Obviously, these DMs are fake. We assume that the Russian troll factory (RIA FAN) is publishing some story with other fake DMs soon, judging by the watermark in the photos.
Quick thread on why this is a bad fake, and our upcoming story (which Pieter has no part in):
Quick thread on why this is a bad fake, and our upcoming story (which Pieter has no part in):
1) The WhatsApp conversation here is for a Belgian number. Our researcher Pieter van Huis is Dutch. They probably mixed him up with @p_vanostaeyen, a Belgian researcher who has contributed to Bellingcat before. Oops!
2) They gave Pieter comically bad Russian skills in these screenshots. Pieter would have one of the many native Russian speakers on our team double-check anything before sending this hodge-podge of sub-Google Translate text to someone.
3) Fake Pieter spelled his last name "ван Хьюис" in these screenshots. He knows the dirty pun that would come with this spelling. He transliterated his name as "ван Гюйс" in a previous report he authored (see the final page in the PDF linked here:
ru.bellingcat.com/wp-content/upl…)
ru.bellingcat.com/wp-content/upl…)
4) Pieter isn't even working on any story related to the troll factory, so they should have used someone else for these fakes. @christogrozev is working on the investigation, and Pieter is learning about it for the first time with these fake DMs.
5) Here is troll factory article with these fake DMs -- archive.vn/wip/mAFV9
They are doing this just to preemptively discredit our ongoing investigation into Prigozhin and his troll factory.
They are doing this just to preemptively discredit our ongoing investigation into Prigozhin and his troll factory.
6) We have been working with with international media partners on a major story exposing Prigozhin's re-vamped troll factory as well as his political interference and mercenaries operations in Africa, similar to the work done by @wwwproektmedia.
We aren't a big fan of faking correspondences, but we do appreciate the free hype you're giving our upcoming investigation, troll factory crew.
Stay tuned for more soon!
Stay tuned for more soon!
Thanks to the coordinated placement of this forgery on a vast network of Prigozhin-controlled websites, we have now expanded our understanding of his fake news empire. Very useful for our ongoing investigation, more details of that soon.
Russian UN diplomats and even the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs are now sharing the fake story about Bellingcat published by Riafan.ru. Was it something we said?
Russia's First Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN responds:
