How Russia‘s corrupt 'police state‘ sells it own spies | Conflict Zone

If you really want to know about war, who’s murdering and torturing, who’s giving the orders and which weapons are being used, much of it is out there on the internet. There is still cause for hope, at least that's what Eliot Higgins the founder of the open-cource research orgnization, Bellingcat, believes.

Speaking to DW's Tim Sebastian, Higgins said Ukraine might be the best hope of achieving accountability and the internet is providing the means to build the case files.

Bellingcat has exposed Russian spies and assassins, now it is collecting the evidence of war crimes in Ukraine.
The British founder of the group has been mining that raw data and incriminating the brutal and powerful.

In Ukraine his investigators are poring over evidence of Russian war crimes but he’s not averse to looking at Western actions elsewhere.
"While I think we do have a reputation for focussing a lot on Russia….it gives us a lot more to write about.”

Higgins doesn’t flinch from naming names, but he fights on an information battlefield – where facts – however detailed– are routinely contested and dismissed as fake news.

Is truth already a devalued currency?

Let us know what you think in the comments.

Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:02 Welcome to Eliot Higgins
01:09 Poking the Bear
01:29 Russian disinformation & cyberattacks
02:45 What is Bellingcat becoming?
03:15 Sued by Yevgeniy Prigozhin for Wagner PMC allegations (SLAPP)
04:15 Intercept reporting on EU sanctions
05:40 Investigating war crimes in Ukraine with OSINT
05:50 Saudi airstrikes in Yemen
06:05 Bellingcat's process of data verification & ICC
06:27 Human rights violations in Bucha under Russian occupation
07:05 Azov Battalion allegations
07:35 Executions by Russian forces
08:29 Ukraine is the best hope for accountability
08:59 Russian operational security
09:50 Mutilation of Ukrainian POW
12:25 Origins of Bellingcat in Arab Spring & Libya
13:20 CIA and conspiracy theorists
14:20 Using Geolocation and MH-17
14:45 Bellingcat's relationship with Western intelligence services
15:00 CIA, MI5, MI6 and transparency
16:05 "Maria Adela" GRU spy near NATO headquarters in Naples
16:45 Russia is corrupt from top to bottom
17:14 Hunting Kremlin assassins throgh phone records, pasenger lists, & travel documents.
17:35 Skripal, Navalny poisonings
19:01 Buying data on the Dark Web; Afghanistan
19:45 US airstrikes in Syria
20:30 Freedom House and internet freedom
21:20 Russian convoys & Tik Tok
22:40 Do facts matter still in age of Donald Trump?
24:00 Chemical weapon attacks in Syria & invasion of Iraq
24:32 Coronavirus, COVID19 and mistrust of elites

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