Written by Slavko K. exclusively for SouthFront
The “investigation” of Bellingcat and The Insider (a Russian-language pro-Western media outlet) designed to reveal the “real” identities of the Skripal poisoning suspects Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov has already turned into an interesting spy series. The investigation and its “revelations” gained signfiicant attention among the audience of both mainstream and alternative media outlets. However, it seems that it may have had an unexpected impact on its authors. The content released by Belligcat “highly likely” exposed it as a mouthpiece of Western special services.
On October 8 and October 9, Bellingcat and The Insider came with a new speculations on the identity of the Skripal poisoning suspects. Previously, they claimed that Ruslan Boshirov is GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, who also has with the highest Russian state award – Hero of the Russian Federation.
Now, Bellingcat and The Insider claims that Alexander Petrov is Dr. Alexander Mishkin, a “trained military doctor in the employ of the GRU”. He also allegedly has the highest Russian state award – Hero of the Russian Federation.
IMAGE: bellingcat.com
- Second Skripal Poisoning Suspect Identified as Dr. Alexander Mishkin
- Full report: Skripal Poisoning Suspect Dr. Alexander Mishkin, Hero of Russia
Bellingcat and The Insider once again provided a lengthy and detailed article full of speculations. In the conclusion, Belligncat stated the following:
“The findings of this investigation by Bellingcat add possibly material context to the mission of the two GRU officers to Salisbury. The inclusion of a trained military doctor on the team implies that the purpose of the mission has been different than information gathering or other routine espionage activities. Bellingcat contacted various sources with knowledge of practices of Russian military intelligence who provided a range of opinions on what the relevance of the presence of a doctor in a foreign-operations team means. While some stated that GRU was known to form multi-functional and multi-skilled teams as part of operational “best practices”, others suggested that a doctor would be a mandatory addition to a team tasked with poisoning a target — either for ensuring effective application of the chemical, or to protect team members from accidental self-poisoning.
The new findings also require a renewed analysis of the travel itinerary of Mishkin across Western Europe in the period 2016-2018, previously disclosed by Bellingcat.”
This artlce as well as all prvious pieces released by Bellingcat are designed to strengthen the British version that the Kremlin is behind the alelged Novichok poisoning of former GRU colonel and double agent for British intelligence Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.
Nonetheless, the most interesting part is an image of Mishkin’s scanned passport pages. Bellingcat reportedly obtained it “from a source with access to a scanned copy of the passport. The source requested complete anonymity due to safety concerns, and thus Bellingcat cannot share the position or history the source has that has enabled them to have access to this document.”
IMAGE: bellingcat.com
It should be noted that in its previous articles about Boshirov/Chepiga Belligncat also used documents obtained from undisclosed sources.
On September 26, Belligncat published “extracts from the passport file of Anatoliy Vladimirovich Chepiga”, including “a passport application”.
Source: bellingcat.com
On September 20, Belligncat released a screenshot of Petrov’s alleged “biographical page”, which contained “Top Secret” annotations.
Source: bellingcat.com
On September 14, Bellingcat posted a screenshot Petrov’s alleged “passport dossier”, which was makred “with a stamp containing the instruction “Do not provide any information”.
Source: bellingcat.com
Source: bellingcat.com
Sum up
The MSM and Belligcat itself continue to claim that that Bellingcat is an “open-source” investigative website, which has no links to governments and special services. The only problem is that a significant part of the Skripal case “investigation” is data, including documents, which cannot be obtained from “open sources”.
The articles released by Bellingcat The Insider have no answers to the key questions:
- How they obtained the passport scans, screenshots of other documents and extracts from the passport data for their inveistigation?
- If this data was not directly provided to Belligcat and The Insider by some side, how did Belligcat and The Insider established communication channels with persons who have access to this data?
These questions remain open and it’s unlikely that they will be answered anytime soon. Most likely, Bellingcat and The Insider just received this data directly from persons or entities linked to US, British special services or through channels establsihed by US, British special services in Russia. Using these data, Bellingcat destroyed its own image of “open-source” investigation website, which the MSM has created for it in the Western audience over the past few years.
This article indirectly states that Bellingcat was right. Because if they weren’t then the main question wouldn’t be whether or not Bellingcat is connected to any agencies.
