May 25, 2018
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
A joint investigation between Bellingcat, The Insider, and McClatchy DC Bureau has conclusively identified another key person of interest in the ongoing investigation of the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17). The person known as ’Andrey Ivanovich’, a.k.a. call sign ‘Orion’, is in fact a high-ranking Russian GRU officer named Oleg Vladimirovich Ivannikov. Русская…
May 10, 2018
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
The full investigation can be downloaded here A collection of intercepted phone conversations that were used as research materials in this investigation can be accessed here Our directory of archived videos of the Mariupol shelling and its aftermath can be accessed here Our map summarizing the estimated trajectories and potential firing sites near Mariupol can be…
May 7, 2018
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
The Bellingcat Investigation Team has determined conclusively that the artillery attack on the Ukrainian town of Mariupol on 24 January 2015, which resulted in at least 30 civilian deaths and over 100 injuries, came from Russia-controlled territory. Bellingcat has also determined that the shelling operation was instructed, directed and supervised by Russian military commanders in…
April 9, 2018
On April 4, 2018 French media reported that the 72 year old Shaykh Bassam Ayachi was arrested in the north of France on March 27. The media portrayed him as “the oldest Belgian Jihadi”, as “the mentor of generations of Belgian Jihadi’s” and above all as “one of the main recruiters for Belgian foreign fighters who left for the war in Syria”. In 2012 Flemish newspaper De Standaard even called him “the personification of radical Islam in our country.” His actual story is a bit more nuanced however, and this brief article aims to separate the fiction from the facts.
March 12, 2018
By Aric Toler
North Carolina congressional candidate Linda Coleman made national headlines last week when her campaign discovered that an old domain used for a previous election — LindaForNC.com — was hijacked by a Russian. Coleman saw political motives behind the incident, calling the “tampering” an “underhanded and deceptive” move. A number of local and national news articles…
March 2, 2018
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
Scottish Limited Partnership registrations have plummeted in the latter half of 2017, but they continue to make headlines for all the wrong reasons.
February 10, 2018
On February 9 2018 the Russian Embassy to the Netherlands tweeted their suggestion for a brand “describing Russia’s position in world affairs”: It’s unclear if this was an attempt at humour, as in world affairs it would be fair to say Russia’s greatest weakness is in truth, as the work of Bellingcat and others has…
January 5, 2018
By Aric Toler
Just a few hours after the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), the circumstances that caused the tragedy came to light: a Buk-M1 Russian-made anti-aircraft missile system was fired by either Russian-led separatists or Russian forces from an area near Snizhne, Ukraine, leading to the death of 298 civilians aboard the passenger plane. Over…
January 4, 2018
Europol, the law enforcement agency of the European Union, asks the public for help in countering child pornography. Despite all their detection methods, they sometimes encounter objects in child abuse footage of which they have no idea what or where it is. You may be able to help identify these objects and places. Bellingcat started…
December 26, 2017
By Aric Toler
On Christmas, Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post published two widely shared reports on GRU (Russian military intelligence) activities in creating fake profiles on social networks, along with “astroturfed” political activist groups. The first, longer article, entitled “Kremlin trolls burned across the Internet as Washington debated options,” was written by Nakashima along with Greg Jaffe and…
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