The Guardian was forced to correct an article by Eliot Higgins, a self-styled “citizen journalist”, who claimed Russian military units fired on the Ukrainian Army from inside the Russian border on the basis of his jointly authored research with the Guardian’s Diplomatic Editor.

SputnikNews.com, 23:50 19.02.2015
http://sputniknews.com/military/20150219/1018504330.html

 

EDINBURGH (Sputnik), Mark Hirst — The Guardian was forced to correct an article claiming Russian military units fired on the Ukrainian Army from inside the Russian border after Sputnik news agency learned the newspaper’s reporter had himself jointly authored the research on which the story was based.

 

On Tuesday Eliot Higgins, a self-styled “citizen journalist” wrote a joint news article with the Guardian’s Diplomatic Editor, Julian Borger, based on a study published by the so-called “Bellingcat investigative group”. Under the headline “Russia shelled Ukrainians from within its own territory, says study” Higgins and Borger detail the claims made by the group based on “self-taught” analysis of satellite maps freely available on the internet. N. B.!

 

Unusually, The Guardian article was reproduced by the newspaper in the English, German and Russian languages.

 

But Sputnik News learned Thursday that Higgins was one of the co-authors of the study on which the apparent news story was based and was in fact responsible for founding the Bellingcat group.

 

“Eliot Higgins is the founder of the Bellingcat investigative journalism network and lead author of the report Origins of Artillery Attacks on Ukrainian Military Positions in Eastern Ukraine Between 14 July 2014 and 8 August 2014,” said the footnote added to the article Thursday.

 

Responding to Sputnik an official spokesman for The Guardian newspaper, who declined to be named said, “The article in question should have made clear that Eliot Higgins was lead author of the report and the founder of the Bellingcat investigative journalism network. N. B.!  We have now footnoted the article to reflect this and amended Eliot Higgins’ byline profile.”

 

The article had remained published online for more than two days and had attracted 1658 online comments before the changes were made.

 

Sputnik also learned Thursday that Higgins is a research fellow with the UK based security and intelligence organization CENTRIC, based at Sheffield University. N. B.!  CENTRIC’s website boasts the organization has “close collaboration in security research and activity started between Sheffield Hallam University and Law Enforcement Agencies” and whose board comprises of individuals from UK policing and the British intelligence community. N. B.!  

 

Responding to questions from Sputnik, Higgins said, “If anyone has any questions about the validity of the work we produce we provide enough detail for them to check our methodology and conclusions. CENTRIC has had zero influence or involvement on the cross border artillery attack report, so any perception they did would be deeply flawed.”

 

Asked about the central claims made in the study that his group of unpaid [N. B.!] “citizen journalists” had found evidence of direct Russian military attacks on the Ukrainian army when NATO and the Western powers [also the OSCE and the Chief of Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Gen. Viktor Mazhenko—MJS] had been unable to produce a single piece of credible evidence to support that [or admitting there was no such evidence—MJS], Higgins replied, “Maybe they have, and weren’t sharing it, but I couldn’t really speak on behalf of the intelligence services in that regard.”  N. B.!

 

Higgins added he played no part in the editorial decision that should have made clear he was both the author of the news report and also co-author of the study on which the article was published.

 

“The Guardian editorial team is best placed to explain their decision making process,” Higgins told Sputnik.

 

When challenged directly on whether he and his Bellingcat group had any links to the well-documented CIA-front organization, the National Endowment for Democracy, Higgins said, “We’ve no direct links and I’m unaware of any indirect links.”

 

One former senior CIA officer told Sputnik there were questions over how much reliance anyone could place on “intelligence” gathered purely from freely available online satellite images.

 

“To truly figure out what’s happening inside Ukraine and Russia you’d need human sources,” Robert Baer, who spent 21 years working with the CIA, told Sputnik Thursday. N. B.!

“[Human sources] are something American intelligence decided wasn’t necessary when the [Berlin] Wall came down. Has it changed since I left? I don’t know. But ex-colleagues tell me it hasn’t,” Baer told Sputnik.

Baer previously told Sputnik that in intelligence terms the US and the West were “blind” in the Donbass. N. B.!

 

In an interview with another UK newspaper, The Independent, in January 2015 Higgins admitted he had been approached to work for an undisclosed “commercial intelligence organisation”, but told the newspaper he was persuaded to turn down the offer by his social media “followers” who, the newspaper reported, “persuaded him to use crowd-funding to set up Bellingcat.”

