In 2012, Mr. Manafort, the American lobbyist and later campaign manager for Donald Trump, helped arrange a report by Skadden for the Moscow-backed government of Viktor Yanukovych, former president of Ukraine. US investigators have taken an interest in the case as part of Mr. Mueller’s investigation into Mr. Gates’ and Mr. Manafort’s dealings in Ukraine. On Thursday, Mr. Mueller filed new charges of fraud and tax evasion against the pair. Mr. Manafort has denied wrongdoing. Mr. Gates is expected to plead guilty on Friday to conspiracy against the US and making a false statement The Ukraine report has been thrust into the spotlight once again because of Mr. van der Zwaan, 33, a Dutch national who worked for Skadden in London. The Russian-speaking associate worked on the Tymoshenko report. Mr. van der Zwaan’s profile, since deleted from Skadden’s website, also listed work for Gennady Bogolyubov, a Ukrainian oligarch, when the businessman was sued by his fellow countryman Victor Pinchuk in 2013. He also acted for Mr. Abramovich’s businesses in relation to mining assets in Ukraine, according to the profile. Last summer, the associate’s connections to the oligarch world deepened when he married Eva Khan, a daughter of Mr. Khan, the Russian-Ukrainian billionaire whose interests Skadden has represented in the past alongside Mr. Fridman.” http://www.ft.com/content/741975b0-18ae-11e8-9376-4a6390addb44 (http://archive.is/EWc7e)
•Tea Pain (data science blog)—Data Patterns Suggest Trump ToweSpectrum Health Ran a “Stealth Data Machine” With Russia (3/8/2018) “Jared Kushner is currently taking a victory lap, crowin’ about his ‘Stealth Data Machine’ that put Donald Trump over the top in the 2016 race. Let’s pry off the lid and peer into the inner-workings of this ‘Data Machine.’ The Signal in the Noise: Building on the data analysis by @Conspirator0 on Twitter, Tea Pain has stumbled onto a possible ‘signal in the noise’ that opens a window into the data-swappin’ shenanigans going on between Trump Tower, Spectrum Health and Russia’s Alfa Bank during the election. The data traffic, when analyzed, tells a very different story, a story of automated, orchestrated data sharing among multiple sites for a strategic end. Tea Pain originally dismissed this story as a possible red-herring. With the Russia craze at a fever pitch, this activity could be explained by what Tea’s daddy used to say, ‘When you got a new hammer, everything looks like a nail.’ But when Tea Pain saw the data patterns analyzed by Conspiritor0, he knew he’d spotted something mighty familiar: Database Replication. Put a pin in that, more on that later. At first, data analysts were puzzled by what appeared to be random activity with no apparent pattern. Perhaps it was email activity? Maybe money transfers? But there were literally thousands of these IP ‘pings.’[...] Whatever was running, it would hook up, transfer data for a few minutes, then go to sleep for an hour. This was the clue that led Tea Pain to formulate a much clearer working model to explain what we were all seeing: SQL Server Database Replication between multiple sites. What Is Database Replication?: Database Replication is a rather simple concept. When you have a database with millions of records representing hundreds of gigabytes of data, and you would like to keep a copy of that database housed in 2 or more locations, it makes no sense to continually copy the entire database from point A to point B every time a change is made, so you ‘replicate’ it. This allows only the changes made to be sent from one database to another[...] Tea Pain’s working theory is that Russia created a voter targeting database with information gleaned from hacked DNC data rolls and other data rolls ‘acquired’ from other states to feed this growing contact database. That database originated at Russian Intelligence which was in turn replicated to Russia’s Alfa Bank. This is where the ‘data laundering’ takes place, Alfa Bank is the pivot point where the FSB’s data fingerprints are wiped clean. Ironically Russia launders its data at the same place it launders its money. At Trump Tower, more data could merged into this system using various legal sources as well. Spectrum Health could also add value to the data by matching names and addresses in their extensive healthcare databases to harvest email addresses and phone numbers to flesh out this list. All these changes would be promptly replicated back to Russia in a matter of hours. Once back in the hands of Russian Intelligence, this massaged data could be programmatically matched up with social media handles to create a micro-targeted ‘hit list’ for the thousand Russian trolls employed by Putin.” http://web.archive.org/web/20170404010239/https://teapainusa.wordpress.com/2017/04/03/data-patterns-suggest-trump-towerspectrum-health-ran-a-stealth-data-machine-with-russia
•Meduza—The end of privacy ‘Meduza’ takes a hard look at FindFace and the looming prospect of total surveillance (7/14/2016) “In June 2016, N-Tech. Lab sold its technology to Beeline to create the Alfa Future People Electronic music festival app. The festival will be held on July 22 – 24 under Nizhny Novgorod, last year it gathered about 40,000 spectators. The application based on the FACEN algorithm will allow you to send your selfie to the robot, which, in turn, will find other photos of the user in the festival [data]base.” http://web.archive.org/web/20160827095842/https://meduza.io/en/feature/2016/07/14/the-end-of-privacy
•The Rachel Maddow Show—New look at Trump Org server mystery suggests avenues of inquiry (10/9/2018) “Dexter Filkins, contributor to The New Yorker, talks with Rachel Maddow about what is known about unusual communication between a Trump Organization computer server and a server at Russia's Alfa Bank, and what more some well-placed subpoenas could find out.” http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/new-look-at-trump-org-server-mystery-suggests-avenues-of-inquiry-1340582467598 (http://archive.is/i5g92)
