You’ve just written a thread justifying your war crimes revisionism, you war crimes revisionist. You’re a crank Justin, who spread conspiracy theories about the murder of children. I don’t care whether you feel ashamed of it or not, I care that other people see through your lies.
Unlike Justin, in my 13 year career, never once have I spread baseless conspiracies absolving a dictator of the crime of murdering children. He’s still squawking about “official narratives”. These people spread lies about a war crime. Period. There is no escaping from that.
He may never have the integrity to aplogise for his grotesque and inhumane behaviour, that’s his prerogative. But you can officially ignore this deluded crank’s pathetic weasel noises for the rest of his life, everything you need to know about him is clear from his behaviour.
This is as simple as it gets. These baseless conspiracy theories were repeatedly debunked by the BBC and Guardian. Justin instead preferred to listen to a fascist regurgitating lies from a Kremlin disinformation campaign. He’s still defending those lies. This is war crimes denial
I’ve spent 11 years covering Syria. It’s hysterical for Justin to accuse anyone of not presenting evidence when he is literally just repeating debunked lies. And that’s what they are, lies. 40 civilians were murdered in an attack Justin spread lies about. That’s a fact.
So just so we’re clear Justin, I stand by every word I said about you, and if you want to take this to a courtroom and see how you fair, be my guest. Otherwise, sit back down.
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Day 22 of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, all of its military advances have been stalled by fierce Ukrainian resistance. Russia responds to this by deliberately bombing children.
When I first started these updates, I did so because many journalists were (understandably) fleeing the city due to the belief that Kyiv would fall in 48-72 hours. All I wanted to do was reassure people that myself and other journalists I arrived with wouldn’t abandon them.
No matter what happened, I wanted Ukrainians to know that there were those of us who would stand with them, come what may. I had no idea what the next day would hold, but every morning I woke up to find Kyiv still standing, still defiant.
My generation, which grew up in the shadow of the Iraq war, learned to be instinctively distrusting of US foreign policy, and that alone created an entire worldview in perpetuity for many of my peers, particularly on the left.
Those same people are now very angry as they are slowly coming to realise that the generations below them have grown up largely in the shadow of Russian imperialist violence, and that they have lost control of the narrative that comforted them through decades of the war on terror
Now we've got 37 year old social media pundits screaming about George Bush to 17 year olds with Ukrainian flags in their profile pictures. It's little more than the inevitable death rasp of the Tankie left.
Another residential building was shelled in Kyiv this morning, I am here now in Svyatoshyns'kyi District where first responders are still tackling the flames that have totally gutted this apartment block
Civilian casualties are still being pulled from this building and placed in body bags outside. Unclear how many are dead and wounded right now, there are two bodies in front of us.
Impact crater again just in front of the building, it is significantly larger and deeper than the Podil attack.
With the greatest possible respect to Ben, that really isn’t how open source intelligence works, the whole point of it, and it’s greatest strength, it is used to verify and corroborate information in highly partisan information ecosystems.
There were never any “neutral” sources of information in Syria, that doesn’t mean we weren’t able to accurately verify chemical weapons attacks through gathered open source material. Explicitly pro-regime material is also perfectly usable for OSINT methods.
I think people who aren’t actively involved in OSINT sometimes have a problem understanding what it actually does. Comments like these were made during Syrian chemical weapons attacks and the Skripal poisonings. They were wrong then and are wrong now.
I published a thread today detailing & disclosing that I had met far right individuals during the course of my reporting, confirming their presence & contextualising it. I am being trolled as a result by people accusing me of trying to hide this in some way. Bizarre 🤷🏽♂️
Literally the first moment I discovered the politics of one of the individuals I was in a room with, who I did not even talk to, I added it to the thread. I’m not sure what more I can do besides that, I’m not omniscient, but I am disclosing the facts as soon as I learn them.
Covering & contextualising the existence of far right elements in Ukraine is an important part of the job here, just as it was/is in Syria, and I’m going to continue to do it, regardless of what narrative trolls try and come up with.
A small thread on my firsthand experiences on the ground in Kyiv and the presence of the far right here:
I have been in Ukraine for exactly one month, and so far I have seen precisely one far right foreign volunteer, 3 individuals wearing Azov patches, and one small unit of about 8-10 guys heading to a frontline. I can definitely corroborate their existence here on the ground.
In that time though I have seen hundreds of armed men and women, I have spoken to dozens of them, I have met & interviewed people on Kyiv’s barricades from all walks of life with a wide spectrum of political beliefs.