 

Records held by Companies House reveal that Higgins’ business, “Brown Moses Ltd”, which owns the Bellingcat website, was established in December 2013, just months before the Kiev coup took place in February 2014.

 

Despite these facts, the Guardian article by Higgins and Borger on Russia’s alleged shelling of Ukrainians was apparently taken at face value by UK diplomatic services. On Tuesday the article was retweeted by the UK Delegation to NATO, @UKNATO.

 

On Wednesday, the UK delegation to NATO and the UK embassy in Ukraine almost simultaneously published a slide by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office titled “Further proof [sic] of Russian military involvement in Ukraine” with photographs which allegedly show Russian military equipment on Ukrainian territory.

 

@UKNATO said tweeting the instruction by the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office, on “How to Recognise Russia’s Pantsir-S-1 (or SA-22) which is not operated by Ukrainian forces.”

However, the data on the pictures posted by UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, UK delegation to NATO and UK embassy in Ukraine, regarding the time and place they were taken, does not coincide with the information on the very same photographs, published on other websites, including armamentresearch.com and Bellingcat earlier. There is also no visual proof that the equipment belongs to Russia or that the photographs were made in Ukraine. N. B.!

Russia shelled Ukrainians from within its own territory, says study

Satellite images, digital detective work and social media provide strongest evidence yet of Russian crossborder shelling, according to investigation
Julian Borger and Eliot Higgins
The Guardian, Tuesday 17 February 2015 09.00 EST

[Related Videos Accessible Only at the URL for this Article]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/17/russia-shelled-ukrainians-from-within-its-own-territory-says-study
When Ukrainian forces came under withering attack in the east of the country last summer, soldiers were surprised as much as scared by the ferocity of the attack. The separatists they were up against had proven fierce and organised. But this was something else.
Now a group of British investigative journalists using digital detection techniques, satellite imagery and social media has provided near conclusive proof that the shelling came from across the border in Russia.
The work by the Bellingcat investigative journalism group highlights a murky [sic] aspect of the war in Ukraine, which continues to sputter despite last week’s attempt in Minsk to draw up a ceasefire, with reports of heavy fighting around the railway hub of Debaltseve on Tuesday.
Russia has long been accused of funnelling soldiers, munitions and military vehicles into eastern Ukraine to help separatists take on the Ukrainian army. But until now, little [virually nothing—MJS] has been written about Russian military units shelling across the border into Ukraine. N. B.!
The Bellingcat team analysed crater patterns from satellite photos of three battlefields where the Ukrainian army came under particularly savage attack last summer and traced the estimated trajectories back to likely firing positions, where it identified scorch marks and tyre tracks on satellite images consistent with Russian rocket-launchers.
With a single exception, the identified firing positions were on Russian soil. Furthermore, the tracks to and from the firing positions led further inside Russia, further evidence that they were Russian units, not separatist fighters who had strayed across the border. Images of the same terrain just before the attacks show no track marks or scorched earth.
An independent military forensics expert warned that the accuracy of crater analysis in determining direction of fire on the basis of satellite photography was scientifically unproven, but said that the images of firing positions on the Russian side of the border were compelling and raised questions of what they were doing there.
The incidents happened last summer, during an intensive period of fighting in which the Ukrainian army began to gain the upper hand against separatists and Russia began to supply more overt aid to ensure the rebels were not defeated. In mid-August the Guardian saw a column of Russian armour cross the border, and Kiev claims that thousands [9,000 to be exact—MJS] of regular Russian troops effectively invaded. A ceasefire was signed in Minsk in September, though it broke down almost immediately.
In early February, the governor of Luhansk [sic], Gennady Moskal, made new allegations that Russian forces were shelling Ukrainian territory from inside Russia, as part of the battles that raged before the signing of the new Minsk accords last week.
Russia has repeatedly denied the involvement of its troops in eastern Ukraine, insisting the war against government forces there is being fought by local insurgents. Vladimir Putin has described them as “volunteers”. “We’re not attacking anyone; we’re not warmongers,” he declared in December. 
The families of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine have been put under pressure not to talk publicly about it, and have reportedly been threatened with a withdrawal of state death benefits if they do, but some have begun to speak out. [Evidence?]
In an earlier investigation, Bellingcat – a group of investigative journalists specialising in image analysis – tracked the movement of the Buk, which was photographed by members of the public near the crash site on the day MH17 was shot down, and the photographs were posted online. Bellingcat showed that the same launcher was part of a Russian unit. 
 
