Thread by @bellingcat

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ongoing, it’s easy to forget about the dubious provocations designed to implicate Ukrainian forces before war began

Bellingcat asked a forensic pathologist & explosives expert to analyse one particularly concerning claim bellingcat.com/news/2022/02/2…

According to reports in Russian and separatist media, an IED was said to have detonated on a highway in the DPR, impacting two vehicles - a van and a car on February 22. 

https://twitter.com/MarQs__/status/1496042122302181377?s=20&t=G3oxAe-iGaJawMTwygUWbQ

The head of Russia’s Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin ordered an official investigation into the event. sledcomrf.ru/news/503279-pr…

But online observers such as @glastnostgone soon began to raise questions about the reported version of events given the state of the dead bodies and damage to the vehicles visible in various media footage glasnostgone.org/2022/02/22/in-…

Experts Bellingcat spoke to raised similar concerns.

Chris Cobb-Smith, aan explosive weapons expert and director of Chiron Resources, dismissed the possibility of IED blast, stating the scene shown in detailed media reports was inconsistent with such an event.

For a start, the puncture marks were too uniform and there was no evidence of buckling or indentation on the panels that would occur from a blast, Cobb-Smith said.

The appearance of the bodies in the vehicles also did not quite add up to what was being claimed in media and separatist reports, a forensic pathologist told Bellingcat.

Dr Lawrence Owens, a research fellow at the University of Winchester, said that the bodies visible in news reports were likely already deceased before the incident took place

A number of clear cut lines along some of the skulls strongly suggested autopsies had already been carried out on the bodies that were shown

Damage to the ribs, which appeared to show neat cutlines, was also consistent with an autopsy procedure, Dr Owens said.

At Bellingcat we have been keeping track of some of the disinformation used by the Russian state and its proxies to justify its war against Ukraine. bellingcat.com/news/2022/02/2…

However, no other event has gone quite so far as this one, namely using the corpses of already deceased individuals to try and fake an IED attack.

Read the full article here: bellingcat.com/news/2022/02/2…