Response from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Bellingcat Regarding Fakery Allegations

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):