•The Rachel Maddow Show—Republicans To Put Russian Bank Lawyer In Coveted DoJ Position [Alfa-Bank] http://facebook.com/drew.incarnate/posts/1736659809691528
•CNN—Russian bank sends threatening letter to computer scientist who called for Trump investigation [Alfa-Bank] (3/22/2017) "Alfa-Bank has stepped up its fight against computer scientists who suggested the major Russian bank was in communication with the Trump Organization in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The bank has sent a letter to one of those computer scientists, L. Jean Camp of Indiana University, warning of potential legal action. 'Alfa-Bank is exploring all available options to protect itself from malicious or tortious interference,' it said. 'Those options include litigation.' In recent months, Camp posted the bank's leaked computer logs on her personal website. She has repeatedly said 'this computer traffic should be investigated" by American law enforcement. In its letter, the bank noted that she "disclosed certain computer data regarding Alfa Bank... and encouraged inquiries into supposed links to the Trump Organization.' 'Your activities continue to this day to promote an unwarranted investigation into Alfa-Bank's 'communication' with the Trump Organization,' the letter warned." http://www.facebook.com/drew.incarnate/posts/1736726246351551
•Politico—3 Russians named in Trump dossier sue Fusion GPS for libel [Fridman, Alfa-Bank] http://facebook.com/drew.incarnate/posts/1737103689647140
•Getty Images—Face Control Finds First Commercial Use At Alfa Future People Festival http://facebook.com/drew.incarnate/posts/1736623383028504
•Slate—Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia? (10/31/2016) “This spring, a group of computer scientists set out to determine whether hackers were interfering with the Trump campaign. They found something they weren’t expecting. [...] In late July, one of these scientists—who asked to be referred to as Tea Leaves, a pseudonym that would protect his relationship with the networks and banks that employ him to sift their data—found what looked like malware emanating from Russia. The destination domain had Trump in its name, which of course attracted Tea Leaves’ attention. But his discovery of the data was pure happenstance—a surprising needle in a large haystack of DNS lookups on his screen. ‘I have an outlier here that connects to Russia in a strange way,’ he wrote in his notes. He couldn’t quite figure it out at first. But what he saw was a bank in Moscow that kept irregularly pinging a server registered to the Trump Organization on Fifth Avenue. More data was needed, so he began carefully keeping logs of the Trump server’s DNS activity. As he collected the logs, he would circulate them in periodic batches to colleagues in the cybersecurity world. Six of them began scrutinizing them for clues. (I communicated extensively with Tea Leaves and two of his closest collaborators, who also spoke with me on the condition of anonymity, since they work for firms trusted by corporations and law enforcement to analyze sensitive data. They persuasively demonstrated some of their analytical methods to me—and showed me two white papers, which they had circulated so that colleagues could check their analysis. I also spoke with academics who vouched for Tea Leaves’ integrity and his unusual access to information. ‘This is someone I know well and is very well-known in the networking community,’ said Camp. ‘When they say something about DNS, you believe them. This person has technical authority and access to data.’) The researchers quickly dismissed their initial fear that the logs represented a malware attack. The communication wasn’t the work of bots. The irregular pattern of server lookups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation—conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn’t an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank. The researchers had initially stumbled in their diagnosis because of the odd configuration of Trump’s server. ‘I’ve never seen a server set up like that,’ says Christopher Davis, who runs the cybersecurity firm HYAS InfoSec Inc. and won a FBI Director Award for Excellence for his work tracking down the authors of one of the world’s nastiest botnet attacks. ‘It looked weird, and it didn’t pass the sniff test.’ The server was first registered to Trump’s business in 2009 and was set up to run consumer marketing campaigns. It had a history of sending mass emails on behalf of Trump-branded properties and products. Researchers were ultimately convinced that the server indeed belonged to Trump.” http://web.archive.org/web/20161031215320/http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html
•The New Yorker—Was There a Connection Between a Russian Bank and the Trump Campaign?; A team of computer scientists sifted through records of unusual Web traffic in search of answers. (10/15/2018) “A set of cryptic data has inspired a years-long argument over its meaning. In June, 2016, after news broke that the Democratic National Committee had been hacked, a group of prominent computer scientists went on alert. Reports said that the infiltrators were probably Russian, which suggested to most members of the group that one of the country’s intelligence agencies had been involved. They speculated that if the Russians were hacking the Democrats they must be hacking the Republicans, too. ‘We thought there was no way in the world the Russians would just attack the Democrats,’ one of the computer scientists, who asked to be identified only as Max, told me. [...] As Max and his colleagues searched D.N.S. logs for domains associated with Republican candidates, they were perplexed by what they encountered. ‘We went looking for fingerprints similar to what was on the D.N.C. computers, but we didn’t find what we were looking for,’ Max told me. ‘We found something totally different—something unique.’ In the small town of Lititz, Pennsylvania, a domain linked to the Trump Organization (mail1.trump-email.com) seemed to be behaving in a peculiar way. The server that housed the domain belonged to a company called Listrak, which mostly helped deliver mass-marketing e-mails: blasts of messages advertising spa treatments, Las Vegas weekends, and other enticements. Some Trump Organization domains sent mass e-mail blasts, but the one that Max and his colleagues spotted appeared not to be sending anything. At the same time, though, a very small group of companies seemed to be trying to communicate with it. Examining records for the Trump domain, Max’s group discovered D.N.S. lookups from a pair of servers owned by Alfa Bank, one of the largest banks in Russia. Alfa Bank’s computers were looking up the address of the Trump server nearly every day. There were dozens of lookups on some days and far fewer on others, but the total number was notable: between May and September, Alfa Bank looked up the Trump Organization’s domain more than two thousand times. [...] One remarkable aspect of Foer’s story [Slate] involved the way that the Trump domain had stopped working. On September 21st, he wrote, the Times had delivered potential evidence of communications to B.G.R., a Washington lobbying firm that worked for Alfa Bank. Two days later, the Trump domain vanished from the Internet. [...] [T]he Trump-Alfa Bank story seemed to fade. The Trump campaign dismissed any connection, saying, ‘The only covert server is the one Hillary Clinton recklessly established in her basement.’ Bloggers and tech journalists assailed the Slate piece online. The cybersecurity researcher Robert Graham called the analysis ‘nonsense,’ and complained, ‘This is why we can’t have nice things on the Internet.’ He pointed out several problems. For instance, Foer’s sources had found that the Trump domain was blocking incoming e-mail, and argued that this was evidence that Trump and Alfa Bank were maintaining a private communications network; in fact, Listrak routinely configured its marketing servers to send e-mail but not to receive it. Graham also noted that the domain was administered not by Trump but by Cendyn, a company in Boca Raton that handled his company’s marketing e-mail. Alfa Bank hired two cybersecurity firms, Mandiant and Stroz Friedberg, to review the data. Both firms reported that they had found no evidence of communications with the Trump Organization. The bank also began trying to uncover the anonymous sources in the Slate piece. Attorneys representing Alfa contacted Jean Camp, telling her that they were considering legal action and asking her to identify the researchers who had assembled the data. [...] Alfa Bank was founded by Mikhail Fridman, in the last years of the Soviet Union. Fridman was born in western Ukraine and studied metallurgy in college. Like many others of his generation, he was introduced to the market economy through hustle. He sold theatre tickets, washed windows, and ran a student discothèque. After the Soviet Union collapsed, in 1991, Fridman joined the scramble to befriend members of the new government and amass a fortune with help from the state. Along with an economist named Petr Aven, who had previously served as the country’s minister for foreign economic relations, Fridman built Alfa Bank into one of the most successful businesses in the new Russia. Its parent company, Alfa Group, now controls the country’s largest private bank, along with financial institutions in several European nations. Fridman and Aven acquired reputations as brilliant, relentless businessmen. Describing the lawless post-Soviet years to the journalist Chrystia Freeland, who is now the foreign minister of Canada, Fridman said, ‘We were absolute savages.’ In a notorious episode in 2008, a group of Russian companies, including Alfa Group, tried to gain control of a joint venture they’d formed with British Petroleum. The power struggle was so fierce that the C.E.O. of the joint venture, Robert Dudley, felt compelled to leave Russia. The oligarchs kept pushing for control of the BP venture until it was sold to a state-owned petroleum company, for fifty-five billion dollars; Alfa Group’s cut was almost fourteen billion. Alfa Bank prospered during the Yeltsin years and has continued to do so under Putin. Though Fridman and Aven are not part of Putin’s innermost circle, they have managed to avoid the fate of some other oligarchs, who have had assets seized and, in a few cases, been imprisoned, after falling out of favor. Michael McFaul, a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, told me he was impressed that Fridman and Aven had ‘navigated the very difficult world of maintaining their private business interests and not crossing the Kremlin.’ One reason the server story alarmed Alfa Bank was that it threatened the bank’s standing in Washington. Members of Russia’s government and many of its businessmen have been under American economic sanctions since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, but Alfa’s principals and representatives have enjoyed access to U.S. politicians at the highest levels. Fridman and Aven met several times with officials at the Obama White House, discussing such issues as Russia’s effort to gain entrance to the World Trade Organization. (Alfa Bank maintains that it has ‘never advocated for political or trade issues on behalf of the Russian government.’) ‘Fridman and Aven were seen as people that Washington could talk to about U.S.-Russia, because they checked two boxes—they were ‘polite company’ oligarchs, and they could shed light on Putin’s intentions and perspective,’ a senior official in the Obama Administration told me. ‘They got meetings at State and on the Hill and at the White House. And they were understood to be operating with the consent and guidance of Vladimir Putin.’ Alfa is still closely tied to the Russian system, but Fridman and Aven live much of the time in the United Kingdom. If there was a communications link with the Trump Organization, it might have been created without their knowledge. According to experts I spoke to, large Russian companies typically have a member of the intelligence services, either active or retired, working at a senior level. If a company’s services are required in some way, the officer—called a kurator—coördinates them. ‘A company couldn’t say no,’ a Washington-based Russia expert told me. (When asked about this, an Alfa Bank spokesperson said, ‘To our knowledge there are no senior intelligence officials at senior levels at Alfa Bank.’) This past May, I saw Petr Aven in New York, at the Four Seasons Hotel. He had just come from a dinner in Washington, at which he had met a group of prominent Americans, including officials from the White House, to discuss Russia’s economic situation. Aven seemed worried about surveillance; before we sat down, he brought his phone to the other side of the lobby and hid it behind a plant. He wouldn’t say much for the record, but he told me that his bank didn’t have ‘any connection at all with Trump—nothing.’ Aven and Fridman have visited Washington less often since Trump took office. But Trump’s victory appeared to elevate Alfa Bank’s connections there—at least by association. Don McGahn, the White House counsel, came from Jones Day, one of the law firms that represent Alfa Bank in the United States. McGahn brought five Jones Day lawyers with him into the White House; six more were appointed to senior posts in the Administration. Jones Day has done work for businesses belonging to a long list of Russian oligarchs, including Oleg Deripaska, Viktor Vekselberg, and Alexander Mashkevich. The firm has also represented the Trump campaign in its dealings with Robert Mueller. For this reason, McGahn secured an ethics waiver that allows him to talk to his old firm when its clients have business before the U.S. government. In June, 2017, Trump nominated Brian Benczkowski, a lawyer who had overseen the Stroz Friedberg report for Alfa Bank, to lead the criminal division of the Justice Department. At his confirmation hearing, Benczkowski said emphatically that Stroz Friedberg, like Mandiant, had rejected the possibility of complicity. The investigation, he said, found that ‘there was no communications link between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank.’ Democratic senators expressed concern that Benczkowski had taken on work for Alfa Bank; he had been a senior member of Trump’s transition team and had good reason to expect that he would be appointed to a job in the Administration. ‘The client was a Russian bank that is under suspicion of having a direct connection with the Trump campaign,’ Senator Richard Durbin said, during the hearing. [...] [T]he traffic coincided with Paul Manafort’s time as Trump’s campaign manager—but the D.N.S. queries continued after Manafort stepped down. ‘A lot of people are seeing faces in clouds,’ Leto said. The Trump Organization had done little to clarify the matter. In October, 2016, it released a statement denying interactions with Alfa Bank ‘or any Russian entity.’ Instead, it offered a peculiar explanation for the D.N.S. traffic: it had been triggered when ‘an existing banking customer of Cendyn’—the marketing firm—had used the company’s systems to send communications to Alfa Bank. Such a scenario would be highly irregular; it was as if Gmail had allowed a user to send e-mail from another user’s account. ‘It makes no sense,’ Paul told me. Trump’s advocates claimed that the investigations sponsored by Alfa Bank had proved that Alfa and the Trump Organization were not communicating. In fact, they sidestepped the question. Mandiant, one of the cybersecurity firms, said that it was unable to inspect the bank’s D.N.S. logs from 2016, because Alfa retained such records for only twenty-four hours. The other firm, Stroz Friedberg, gave the same explanation for why it, too, was “unable to verify” the data. As Jones’s team vetted the data, they examined various possible explanations. One was malware, which had played a role in the hack of the D.N.C.’s computers. Most malware has ‘distinctive patterns of behavior,’ Camp told me. It is typically sent out in a blast, aimed simultaneously at multiple domains. There is a ‘payload’—a mechanism that activates the malicious activity—and a ‘recruitment mechanism,’ which enables the malware to take over parts of a vulnerable computer. None of the experts whom Jones assembled found any evidence of this behavior on the Trump server. ‘Malware doesn’t keep banging on the door like that,’ Paul said. A second possibility was marketing e-mail. After the Slate article appeared, some commentators suggested that Trump’s server had innocently sent promotional e-mails to Alfa Bank, and that a computer there had responded with queries designed to verify the identity of the sender. [...] The timing and the frequency of the D.N.S. lookups also did not suggest spam, Paul and Leto believed. Mass-marketing e-mails are typically sent by an automated process, one after another, in an unbroken rhythm. The Alfa queries seemed to fall into two categories. Some came in a steady pulse, while others arrived irregularly—sometimes many in a day, sometimes a few. ‘The timing of the communication was not random, and it wasn’t regular-periodic,’ Paul said. ‘It was a better match for human activity.’ But, if the Trump server wasn’t sending or receiving e-mail, what could explain the traffic? There was the possibility of ‘spoofing’—essentially, faking an identity. [...] As Jones’s team sifted through explanations for the traffic, they began constructing their own theory. ‘What you have here is a minimally viable technical footprint of a small number of people who are using what I suspect is an ad-hoc system to communicate,’ Paul said. ‘Anytime the F.B.I. or anyone else pulls apart a cyber-crime organization, there is always some communication structure that’s used for command and control. That’s where the high-value communications happen.’ (Max and his colleagues did not see any D.N.S. evidence that the Trump Organization was attempting to access the server; they speculated that the organization was using a virtual private network, or V.P.N., a common security measure that obscures users’ digital footprints.) If this was a communications mechanism, it appeared to have been relatively simple, suggesting that it had been set up spontaneously and refined over time. Because the Trump Organization did not have administrative control of the server, Paul and Leto theorized that any such system would have incorporated software that one of the parties was already using. ‘The likely scenario is not that the people using the server were incredibly sophisticated networking geniuses doing something obscure and special,’ Max said. ‘The likely scenario is that they adapted a server and vender already available to them, which they felt was away from prying eyes.’ Leto told me that he envisioned ‘something like a bulletin-board system.’ Or it could have been an instant-messaging system that was part of software already in use on the server. Kramer, of Listrak, insisted that his company’s servers were used exclusively for mass marketing. ‘We only do one thing here,’ he told me. But Listrak’s services can be integrated with numerous Cendyn software packages, some of which allow instant messaging. One possibility is Metron, used to manage events at hotels. In fact, the Trump Organization’s October, 2016, statement, blaming the unusual traffic on a ‘banking customer’ of Cendyn, suggested that the communications had gone through Metron, which supports both messaging and e-mail. The parties might also have been using Webmail—e-mail that leaves few digital traces, other than D.N.S. lookups. Or, Paul and Leto said, they could have been communicating through software used to compose marketing e-mails. They might have used a method called foldering, in which messages are written but not sent; instead, they are saved in a drafts folder, where an accomplice who also has access to the account can read them. ‘This is a very common way for people to communicate with each other who don’t want to be detected,’ Leto told me. David Petraeus, when he was the director of the C.I.A., used this method to exchange intimacies—and to share classified information—with his lover, Paula Broadwell. In June, an attorney for the Mueller investigation accused Paul Manafort of using foldering to facilitate secret communications. Given the limitations of D.N.S. data, none of the independent experts I spoke to could be certain of what Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization were doing. Some of them cautioned that it was impossible even to guess at every way that an e-mail system might malfunction. A senior analyst at a D.N.S.-service provider said, ‘Things can get messed up in unexpected ways.’ But Paul and Leto maintained that they had considered and rejected every scenario that they had encountered in decades of cybersecurity work. ‘Is it possible there is an innocuous explanation for all this?’ Paul said. ‘Yes, of course. And it’s also possible that space aliens did this. It’s possible—just not very likely.’ [...] If Trump and Alfa Bank [...] were communicating, what might they have been talking about? Max and some of the other scientists I spoke to theorized that they may have been using the system to signal one another about events or tasks that had to be performed: money to be transferred, for instance, or data to be copied. ‘My guess is that, whenever someone wanted to talk, they would do a D.N.S. lookup and then route the traffic somewhere else,’ Richard Clayton, of the University of Cambridge, said. Camp also speculated that the system may have been used to coördinate the movement of data. She noted that Cambridge Analytica, which was working for the Trump campaign, took millions of personal records from Facebook. In Camp’s scenario, these could have been transferred to the Russian government, to help guide its targeting of American voters before the election. The researchers I spoke with were careful to point out that the limits of D.N.S. data prevent them from going beyond speculation. If employees of the companies were talking, the traffic reveals nothing about who they were or what they were saying; it is difficult to rule out something as banal as a protracted game of video poker. ‘If I’m a cop, I’m not going to take this to the D.A. and say we’re ready to prosecute,’ Leto said. ‘I’m going to say we have enough to ask for a search warrant.’ More complete information could be difficult to obtain. This March, after Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee announced that it had found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the committee’s Democrats filed a dissent, arguing that there were many matters still to be investigated, including the Trump Organization’s connections to Alfa Bank. The Democrats implored the majority to force Cendyn to turn over computer data that would help determine what had happened. Those records could show who in the Trump Organization used the server. There would probably also be a record of who shut down the Trump domain after the Times contacted Alfa Bank. Cendyn might have records of any outgoing communications sent by the Trump Organization. But the request for further investigation is unlikely to proceed as long as Republicans hold the majority. ‘We’ve all looked at the data, and it doesn’t look right,’ a congressional staffer told me. ‘But how do you get to the truth?’ The enigma, for now, remains an enigma. The only people likely to finally resolve the question of Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization are federal investigators.” http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/was-there-a-connection-between-a-russian-bank-and-the-trump-campaign (http://archive.is/MSR3j)
[“No collusion”? Collusion.]

