We'll endeavour to ensure any open source evidence is collected, archived, and made accessible to any accountability body that needs it, including the ICC. If you want to support that work you can donate here bellingcat.com/donate
We've developed a process for archiving and investigation specifically focused on accountability and meeting legal standards for use by bodies just like the ICC, first developing it with our Yemen project yemen.bellingcat.com
Doing these detailed investigations is a time-consuming process, so we've been working on fundraising to hire full time researchers to work on those investigations, and ensure material is correctly archived with the help of partners like @mnemonicorg
Our previous experience has shown there's a large amount of interest in the use of open source evidence from justice and accountability bodies, including the ICC, so we aim to provide them with useful evidence and thorough analysis via a well documented methodology and process.
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Thanks to all the people on Twitter, as well as those who are working with Bellingcat directly, for volunteering their time this weekend to help gathered and share reliable information about the conflict in Ukraine. May our children and partners forgive us in time.
Personally I've been astonished by how quickly a community has come together to collect and process this information, and I think it's really having a genuine impact on how the world has seen the build up to the conflict and how it's unfolding each day.
I had expected the Ukraine community that's been following the conflict since 2014 to play a big part in understanding what's happening, but I've also seen a lot of new names getting involved, so kudos to those of you who have gotten involved.
These remains of rocket motors from BM-30 multiple rocket launcher rockets have been documented in various civilian areas, and considering these are usually associated with cluster munition use it raises concerns of cluster munitions being used by Russia in civilian areas.
What would be particularly significant is the documentation of the part of the rocket that holds the cluster munitions, as seen below. armamentresearch.com/9m27k-series-c…
We'd also be looking for unexploded submunitions. It should be stressed that these should not be moved or touched if encountered, as they can still explode. cat-uxo.com/explosive-haza…
We've confirmed @john_marquee's geolocation (47.2739, 38.3309) which places this video inside separatist territory right on the border with Russia. This appears to be yet another fabricated videos for another false flag. Seeing a pattern yet?
I believe this footage became available about an hour ago, and we've already debunked it in less time than it took to make it.
It also looks like building supposedly destroyed by Ukrainian saboteurs was geolocated very close to where that fake video was filmed. I suspect that's not a coincidence.
Anatomy of a Russian Seperatist False Flag - On February 18th the Telegram channel of the press service of the People's Militia of the Donetsk People's Republic published the following video, claiming to show a sabotage operation targeting chlorine tanks t.me/nm_dnr/6192
They claimed that Polish speaking saboteurs "planned to blow up a tank with chlorine on the territory of a sewage treatment plant near the city of Gorlovka” and the video was recovered from the saboteurs' bodies. t.me/nm_dnr/6191
However, the online community started to quickly identify a number of issues with the evidence presented. @oldLentach examined the metadata from the video, and discovered a media creation data of Feb 8th, and a Feb 4th project folder date.
Does any serious person take Russia's attempts to justify their invasion of Ukraine seriously? It's like they're phoning it in. One really obvious attempt to create a pretext for invading after another.
Their report to the UN was nearly entirely sourced from RT Russia articles. It's a like a fig leaf made of glass.
It had a real "doing all your coursework on the last day of term" vibe to it.
How dumb the spread of disinformation can be; some Twitter rando photoshops a picture from yesterday's nursery shelling, quickly admits it was a photoshop, and now people are sharing it like it's legit. Half expect it to appear in a Russian MoD press conference by this evening.
For those interested, the source of the background image is a video showing the outside of the nursery that was attacked.
Even after I made that tweet people are still sending me it as if it's some amazing trump card. Just demonstrates how easily disinformation gets out there and how hard it is to stop it once it does when there's an audience willing to lap it up