July 17, 2019
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
Today, 17 July 2019, is exactly five years since Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) was shot down by a Buk missile, fired from territory in East Ukraine controlled by Russian-directed militants. After five years it has become clear that the Buk missile launcher that downed the plane came from Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, and…
July 16, 2019
By Bellingcat Anti-Equality Monitoring
Authored and researched by Oleksiy Kuzmenko, Michael Colborne Ahead of Ukrainian parliamentary elections on July 21, it is clear from polling data that Ukraine’s far-right groups and their ideas enjoy little popular support among its citizens. Despite this, Ukraine’s government continues to provide funds to notorious far-right extremist groups and their affiliates — including two…
July 11, 2019
Soon after the inception of Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch in January of 2018, reports began trickling out of Syria’s Afrin district detailing the desecration or destruction of numerous cultural sites in the region. Just two days into the operation, airstrikes inflicted significant damage on Ain Dara, a “Neo-Hittite temple…built by the Arameans in the first…
July 9, 2019
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
Last week reports appeared online that the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) arrested Ukrainian citizen Vladimir Borysovich Tsemakh (b. 4 July 1961) in connection to the 2014 downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17). Tsemakh was previously known to have been the commander of an air defense unit in Snizhne, the town nearest to the Buk…
July 6, 2019
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
In the first part of this “GRU Globetrotters” series, Bellingcat and its investigative partner The Insider teamed up with BBC Newsnight to trace the London movements and potential role of Russian GRU officer Denis Sergeev during the time that the Skripals were poisoned in Salisbury. The research was made possible thanks to telephone metadata which…
July 3, 2019
With the resurgence of direct military conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in 2015 and in the wake of the 2016 coup attempt, Turkey began to reinstall and reinvigorate the invasive security apparatus it constructed during the 1980s. This report uses satellite imagery to track the development of 73 checkpoints across southeast Turkey, showing…
July 2, 2019
In November 2018, Bellingcat wrote about two photographs related to child abuse crimes – photographs which were geolocated to Shenzhen in China. This investigation was crowdsourced by Europol as part of their Stop Child Abuse campaign that has been running since 2017. Images are shared on their website with the goal to identify the objects…
June 28, 2019
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
In a series of previous investigations, Bellingcat and the Insider identified the two key suspects in the Novichok poisoning of Sergey and Yulia Skripal, and the subsequent poisoning death of Dawn Sturgess. We identified the two suspects, who travelled under the fake identities of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, as Russian military intelligence (GU/GRU) officers…
June 26, 2019
By b33lz3bub
Before tuning in via Skype to oversee the murder and dismemberment of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Saud al-Qahtani, a high-level adviser to the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), was best known for running social media operations for the royal court and serving as MBS’s chief propagandist and enforcer. His portfolio…
June 25, 2019
Since the onset of its direct intervention in Syria, Turkey has struggled to create stability in northern Aleppo. Writing in mid-2017, Aaron Stein and others attributed this to the Turkish development and support of two conflicting security apparatuses; the newly created local police forces and existent militant opposition, as well as local council governance structures…
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