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The first independent FunFair-powered Casino is expected to launch within the next 24 days (from RakeTheRake, a well-known online poker rakeback platform - by end of May), along with a new affiliate program that will allow anyone to promote FunFair and receive a piece of the action of the players they sign up (for life!).
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FunFair will be further streamlining the onboarding journey through the rest of Q2 (including a fully mobile-optimized experience, and a browser-independent wallet that will allow people to sign up and play from ANY browser / device whether it is crypto-enabled or not). A total of 5 or more FunFair-powered Casinos are expected to be operating by the end of the year.
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Great to see such strong early momentum and quickening acceleration from one of the best crypto projects out there.
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You can see the stats for yourself using the excellent FunStats.xyz
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CasinoFair is currently available to residents of 22 countries, including Canada, China, Brazil, Finland, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, Thailand, Ukraine, Mexico, Malaysia, Nigeria, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Kenya and Uruguay.

The draft law introduces comprehensive regulation of the gambling market in Ukraine
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine supported draft law No. 2285-d “On state regulation of the organization and conduct of gambling” as the basis in the first reading.
260 members of Parliament supported the document.
The draft law introduces comprehensive regulation of the gambling market in Ukraine and exclusive list of gambling activities permitted in Ukraine.
Highlights of the law about Casinos in Ukraine
The provision on the possibility of locating slot machine halls and betting shops in separate buildings is excluded. Gaming machines are allowed to be placed only in hotels.
The draft low introduces system for licensing gambling activities with a differentiated fee for licenses depending on the type of activity, location of a gambling establishment and the like; stringent requirements are established for the financial condition of gambling organizers in order to ensure their financial stability and ensure payment of winnings.
The document establishes special requirements for the compliance of gambling equipment used for gambling with generally accepted international standards; the basis is being created for introducing restrictions on the activities of operators that are not registered in Ukraine and do not have appropriate license.
It should be stressed that they plan to increase minimum age of gambler – from 18 to 21, as well as establish requirements for gamers and their identification, which will help to prevent the negative consequences of participation in gambling, in particular, persons under the age of 21, and tough financial sanctions for failure to comply with such requirements. The draft law suggests creating a register of self-restrictions of persons and of those who have other restrictions imposed. As a result, the future law makes it possible to limit participation of certain person in gambling for a period of 6 months to 3 years.
The bill provides that regulation in the field of gambling is carried out by a special body – the Commission for the Development and Regulation of Gambling, which is subordinate to the Cabinet of Ministers. The domain of competence of the commission includes licensing of gambling organizers, maintaining relevant registers, establishing requirements for certification of relevant gambling equipment.
The document introduces online monitoring system, which will allow for state control of the activities of the organizers of gambling by receiving data from the gaming equipment of the organizers of gambling, which is connected to a single system.
The document also stipulates the creation of a special Fund in the state budget to support medicine, sports and culture.
In addition, restrictions on the advertising of gambling are established; in particular, bill bans outdoor advertising, except for signage, and imposes restrictions on all other types of advertising.
Regulation of selected gambling activities
1) casino gambling establishments: limited casino operation mode is established, including locating facilities exclusively on the territory of buildings of five-star hotels with appropriate number of rooms for different territories; at this the area of ​​such institutions should be at least 500 square meters;
2) betting and gambling online: the draft law authorizes betting activity online or in betting shops. In addition, the bill establishes special requirements for gaming equipment and its certification for betting shops;
3) gambling online, certified online system and mandatory connection to the online monitoring system, website with .UA domain and the ability of each player to set voluntary restrictions on money and time are provided;
4) slot machines: limit on the number of slot machines is established – up to 40,000. The right to place these machines is exercised through electronic auctions with reference to the corresponding territory. The bill also sets requirements for slot machine halls (only in three, four and five star hotels).
5) lotteries: the bill suggests three licenses for the issue and holding of lotteries, which is used in many countries of the European Union and other foreign countries to stimulate the development of the lottery market. Such an approach will make it possible to attract large international companies in the field of lottery activities, introduce generally accepted international standards, attract investment in the country’s economy, increase the confidence of players in the field of lottery activities, etc.;
6) poker: allowed online; the draft law sets requirements for premises and special rules for holding poker tournaments.
Now it is difficult to say exactly when casino will be allowed in 5* Hotels in Ukraine, since the bill is still being finalized. However, we can certainly hope that gambling business will again become more open and legal in Ukraine.
In 2010, Ukraine completely banned gaming activities and all casinos were closed.
Yes, if you travel to Ukraine in 2020, you can visit the casino, there are none, even in 5 star hotels. However, you can enjoy nightlife Of Ukraine:
Guide to the nightlife of Kyiv https://guideme.com.ua/tour-item/kiev-bar-crawl/ Guide to the nightlife of Lviv https://guideme.com.ua/tour-item/lviv-nightlife-tou
Source: guideme.com.ua
Gambling in Ukraine

Rockstar has disabled gambling and coins purchasing in all countries which have a strict policy of anti gambling. You have no way to alter or bypass it unless you use a VPN.
