Founder and creative director of @Bellingcat. Now on Bluesky and no longer posting here @eliothiggins.bsky.social

Not here
Sick of supporting the business of the worst person in the world by still posting on their website? Then join BlueSky, it's like X without the Nazis. If you need people to follow, I'm posting Starter Packs here: bsky.app/profile/eliothiggin…
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Musk predicts a massive victory for Kamala Harris while calling half of Trump supporters idiots.
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"Russia is behind the killing of George Floyd to provoke protests and riots" has to be one of the dumbest takes on the current situation in the US.
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Ever wonder how Russian cruise missiles find their way into Ukrainian playgrounds, power stations, and apartment buildings? Well thanks to @bellingcat’s @christogrozev wonder no more. It’s time to meet the team behind the targeting of Russian missiles on civilian infrastructure.
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"Let me win or I'll nuke you" isn't exactly a position of strength.
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Making pictures of Trump getting arrested while waiting for Trump's arrest.
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🧵Meet Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera, widow, jeweller, and socialite. The love child of a German father and a Peruvian mother, born in Callao, Peru, and abandoned in Moscow by her mother during the 1980 Olympic Games.
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With $TSLA already down 3% in pre-market trading, let's see what the CEO is up to:
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This week, a Russian couple living in Sweden for the past 20 years were arrested, with the husband detained under suspicion of working for the Russian intelligence services. @christogrozev did some digging and made some interesting discoveries about their neighbours in Moscow.
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Bellingcat Discord member Sepulco geolocated the video Elon Musk posted overnight, claiming to show a stalker, which he used to justify the banning of accounts that tracked flights. It's at 34.116175,-118.160635, not close to any airports. google.com/maps/@34.1161302,…
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To be honest, Twitter, I think we'd all just be cool with you banning the account:
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The Community Notes on Musk's original tweet and the reply have both now been removed. Says everything about Musk and this platform.
Someone's starting to regret having community notes.
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Latest update from the lettuce, disco lights have been deployed.
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The account that posted Elon Musk getting booed at Dave Chapelle's show was just deleted, for some reason. Here's the video in question piped.video/BdBga225HBk
Replying to @SoozUK
Piggy-backing off of this because it's the topic comment... Uhh, did @CleoPat48937885's account just disappear for everyone else? Like, within the last 5 minutes since I clicked on this?
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Pro-Russian accounts are currently sharing a video (left) that has a big ol' pile of cocaine digitally added to smear Zelensky. The original video (right), sans cocaine, can be found here piped.video/shorts/dbTjpPLv9…
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Nothing says more about the crass brutality of Putin's war in Ukraine than this satellite image of the bombed remains of Mariupol Drama Theatre. Shelter for victims of his war, "CHILDREN" written outside so clearly that it's visible from space, and still it was bombed.
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The right has spent that last 48 hours attacking @Bellingcat for saying the Allen mall shooter had neo-Nazi tattoos. Here's what the Allen police said "We do know that he had Neo-Nazi ideation. He had patches, he had tattoos, even his signature verified that."
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The Kherson front is collapsing faster than Twitter.
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Sam Smith looks like he's about to get shot down by a F-22.
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Pro-Russian mapmakers tracking the fighting around Kharkiv are showing a really significant problem for Russia unfolding rapidly.
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Always nice to see a new wave of people discovering Roger Waters is a terrible person.
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Genius invents Twitter verification
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For some reason, @elonmusk's X is now claiming the link to this article about Russia bombing a children's hospital is unsafe, because apparently it has "been identified by X or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe". Unsafe to who, Putin? 🤔
Latest: An analysis of open source evidence, as well as multiple missile experts, have pointed to a Russian launched Kh-101 cruise missile being the weapon that struck a children’s hospital in Kyiv bellingcat.com/news/2024/07/…
Community note
Bellingcat has a high credibility rating. This link is safe. mediabiasfactcheck.com/bellingcat
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Scourge of the Russian intelligence services, Christo Grozev, has spent the last several months piecing together the team responsible for programming Russian cruise missiles launched at targets in Ukraine, frequently hitting civilian infrastructure.
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Osama Bin Laden becoming Gen Z's Noam Chomsky wasn't something I saw coming.
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Pretty incredible Zelensky can leave his hand on Rishi Sunak's shoulder while also taking a photo of him from the across the room.
