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Migrants From Another World: Introduction To The Project
Every year, thousands of people expelled from Asian and African countries cross Latin America looking for the north like swallows disoriented by an altered climate. Along the way, the already painful journey of these extraordinary human beings is made unnecessarily difficult by almost all governments — putting people at constant risk. This is an introduction…
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“K” for Kurator, or Catch Me If You Can
On 7 July 2020, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) announced it arrested what it called a non-staff GRU operative who had played a crucial role in supervising the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) in 2014 and 2015. The detainee was identified only as “Andrey K.”, which could be expanded to Andrey Nikolaevich K. based on the…
Russian interference in North Macedonia: A View Before the Elections
This article was contributed by Yordan Tsalov as a series of analytical reports titled “Kremlin’s Favorites in Europe”, with the support of Journalismfund.eu. Serious questions are raised by international observers about the reliability of the newest member of NATO and EU candidate, North Macedonia, while the country is heading towards its general election on July…
The Mystery of the Missing £5.6 Million
One of the last claims made by Aierken Saimaiti, a self-confessed money launderer who was murdered in Istanbul last November, was that he sent millions of pounds to London for a powerful former Kyrgyz official. What happened to the money? Here’s where the evidence leads. By RFE/RL (KG), OCCRP (RU), Kloop (RU), and Bellingcat Before…
FSB’s Magnificent Seven: New Links between Berlin and Istanbul Assassinations
On 23 August 2019, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Georgian asylum-seeker of Chechen origin, was assassinated on his way back from Friday mosque service in a park near Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten. The killer had been captured by German police after running away from the murder scene on a bicycle, and after two teenagers saw him dispose of…
Crisis Actors As Defense Witnesses: Pulatov’s Defense Strategy In The MH17 Trial
Earlier this week, the criminal trial against the four indicted suspects in the MH17 downing continued with the defense lawyers’ requests for additional investigations. The defense team from the Rotterdam law-firm Sjöcrona Van Stigt represents only one of the indicted persons – the Russian citizen Oleg Pulatov – as the three other defendants chose not…
Masked Men On A Hellenic Coast Guard Boat Involved In Pushback Incident
Introduction In recent months, disturbing reports have emerged of unidentified masked men on high speed launches harassing or attacking boatloads of asylum seekers in the Aegean. Witness testimony gathered from multiple sources has described a string of incidents where these launches, known as Rigid Hull Inflatable Boats (RHIBs), have approached vessels carrying men, women in…
Levijatan: Serbian Animal Rights Vigilantes Go To The Polls
In a scene from Srećni Ljudi (Happy People), a Serbian television show from the early 1990s, two young brothers harass a younger boy sitting on a bench, a dog underneath his feet. “Is that the little mongrel you got for your birthday?” One brother, played by Pavle Bihali, says to him, using a derogatory word…
Visualizing Police Violence Against Journalists At Protests Across The U.S
Update (July 3, 2020) -Since publishing this article on June 5, 2020, we have teamed up with Forensic Architecture to map these incidents on their platform. Today, Forensic Architecture has published that map. The map allows for navigation of the events in, time, and by category of event (i.e., “physical assault”, “pepper spray”, etc.). Together…
Investigating One Case of Civilian Harm In Afghanistan
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has been investigating strikes in Afghanistan for the past five years. It has been a struggle. Issues from sheer danger on the ground to a near-total lack of transparency from the U.S. and Afghan armed forces have made the job difficult. There was a cache of 21 strikes in our…
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BellingChat Episode 4 – Return to the MH17 Trial, and More Russian Spy Shenanigans
In this week’s BellingChat, Bellingcat’s Christo Grozev joins us to discuss the ongoing MH17 trial in the Netherlands, our latest investigation linking the FSB to assassinations plots from Berlin to Istanbul, and the latest revelations from the US about the GRU’s Unit 29155’s involvement in placing bounties on US service members in Afghanistan. Related links…
How To Track Desert Locust Swarms
Billions of desert locusts are swarming across East Africa, multiplying in numbers over several months of favorable rain and breeding conditions, creating what the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) called an “unprecedented threat to food security,” and the worst locust upsurge in East Africa in seventy years. “We do have a chance to nip…
BellingChat Episode 3 – Hunting the The Salisbury Poisonings Suspects
The new BBC series The Salisbury Poisonings tells the story of the impact of the Skripal assassination attempt on the people of Salisbury, but what do we know about the two suspects identified by UK authorities? Bellingcat’s Christo Grozev explains the work he did to reveal the true identities of the Skripal suspects, how he identified…
BellingChat Episode 2 – Racism Today
In this week’s episode of BellingChat, Eliot Higgins is joined by Bellingcat’s Charlotte Godart and Nick Waters to discuss their recent work documenting police violence against journalists during the recent protests in response to the police killing of George Floyd. We’re also joined by Robert Evans, Bellingcat writer and presenter of Behind the Bastards on…
BellingChat Episode 1 – MH17: Past, Present, and Future
In this inaugural episode of Bellingcat’s new regular discussion podcast, BellingChat, Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins talks to Bellingcat’s lead MH17 researchers, Aric Toler, Pieter van Huis, and Christo Grozev, about the MH17 trial, discussing the first court sessions in March, developments in Bellingcat’s MH17 investigations since the March sessions, and what we expect to see…
Investigate TikTok Like A Pro!
TikTok videos have grown increasingly popular over the last few years, with short clips showing people dancing, lip syncing, doing viral challenges, and so on. This relatively new platform lets users share short video clips, and can be looped. It is similar to the now-defunct Vine. Compared to other video-sharing services, TikTok videos are much…
How (Not) To Report On Russian Disinformation
Whether you’re listening to NPR, watching MSNBC, or reading the New York Times, you will likely be barraged with stories about Russian trolls meddling in every topic imaginable. No matter how obscure, it always seems like these nebulous groups of “Russian trolls” are spreading discord about the topic du jour — Colin Kaepernick, the Parkland…
Bellingcat Now Offering Online Investigation Training Workshops
With our in-person workshops delayed due to ongoing concerns from COVID-19, Bellingcat is now offering online training workshops. These workshops will be held at a reduced price compared to our in-person trainings. We will hold sessions of varying length and on different topics over the coming months, in sessions ranging from a few hours to…
Investigating Coronavirus Fakes And Disinfo? Here Are Some Tools For You
There is no dignified way of putting it — the world has gone bananas as the COVID-19 pandemic rages. When the threat of deadly infection is mixed with the peculiar rush of going viral, people are bound to spread fakes. Even those of us who mean well. Many Bellingcat team members are impacted by this…
New Bellingcat Workshops Announced for May – September 2020
Bellingcat will hold a series of workshops in spring 2020, including: Geneva: May 4 – 8 Washington DC: June 22 – 26 Amsterdam: June 22 – 26 Berkeley, California July 6 – 10 London: July 6 – 10 Paris: August 3 – 7 London: September 7 – 11 Please email us at workshops@bellingcat.com with the information…