EDIT: I did mention you can go ahead and use VPN and bypass it but i don't recommend doing so, You risk yourself being banned.
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List of countries that have anti gambling policy:

• Afghanistan
• Algeria
• American Samoa
• Azerbaijan
• Bangladesh – land-based gambling is illegal
• Barbados – land-based gambling is illegal
• Bhutan
• Brazil – land-based gambling is illegal
• Belarus
• Cambodia – gambling is illegal for natives, but land-based gambling is legal for foreign visitors
• Cayman Islands – land-based gambling is illegal, and online local casinos are banned, whereas foreign slots are not
• China
• Cuba
• Cyprus – online sports betting ok with a license
• Czech Republic – majority of online gambling is illegal (except online lottery and online sports betting)
• Ecuador – land-based gambling is illegal
• France – online casino gambling is not legal, but the rest of online gambling is ok – land-based is legal
• Greece – some online gambling is illegal
• Guam – land-based gambling is illegal
• Guatemala – land-based gambling is illegal
• Iceland – online casino gambling and online poker illegal – offline gambling is legal
• Italy – some online casinos are banned
• Indonesia
• Iran
• Iraq
• Israel
• Japan – land-based gambling is illegal
• Jordan
• Kuwait
• Kyrgyztan – land-based gambling is illegal
• Latvia – some online casinos are banned
• Libya
• Lithuania – some online casinos are banned
• Luxembourg – illegal online other than sports betting and online lottery
• Maldives
• Mali – only legal for foreign visitors
• Mauritania
• New Zealand – local casinos banned online, but foreign aren’t
• Norway – land-based gambling is illegal
• Oman
• Pakistan
• Palau – land-based gambling is illegal
• Poland – everything but online sports betting is illegal
• Qatar – land-based gambling is illegal
• Russia – online casino gambling and online poker is legal, but the rest is illegal
• Saudi Arabia
• Somalia
• Sudan
• Syria
• Taiwan
• Turkey – everything but online sports betting and online lottery is illegal
• Tuvalu
• Ukraine – everything but online lottery is illegal
• United States – online operators and some online casinos are banned (each law is different per state)
• Uzbekistan – land-based gambling is illegal
• Yemen – lad-based gambling is illegal

Syndicate Casino (2019) | Review | Games | Play Now Players from Victoria accepted
Average Complaint Response Time: 19 hours AskGamblers Certificate of Trust Syndicate Casino Review
More than 20 software providers available Mobile-friendly Live casino included SSL-encrypted Syndicate Casino is an online casino that features an extensive array of online slots, table games, video poker and live casino, developed by the leading software suppliers like Pragmatic Play, Endorphina, Habanero, iSoftBet, Elk Studios, Platipus and Mr.Slotty, to name a few. The website is available in English, French and German. Members can also log in using Syndicate mobile casino. Syndicate Casino is licensed and regulated by the Government of Curacao.
Restricted Countries and Territories The casino does not accept players residing in Spain, France and its overseas territories (Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, Réunion, Mayotte, St. Martin, French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna, New Caledonia), Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles (Curaçao, Bonaire, Aruba), St. Maarten, St. Eustatius, Saba, the UK, Ukraine, and the USA.
Virtual Games Once players open the casino lobby, they can access numerous video slots, powered by the leading software developers including Pragmatic Play, Habanero, Endorphina and Ezugi. To make it easier for players to navigate through the selection of online slots, there is a search engine to help them single out their favourite releases. The most popular titles include Great Rhino slot, Macarons slot, Taboo slot, and Wolf Gold slot.
Syndicate Casino offers a huge selection of table games ranging from blackjack and roulette to baccarat and poker games. In particular, table game variants include European Roulette, French Roulette, Multihand Blackjack Pro, Baccarat Zero Commission and other alternatives.
Live Casino Players who enjoy the thrill of being in a live casino environment can visit Syndicate’s live casino and engage with their live dealers. The game selection includes live roulette, live baccarat and live blackj­ack.
Mobile Gaming The casino is available on the go from any compatible mobile, smartphone or tablet device. All players need to do is load up the casino and access their favourite games. No application is required as the mobile casino supports hundreds of mobile slots and other games.
Support In case players need any kind of assistance, they are advised to contact the casino’s customer support team. Friendly support agents can be reached by email, telephone and live chat, available 24/7.
Security and Fairness When it comes to security, Syndicate Casino takes their players information very seriously and, therefore, uses a high level of SSL encryption. That way, players can be sure that all of their sensitive data is safe as is always encrypted before being transmitted over the internet.