A picture worth a thousand words: "There is no God", says the tattoo. And indeed, for the unholy Kiev regime, neo-Nazis & their warmongering Western sponsors, nothing is sacred. Hence, the PR stunts on the bones, persecution of Orthodox Christians & murders of journalists, etc
Community note
The image (though not the text) implies that the same hand is circled on all three photos and thus belongs to Zelensky. But top right shows Zelensky is not next to Sunak, so the tattoed hand on the bottom-right crop is not his. Zelensky's hands are not tattoed: bbc.co.uk/news/world-eur
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The owner of Twitter called Bellingcat a psy-op because it reported accurate information about a mass shooter.
Replying to @lindayaX
Twitter is on a mission to become the world’s most accurate real-time information source and a global town square for communication. That's not an empty promise. That’s OUR reality.
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Russia's response to the attack on the Kerch bridge is to target civilians during the rush hour in Kyiv. Terrorising civilians far away from any front line is a desperate act, another sign of their inability to achieve a military victory in the field.
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Journalists - Next time Elon Musk falsely accuses Bellingcat of being a psy op on your TV show maybe push back a little and ask why he thinks that?
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The latest update from our future robot overlords piped.video/fUyU3lKzoio
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The truly tragic thing about this is Twitter was probably a key element of the development of online open source investigation and Bellingcat over the last decade, having a huge impact on multiple fields of work, and this is what we get.
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Someone's starting to regret having community notes.
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Elon "Graphic Design Is My Passion" Musk's logo for "X" is literally just Unicode Character “𝕏” (U+1D54F). compart.com/en/unicode/U+1D5…
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I told you it was Russia.
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Bellingcat ruining Russia's day again in about 30 minutes.
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Huge victory for authoritarians the world over, and a dark day for America.
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Running out of vehicles, running out of ammo, running out of fuel, running out of soldiers, and even running out of bridges. Vladimir Putin, master strategist.
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Anyone treating the Discord Leaker like a whistleblower is either ignorant of the facts or just thinks anyone leaking documents is a whistleblower, even if it's to their gamer pals for internet cool person points.
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I wish as many people gave a shit about this video when it was originally shared and it was about Syria.
Replying to @Shayan86
This sobering video of a child, with 12,000 retweets, 21,000 likes and one million views, isn't from Gaza. The video was filmed in 2014 in Aleppo, Syria, and shows the aftermath of bombing by Syrian government forces.
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How it started How it’s going
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Last night, we saw a totally false claim about Israel bombing a church in Gaza go viral, thanks to multiple blue tick accounts repeating an unverified claim that had no evidence to back it up. Musk has created a fundamental issue with Twitter's credibility in moments of crisis.
In the past couple of days, we’ve seen an increase in daily active users on @X in the conflict area, plus there have been more than 50 million posts globally focusing on the weekend’s terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas. As the events continue to unfold rapidly, a cross-company leadership group has assessed this moment as a crisis requiring the highest level of response. This means we’re laser focused and dedicated to protecting the conversation on X and enforcing our rules as we continue to assess the situation on the platform. We want to provide an update on some of the recent actions: — Over the weekend, we updated our Public Interest Policy. We know that it's sometimes incredibly difficult to see certain content, especially in moments like the one unfolding. In these situations, X believes that, while difficult, it's in the public's interest to understand what's happening in real time. People on X can also control what media they see. In the “Content you see” settings you can choose whether or not to see sensitive media. — We’ve also taken action under our Violent and Hateful Entities Policy to remove newly created Hamas-affiliated accounts and we’re currently coordinating with industry peers through @GIFCT_official to try and prevent terrorist content from being distributed online. — Our escalation teams have actioned tens of thousands of posts for sharing graphic media, violent speech, and hateful conduct. We’re also continuing to proactively monitor for antisemitic speech as part of all our efforts. Plus we’ve taken action to remove several hundred accounts attempting to manipulate trending topics. — Community Notes are now live on posts and new accounts are being enrolled in real time to propose and rate notes. Community Notes typically appear within minutes of content posting. Notes on photos and videos also appear whenever the media is reposted by other users. This is a critical tool for helping to combat potential misinformation. X is committed to the safety of our platform and to giving people information as quickly as possible. In the coming days, we will continue to keep our community updated.
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Replying to @ElvisLegault
Why do you have a gif like that readily available on your computer?
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If Prigozhin is using Wagner to stage videos to undermine Shoigu then Putin really has lost control of the situation.
