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Comment by elipsey | Hacker News Reader

"Kirill Krechetov[...]asks that his real name not be used out of concern for his safety."

'He was initially contacted several weeks before the summons letter landed in his mailbox – in the form of a message sent via the messaging service Viber: Kirill Ivanovich, we are waiting for you, Krasnodarski Krai, 10th Brigade of the GRU Special Forces."'

Uh, did they just expose his real name?

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Ivanovich is a common middle name. And in russian language, when you want to refer to someone in a formal way, you use "Firstname Middlename" (unlike "Mr Lastname" in english). That's how you would refer to your school teacher, to your boss, to an acquaintance/someone you dont know closely, how a bank teller would talk to you, etc.

So, no, I doubt they doxxed him.

"Aragorn, son of Arathorn"

You joke, but that's pretty much how it is in Russian lol.

Unlike in English-centered naming conventions (and probably others, but I am not knowledgeable enough to comment on that), in Russian you dont really choose a child's middle name. It is always just father's name with slight suffix changes based on whether the person is a male (resulting in a -vich ending) or female (-vna ending).

For example, if your first name is Alexey, and you have a son and a daughter, their middle names will be Alexeyevich and Alexeyevna respectively.

I’d guess not. Ivanovich is the patronym of the pseudonym, the full pseudonym thus being Kirill Ivanovich Krechetov. Unless you meant Krasnodarski Krai which refers to a place, not a person.

Ivanovich is his (fake) patronymic, not last name.

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