Response from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Bellingcat Regarding Fakery Allegations
Translations:
On April 6th 2016 Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova made the following statement about Bellingcat:
Bellingcat as an instrument to divert attention from investigating the tragedy of the Malaysian Boeing over Ukraine
We took note of an interview with Bellingcat representatives for the BBC in which they sarcastically spoke about some “trolling” on the part of the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Ministry of Russia, for allegedly attacking them.
I would simply like to recall that we do not attack anyone, but rather, give our unbiased assessment of the work of both this group and those who use its materials as reliable information.
We understand the purpose of this group’s activities. Acting jointly with the current Ukrainian authorities, they continue to use all possible “fakes,” to create quasi-evidence to blame Russia. Why do we take this position and on what is it based? Even now the commission (investigating the circumstances of the Boeing tragedy over the territory of Ukraine) prefers to ignore Russia’s reasoning, which is corroborated by facts and evidence, in particular by tests and experiments. The commission ignores it to the extent that it makes no reply to this reasoning, while at the same time passing off these “fakes” for the hundredth time as proof or integrated evidence, even when this information has been debunked, and not only by Russia.
At present, we have information,that leads us to believe that loyal and handy witnesses in this case are being selected and presumably trained. This begs the question: why is all this being done? The aim is once again to give the global community fabricated proof of Russia’s aggression. This seems blasphemous in this case, because people died there and their families want to know the truth. One may endlessly combine all these invented stories and collect evidence allegedly found on social media sites and at the same time ignore the results of experiments, including those provided by Russia. All this can be done only if you neglect to consider one thing: this case is not just an information campaign, it involves human lives, the destinies of the victims’ families, who definitely want to know the truth.
The opening of the statement appears to refer to the BBC article Twitter’s role in modern warfare in which Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins is featured:
Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, a company that crowdsources information about the Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts, found himself a target, particularly over Bellingcat’s investigation identifying the missile launcher said to be responsible for shooting down flight MH17.
“I started off by posting a lot on the Guardian live blog comments before I started my own blogs and some of the people from that followed me on to Twitter and still disagree with me strongly and vocally there up until today, five years later,” he says.
“What’s been interesting for me is having this Syria community of trolls and the community of pro-Russian trolls that built up around MH17 and my work, now coming together after Russia’s involvement in Syria. It’s nice to bring people together, even when it’s in their mutual and obsessive hatred of one person.
“Recently we’ve even had the Russian Ministry of Defence and Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs putting out statements attacking Bellingcat. They seem to be basing it on what the trolls are saying,” he adds.
Bellingcat was concerned about the allegations made by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the statement, and contacted the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, along with the Russian Defence Ministry, which has made similar allegations, with the following message:
Dear Sir or Madam,
Both the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defense have accused Bellingcat of preparing “open falsifications,” passing off “fakes,” using “faked posts,” and making “pseudo-hypotheses.” Bellingcat has never created fake information, and has never included “faked posts” as evidence in its investigations. After months of false accusations in official press conferences, we request that the government of the Russian Federation provide specific examples of the “fakes” and false evidence that are supposedly published by Bellingcat.
Additionally, on April 6, the spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Bellingcat of “acting jointly with the current Ukrainian authorities.” Bellingcat has never acted jointly with any body of the Ukrainian government. We request any proof held by the government of the Russian Federation that Bellin gcat has cooperated with the Ukrainian–or any other–government in its research or publications.
The government of the Russian Federation seems very concerned with providing an “unbiased assessment,” in the words of spokesperson Zakharova, of the work of Bellingcat. We request concrete proof to support its accusations.
Yours sincerely,
Eliot Higgins, Bellingcat
On April 14th the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has replied with the following (translated from Russian):
Dear Mr. Higgins,
In your letter, you claim that at the April 6 briefing the MFA’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova allegedly accused the website you head of cooperation with Ukrainian authorities. However, when she mentioned a group cooperating with the current Ukrainian Authorities, Maria Zakharova did not refer to Bellingcat, but to the Joint Investigation Team investigating the MH17 tragedy in the skies over Ukraine. This investigation team does cooperate with Ukrainian authorities, but instead of analyzing Russian evidence, substantiated and proven by experiments, such as the Russian Ministry of Defense data, which is, by the way, publicly available, prefers to ignore it and repeatedly refers to unproven and in some cases simply ridiculous Bellingcat “stories”.