Also, the casino uses a random number generator for the games available at the casino. Therefore, all games result in random and fair outcomes and cannot be manipulated. [email protected] Software Brandon T Future Yellowcas CORP
Deposit Methods
Withdrawal Methods

Syndicate Casino (2019) | Review | Games | Play Now Players from Victoria accepted
Average Complaint Response Time: 19 hours AskGamblers Certificate of Trust Syndicate Casino Review
More than 20 software providers available Mobile-friendly Live casino included SSL-encrypted Syndicate Casino is an online casino that features an extensive array of online slots, table games, video poker and live casino, developed by the leading software suppliers like Pragmatic Play, Endorphina, Habanero, iSoftBet, Elk Studios, Platipus and Mr.Slotty, to name a few. The website is available in English, French and German. Members can also log in using Syndicate mobile casino. Syndicate Casino is licensed and regulated by the Government of Curacao.
Restricted Countries and Territories The casino does not accept players residing in Spain, France and its overseas territories (Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, Réunion, Mayotte, St. Martin, French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna, New Caledonia), Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles (Curaçao, Bonaire, Aruba), St. Maarten, St. Eustatius, Saba, the UK, Ukraine, and the USA.
Virtual Games Once players open the casino lobby, they can access numerous video slots, powered by the leading software developers including Pragmatic Play, Habanero, Endorphina and Ezugi. To make it easier for players to navigate through the selection of online slots, there is a search engine to help them single out their favourite releases. The most popular titles include Great Rhino slot, Macarons slot, Taboo slot, and Wolf Gold slot.
Syndicate Casino offers a huge selection of table games ranging from blackjack and roulette to baccarat and poker games. In particular, table game variants include European Roulette, French Roulette, Multihand Blackjack Pro, Baccarat Zero Commission and other alternatives.
Live Casino Players who enjoy the thrill of being in a live casino environment can visit Syndicate’s live casino and engage with their live dealers. The game selection includes live roulette, live baccarat and live blackj­ack.
Mobile Gaming The casino is available on the go from any compatible mobile, smartphone or tablet device. All players need to do is load up the casino and access their favourite games. No application is required as the mobile casino supports hundreds of mobile slots and other games.
Support In case players need any kind of assistance, they are advised to contact the casino’s customer support team. Friendly support agents can be reached by email, telephone and live chat, available 24/7.
Security and Fairness When it comes to security, Syndicate Casino takes their players information very seriously and, therefore, uses a high level of SSL encryption. That way, players can be sure that all of their sensitive data is safe as is always encrypted before being transmitted over the internet.
Also, the casino uses a random number generator for the games available at the casino. Therefore, all games result in random and fair outcomes and cannot be manipulated.
Software
Deposit Methods
Withdrawal Methods

Syndicate Casino (2019) | Review | Games | Play Now Players from Victoria accepted
Average Complaint Response Time: 19 hours AskGamblers Certificate of Trust Syndicate Casino Review
More than 20 software providers available Mobile-friendly Live casino included SSL-encrypted Syndicate Casino is an online casino that features an extensive array of online slots, table games, video poker and live casino, developed by the leading software suppliers like Pragmatic Play, Endorphina, Habanero, iSoftBet, Elk Studios, Platipus and Mr.Slotty, to name a few. The website is available in English, French and German. Members can also log in using Syndicate mobile casino. Syndicate Casino is licensed and regulated by the Government of Curacao.
Restricted Countries and Territories The casino does not accept players residing in Spain, France and its overseas territories (Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, Réunion, Mayotte, St. Martin, French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna, New Caledonia), Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles (Curaçao, Bonaire, Aruba), St. Maarten, St. Eustatius, Saba, the UK, Ukraine, and the USA.
Virtual Games Once players open the casino lobby, they can access numerous video slots, powered by the leading software developers including Pragmatic Play, Habanero, Endorphina and Ezugi. To make it easier for players to navigate through the selection of online slots, there is a search engine to help them single out their favourite releases. The most popular titles include Great Rhino slot, Macarons slot, Taboo slot, and Wolf Gold slot.
Syndicate Casino offers a huge selection of table games ranging from blackjack and roulette to baccarat and poker games. In particular, table game variants include European Roulette, French Roulette, Multihand Blackjack Pro, Baccarat Zero Commission and other alternatives.
Live Casino Players who enjoy the thrill of being in a live casino environment can visit Syndicate’s live casino and engage with their live dealers. The game selection includes live roulette, live baccarat and live blackj­ack.
Mobile Gaming The casino is available on the go from any compatible mobile, smartphone or tablet device. All players need to do is load up the casino and access their favourite games. No application is required as the mobile casino supports hundreds of mobile slots and other games.
Support In case players need any kind of assistance, they are advised to contact the casino’s customer support team. Friendly support agents can be reached by email, telephone and live chat, available 24/7.
Security and Fairness When it comes to security, Syndicate Casino takes their players information very seriously and, therefore, uses a high level of SSL encryption. That way, players can be sure that all of their sensitive data is safe as is always encrypted before being transmitted over the internet.
Also, the casino uses a random number generator for the games available at the casino. Therefore, all games result in random and fair outcomes and cannot be manipulated.
Deposit Methods
Withdrawal Methods