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The missile programmers are part of the Russian Armed Forces’ vast Main Computation Centre of the General Staff (GVC), and working with @the_ins_ru and @derspiegel we’ve identified the 33 military engineers involved with cruise missile attacks in Ukraine. bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-e…
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Someone is off to the gulag:
Gasoline prices per liter, 9 January 2023
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Avdiivka is a gift from the House Republicans to Putin.
Ukraine's retreat from Avdiivka, where troops said they were up against 7 Russian brigades, outnumbered 1 to 15. At Munich, Zelensky said troops were hamstrung by lack of weapons: “Our dear friends are ... keeping Ukraine in an artificial deficit" Wounded now being treated:
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A fake BBC video claiming a Bellingcat investigation shows Ukraine smuggled weapons to Hamas is being pushed by Russian social media users. It's unclear if this is a Russian government disinformation campaign or a grassroots effort, but it's 100% fake t.me/sheyhtamir1974/58755
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Heavy recorded the Twitter likes of alleged mass shooter Robert Card, from his now suspended Twitter account, which includes @TuckerCarlson @DonaldJTrumpJr @DineshDSouza @elonmusk @SpeakerMcCarthy @catturd2 @jordanbpeterson heavy.com/news/robert-card-x…
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Please read the tweet David Sacks is replying to so you can understand what an absolute feckless dupe he is.
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Elon Musk getting duped by conspiracy theorists, and he wants to "fix" Twitter.
Replying to @EvaKBartlett
Is this list real? What’s the URL?
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Getting kicked out a White House press briefing for turning on a camera is a way more interesting story than regurgitating Spicer's bullshit
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Seems like Elon Musk's brain worms really kicked into high gear overnight.
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The funny thing is, if you told me RFK Jr and JD Vance ate a cat , I'd 100% believe you.
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At this rate Russian troops could be marching through Kyiv before the EU, UK and US has implemented any sanctions.
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I forgot my favourite part of the story, where she appears to have got her "exclusive" jewellery range from Ali Express vendors.
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Russia Today is beyond parody, how dare Ukraine threaten the soldiers invading its territory?!?
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Twitter dying would be a really big blow to the open source investigation community. It really enabled a lot of sharing of information and collaboration that led to real impact. Bellingcat wouldn't have been able to build an audience without it.
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I hope all the people whole denied Russian crimes in Bucha will watch this new video from PBS and AP and feel an appropriate level of shame, but some how I doubt they're capable of that. piped.video/watch?v=WW8YYhUI…
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🧵 In June, The Netherlands announced it had detained a Russian spy, posing as a Brazilian just as he was about to start work for the ICC. Sent back to Brazil, he ended up sentenced to 15 years for using fraudulent documents. Russia now claims he's a drug dealer, not a spy...
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Yet again, @mfa_russia gets caught promoting fake videos from Ukraine, this time caught out by a geolocation that places the scene of the video in Russian territory. @mfa_russia deleted the tweet without acknowledging it was fake.
GeoConfirmed UKR. "2 Ukrainians stopped a car and fires a gun to scare a women and child." ❌This is not Ukrainian military❌ This video is made 30 km's behind the frontline. Russian disinformation, but geolocation by @PStyle0ne1 is on point and GeoConfirmed. 🧵👇 1/13
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If there's one thing to understand with Russia, unless there's true consequences to their terrible actions, you can be sure they'll do it again and again, and get worse and worse.
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Someone just realised they're not going to be on TV as much.
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Countdown to Musk claiming Ukraine shot down MH17 and Douma was a false flag.
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If you want to see how Russia uses peace talks and ceasefires just look at Syria. They're only ever used to reorganise and prepare for the next offensive.
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The Dutch court at the #MH17 trial is detailing why they believe the conflict in Ukraine was an international conflict because of Russia's involvement, which is a good reminder that Russia's invasion of Ukraine really started 8 years ago, not 8 months.
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Tomorrow we have something big for you. Sleep well.
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Elon Musk's tweet falsely stating Bellingcat "literally specialises in psychological operations" in response to our work on this topic has now reached 3.2 million views, with no community notes visible correcting his false claim.
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George Soros has the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever.
NEWS Alex Jones agrees to liquidate his assets to pay Sandy Hook families, in move that would end his ownership of Infowars cnn.com/2024/06/06/media/ale…
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Lots of images of abandoned Russian equipment and ammo in recently recaptured territory. I doubt the retreating Russian forces will be an effective fighting force for quite a while, which could be a major problem for Russia if their defences lack the depth they appear to.