It is well known that Bellingcat “expert assessments” has been called into question even by the Western media due to them being unproven and lacking confirmed factual material. You can check it by yourself by googling in the “world wide web”, especially since you consider yourself an Internet search professional.
However, even if we suppose Maria Zakharova did state you cooperated with Kiev, it is surprising that you regard a connection with Ukrainian authorities as an offense, given that some of the most cited sources in Bellingcat reports are information disseminated precisely by Ukrainian state agencies. One example is the official YouTube channel of the Security Service of Ukraine. However, you never use information provided by other sides in your research, which is what leads one to suspecting you of bias.
Kind regards,
Information and Press Department of the Russian MFA
Bellingcat has replied, again asking for evidence of Russia’s accusations:
Dear Sir/Madam,
We note, as with your earlier statements on Bellingcat, you yet again fail to provide any specific examples of fakery by Bellingcat, despite our earlier email making several requests for those examples. Despite our best efforts, our searches have discovered no such article in any recognised “Western media”, so we would appreciate you providing specific references in reply to this email. I’m sure the Russian Foreign Ministry is not in the habit of making libellous claims about organisations it cannot back up with firm evidence, so we await with great interest the evidence of Bellingcat’s fakery that you will provide in your reply.
Regarding the claims Bellingcat is working with Ukrainian authorities, if this was a misreading of the statement published by the Russian Foreign Ministry then we apologise. Having reread the statement it is clear there is only one way this could be read in light of your reply. As a reminder, here’s the text again:
We took note of an interview with Bellingcat representatives for the BBC in which they sarcastically spoke about some “trolling” on the part of the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Ministry of Russia, for allegedly attacking them.
I would simply like to recall that we do not attack anyone, but rather, give our unbiased assessment of the work of both this group and those who use its materials as reliable information.
We understand the purpose of this group’s activities. Acting jointly with the current Ukrainian authorities, they continue to use all possible “fakes,” to create quasi-evidence to blame Russia.
For perfect clarity about these remarks in light of your reply, can you confirm this statement, which you reply appears to state is referring to the JIT, is definitely referring to the JIT:
Acting jointly with the current Ukrainian authorities, they continue to use all possible “fakes,” to create quasi-evidence to blame Russia.
If that is the case, is the Russian government planning to present evidence of the JIT using fakes, and details of the “quasi-evidence” they’ve created using these fakes? If the Russian government does have such evidence of clear manipulation by the JIT then I’m sure the public in Russia, the Netherlands, and elsewhere would be extremely interested in seeing your evidence, so I would strongly urge you to publish such evidence.
Regarding your comment on your perception that we were insulted by what we believed was your claim we were working with the Ukraine authorities to “use all possible “fakes,” to create quasi-evidence to blame Russia” (which you now seem to be saying was a reference to the JIT) I believe you may have mistaken our reaction. We were merely noting that the Russian Foreign Ministry would make a statement with no basis in fact, and with no evidence to support the claim, and curious to see what evidence the Russian Foreign Ministry had to make such claims. However, if you’re now saying it was the JIT using “all possible “fakes,” to create quasi-evidence to blame Russia” we look forward to publication of evidence the Russian government has to support these allegations.
Your final comments refers to your perceived bias in our work as we, as you put it, “never use information provided by other sides in your research”. We have in fact examined all the evidence presented by the Russian Defence Ministry, in particular the July 21st 2014 press conference on MH17. However, when we attempted to verify the claims it became quickly apparent the Russian Defence Ministry had lied repeatedly about the evidence it presented. We have evidenced this at length (we find providing evidence is a powerful and compelling methodology) and we have been told by numerous journalists that their attempts to get comments from the Russian Defence Ministry on our accusations have been met with no response. Is this a subject the Russian Foreign Ministry would be willing to comment on?
Kind regards
Eliot Higgins
As before, we await their reply, and their evidence.