And this is a sharp turn in terms of Southfront narrative.
No, simply that Bellincat has been able to access docs that no “independent researcher” could ever get access to.
Do they any evidence that these guys are GRU? No, they don’t. Whatever these guys were doing in Salisbury, they certainly didn’t smear a CW on Skipal’s fecking doorknob.
Where are the Skripals? Why will the UK not allow them to release a video message to friends and family that could support the UK version of events? Common sense tells us the UK has “disappeared” them as they likely were not willing to continue with the ruse.
They are dead or told to remain hidden or die… its how the empire does things.
For your assumption to be correct we must assume that the US and UK ‘Intelligence Agencies have any real intelligence.
My assumption is that they do not :)
This nonsense that the Western security agencies can identify Russian agents by their driving licenses, sales of their expensive motors, and can also see them training with perfume bottles on door handles, is gone beyond a joke.
Russia would have been a US vassal long ago if these things could be true. I suppose there is no chance the CIA and its poodles in Britain, could tell us what car the next Russian agent will be selling before they do a mission?
I would not go with assumptions here. If there is evidence than it should be shown. If they only talk about evidence than it’s just that – talk.
Anything that is mostly from anonymous sources ends up in a highly likely product in the end.
Tudor if I tell you my driveway mix concrete is highly likely to have compressive strength above 32MPa, without showing you any test results at all, would you beleive me??
Of course not you would say show me some cylinders show me some past projects.
These charades.also.have another purpose, that is to.lower the truth threshhold. This is very dangerous, abd highly likely to cause trouble later.
The CIA would die to be able to identify with official Russian documentation, all Russian agents from all agencies.
Russia would have a Western style Governor in place if that could ever happen.
Santa Claus and the boogie monster would also be true.
Not at all. The article repeats what a lot of other sources have been claiming for a long time, namely that Bellingcat use information fed to them by Western intelligence agencies. It makes no claim at all about the accuracy of that information. In fact, it puts an even bigger question on the accuracy of Bellingcat reports, since there is no way at all for a bunch of amateurs like them to validate the information being fed to them and there is also no evidence that they have even attempted to do so.
No the original bellingcat way of doing things is sprinkle some highly likely over some anonymous sources.
This song remains the same. See joke posted above.
“How they obtained the passport scans, screenshots of other documents and extracts from the passport data for their inveistigation?” CIA photoshop lab obviosly.
Right along with what I thought after the article.
Why does anyone suppose these documents are real in the first place?
Don’t worry about bellingcat, or bellend as we call him in England. He is already old news and the only dinosaur media outlet that still allows his paid for rubbish is the bbc!
I imagine bellend will be spending more time with his cat, on his laptop, on his mothers dining table. That’s how much street cred this prick has in the UK amongst those who know their news.
Ita highly likely elliott higgins is still a virgin.
I got some momnynous sources, that would rather stay confidential…
Neither the OPCW Nor Porton Down Can Identify Home or Country of Agent Used in Amesbury, Salisbury – Russian Envoy to OPCW
No Doubts, UK Porton Down Laboratory Works With Agents Similar to Novichok… https://sputniknews.com/europe/201810101068753816-uk-laboratory-novichok/
Didn’t the US invest $70 million in Porton Down?
Salisbury attack reveals $70 million Pentagon program at Porton Down – By Dilyana Gaytandzhieva
https://dilyana.bg/salisbury-attack-reveals-70-million-pentagon-program-at-porton-down
The OPCW, aren’t they due to meet, with the UK, Netherlands, US and Canada hoping to throw Russia out?
European Union donates €4.6 million to OPCW Special Missions and the UN-OPCW Joint Investigative Mechanism… https://www.opcw.org/media-centre/news/2016/03/european-union-donates-eu46-million-opcw-special-missions-and-un-opcw
In the press release with the above, 12 other nations (those who fund the White Helmets/IS IS) also donated to the UN-OPCW JIM. Funny that, just 12 UN Member States, out of 193.
France
Germany
Netherlands
Israel (funny, they refuse to enter the OPCW agreement, with regards destroying their CWs)
New Zealand
Sweden
Switzerland
UK
US
Saudi Arabia
Canada
Australia