As the world awaited the Dutch Safety Board’s

official report on the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, Russia’s

oft-criticized state-run RT launched a smear campaign that experts say reveals nothing

more than desperation.

Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, a

collective of self-taught open-source intelligence analysts,

has earned perhaps the most ire for his research on the MH17 tragedy, which has

consistently offered evidence that pro-Russian separatists were responsible for

shooting down the civilian airliner on July 17, 2014.