It has also published research on the use of munitions, including chemical weapons, in the Syrian civil war.
In its new investigation of artillery use in Ukraine, Bellingcat focused on three battles in July as pro-Moscow separatists pushed back a Ukrainian government offensive that had regained a large section of the Russian-Ukrainian border. The separatist counter-offensive was supported by heavy artillery, which proved decisive in driving the Ukrainian army out of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Bellingcat used publicly available satellite imagery of the battlegrounds and adapted established procedures for analysing craters on the ground for determining the trajectory of artillery fire, applying them to the photographs. It looked at two main types of crater: low angle, which produce a distinctive diagonal spray of soil from the central crater, and high angle, which make a triangular shaped crater. Both can show the direction of fire.
The first battle studied was near the town of Amvrosiivka, where there was a crater field showing 330 separate impacts from an artillery attack on Ukrainian army positions on 14 July.
From the shape of the craters, an average trajectory was worked out. The Bellingcat team traced that line back through satellite photographs of the area until they found a potential firing position, identified by burn marks on the agricultural land, of the sort caused by multiple rocket launcher systems (MLRS). This was nine miles away, across the border and near the Russian village of Seleznev. Scrutiny of the imagery showed a pattern of tyre tracks at the suspected firing position, suggesting a number of vehicles parked in a line at the site.
The report said: “The visible tracks that lead to the site come from further inside Russian territory. This leads us to believe that there was no crossborder (Ukraine to Russia) movement of military equipment for this particular location.”
A second site analysed in the report was in the region of Chervonopartyzansk, where Ukrainian units came under heavy artillery barrages between 14 July and 8 August, forcing a Ukrainian retreat. Looking at a field of 813 craters, it appeared there were six separate attacks from five different directions. Using the same methods, the Bellingcat team found five separate firing positions, four of which were in Russia. In each of those cases, “all the observable tracks near the firing sites were exclusively within the territory of Russia”.
One of the identified firing positions was near the Russian town of Gukovo. Six videos uploaded by local residents to YouTube, and another social media video site, VK, showed MLRS (multiple launch rocket system) salvos being fired on 16 July, throwing up large plumes of smoke. By working out the direction from which the videos were shot using visible geographical features, the team estimated two firing positions near Gukovo – where satellite photos showed telltale burn marks and tyre tracks.
The video footage taken by members of the public in Gukovo showed rockets leaving the launchers, so the investigative team could measure the angle of elevation at which they were fired. In each case, that was found to be 20 degrees. Using a firing table for a 122mm rocket fired from a BM-21 Grad launcher, the most likely system used, that suggested a range of between 15 and 16 km. The actual distance between the estimated firing positions and the crater fields over the border in Ukraine was 9.5 miles.
The investigation made similar findings on a third artillery barrage, on 25 July, south of Sverdlovsk, where Ukrainian forces came under heavy fire – an attack Russian media attributed to the separatist Luhansk People’s Militia. Trajectories calculated from a crater field, however, led to two firing positions in Russia, one at a military base near Pavlovka, just across the border.
Stephen Johnson, a weapons expert at the Cranfield Forensic Institute, part of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, said that the application of crater analysis techniques to satellite imagery was “highly experimental and prone to inaccuracy”.  N. B.!
“This does not mean there is no value to the method, but that any results must be considered with caution and require corroboration,” Johnson said in an email after reviewing the Bellingcat report. N. B.!  He added that “the most significant part of the report” was the discovery of the apparent firing positions on the border.
The ground markings do not seem to be consistent with agricultural machinery, Johnson said. “They indicate an orientation of vehicles that would not be unusual for artillery vehicles, and there does appear to be some ‘scorch’ damage that is not a wheel or track.”
Read the full Bellingcat report in English, German or Russian

 This footnote was added on 19 February 2015. Eliot Higgins is the founder of the Bellingcat investigative journalism network and lead author of the report Origins of Artillery Attacks on Ukrainian Military Positions in Eastern Ukraine Between 14 July 2014 and 8 August 2014.