The issue of the title “Hero of the Russian Federation”
In 2014, Chepiga received the order of Hero of the Russian Federation, the highest honour awarded by the President of Russia. According to Ukraine, this was probably a reward to Chepiga for being the head of the team providing personal security for the then-deposed PresidentViktor Yanukovych during the successful "extraction mission" from Ukraine to Russia. Chepiga was reportedly in the Czech Republic in October 2014, using the name Ruslan Boshirov. The Insider published photographs of the memorial to the graduates of the FEFU - Heroes of the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation behind the monument to Konstantin Rokossovsky on the territory of the school, where the name "Chepiga A. V." is stamped. It is written on the official website of DOSAAF in the Ivanovo district of the Amur Region that “in December 2014, Colonel A. Chepiga was awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation for performing a peacekeeping mission”. The assignment of this title is mentioned on the portal of graduates of the DVOKU and in the article by Olga Kapshtyk, journalist of the Suvorov Onslaught newspaper. Radio Liberty together with Bellingcat published a photo of the boarding school "Heroes Alumni" booth from Odnoklassnikisocial network, on which "Anatoly Vladimirovich Chepiga is clearly visible, his name, surname and patronymic are well read". In an interview with Business FM online and the DozhdTV channel, Alexander Borzhko, chairman of the DOSAAF regional branch of the Amur Region, who was the commander of the DVOKU cadet battalion, where Chepiga served, confirmed that “Chepiga was given the Hero of Russia”, although he does not know for what exactly. A spokesman for the President of Russia, Dmitry Peskov, responded to a question from journalists about whether the information presented in the BellingCat investigation that Vladimir Putin awarded a medal to a person with that name was checked: “Yes, they checked. I have no information that a person with that name was awarded”. RIA Novosti reports that to the clarifying question about whether it is possible that a person receives a reward, but this information is classified and for this reason Peskov does not have such information, he replied: “Once again, we would not want to continue these discussions without any reason".
Controversies
and its investigative partner The Insider claimed that Chepiga was one of the suspects in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal and the killing of Dawn Sturgess, having travelled to the United Kingdom together with Alexander Mishkin under the alias of Ruslan Boshirov. Later in October 2018, Turkish media outlets reported that Chepiga was also likely linked to the assassination of the Chechen militant field commander Abdulvakhid Edelgiriyev back in late 2015 in Istanbul. Turkish journalists noted the resemblance of Anatoly Chepiga with Andrey Sholkhov of which he under the alias of.