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Classic saboteur checklist: Explosives ✔️ Guns ✔️ Mein Kampf ✔️ Nazi Flag ✔️ The Sims Expansions ✔️✔️✔️
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Boston Dynamics introduces its latest future robot overlord
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Twitter support says "f** the jews" doesn't violate their policies, in case you were wondering.
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I dunno guys, I still think it's NATO pushing for war here.
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Currently we only have Musk's word he was followed from an airport.
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Every day of this conflict is a reminder that despite Russian disinformation being incredibly pathetic there's always going to be people dumb enough to fall for it or shameless enough to share it.
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And to be clear, I don't think Musk knows he's lying, or that he's a Russian op, I just think he's an idiot who consumes garbage media and incorrectly assumes that makes him smart and well-informed, just like thousands of other idiots on this website.
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A new fake Bellingcat story, from a fake video claiming to be from Fox News. What's interesting about this one is I viewed the tweet 10 minutes ago, and it had 5 views, and suddenly it jumped to 12.5k, then 16.2k views in less than 5 minutes, with zero retweets or likes.
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Whatever happened to Navalny it was always Putin's intention that he should die, like all the other opposition figures Putin threw into prison after his goons failed to murder them. Let's not get distracted from that with a debate on exactly how he died, murder is the system.
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"Myrotvorets is a Ukrainian government kill list" is rapidly becoming the most effective way to identify the dumbest people in this website.
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Thanks to Grok for that image.
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If anyone has the exact coordinates of any mass graves I can check Planet hi-res imagery to see if there's any visible signs of ground disturbance to establish when they were dug.
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I know you all want Bellingcat to sue Musk, but I'd rather spend our money on publishing the sort of investigations that make people like him say dumb shit about Bellingcat, so please donate here if you want to see more of that bellingcat.com/donate/
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It's Syria all over again, Russia bombing hospitals, killing civilians, let's make sure they don't get away with it this time.
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The direct commander of the missile pre-planners sub-unit appears to be Col. Igor Bagnyuk. This was established on the basis of the analysis of telephone data of eleven members of the group of engineers obtained from data sources on the Russian black data market.
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In fact, he barely connects the two events, because tracking a car is very different from tracking a plane.
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Prigozhin better not get himself killed, he owes me 70 grand.
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First unrectified images of Saki Air Base in Crimea via @planet following yesterday's multiple explosions. There's clearly been a massive fire across the base following whatever happened there:
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Gonna use my position in the citizen journalism community to say Elon Musk is full of shit, both on this and all other issues.
Amazing how he keeps saying stuff like this considering that the “citizen journalists” he promotes on here are not actually on the ground and are not experts and are usually just cribbing content from legacy media journalists
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Because I'm a massive verification nerd who hates fun, here's a little thread on geolocating these photos that people are claiming aren't from Venice.
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It's because he frequently denies well documented war crimes, Diane.
I was in the Commons for George Galloway's swearing in. He has just won a thumping parliamentary majority on the issue of Gaza. Two-thirds of the public support a genuine and immediate ceasefire. Yet some want to shun him, and his voters, in the name of.....democracy. Bizarre.
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Kinda hoping Elon Musk does destroy Twitter so I can have my life back.
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Some of the members of this unit also took part in planning cruise missile attacks on targets in Syria and/or worked at Russia's military command centre in Damascus. Some are also recipients of various military awards, including from Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
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Over the past week, @LauraLoomer has been flipping out about Kent McLellan, aka Boneface, a US neo-Nazi who claims to have fought in Ukraine. Now Bellingcat shows how court filings prove Boneface was making up those claims promoted by Loomer bellingcat.com/news/2023/09/…
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It's 5 years since the Skripal poisonings in Salisbury, and, for Bellingcat, the first in a series of investigations that would eventually lead to uncovering more than a dozen assassination attempts by the Russian state. We started here: bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-e…
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Starting to become clearer why Elon called Bellingcat a psy-op
1/Multiple sources have confirmed to me that the Kremlin was in direct contact with Musk in 2020, and that the USIC was made aware of that fact at the time.
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Guessing Russia won't be at the next #EUROVISION either.
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You know which tweets also don't load when you reach your limit? Adverts.
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