BELLINGCAT DEFENDS AZOV TORTURERS

Corporate fake media downplay crimes of neo-Nazis in Ukraine

Russia Identifies Azov Commanders Involved in Torture of Russian Prisoners

April 8 (EIRNS)—Russia’s Investigative Committee said yesterday that it has identified two Azov commanders who were involved in the torture-killing of eight Russian POWs depicted on video. “The investigation has evidence the commanders of the nationalist battalion Azov, S.O. Velichko and K.V. Nemichev, are responsible for encroachment on the life of at least eight prisoners of war by means of inflicting multiple bodily injuries, including with the use of firearms, on the territory of the Kharkiv Region,” the IC said, reported TASS. Velichko and Nemichev have been indicted in absentia under article 317 of Russia’s Criminal Code. Measures are being taken to track down and arrest them.

Also, Russian investigators are working on a criminal case opened against members of Ukrainian nationalist groups Khizanishvili and Antonyuk, who, acting together and in coordination on orders from their military commanders committed brutal crimes against Russian soldiers in the Kyiv region.

Bellingcat Runs Damage Control for Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion

(Who are Bellingcat? A strange organisation run by Eliot Higgins, a British opportunist celebrated and supported by the Atlantic Council and NATO. More about them below)

April 8 (EIRNS)—The British military intelligence-linked private intelligence operation known as Bellingcat is a central part of the damage control operation in the Western corporate media intended to downplay the crimes of the neo-Nazi Azov movement in Ukraine. An April 6 Washington Post story, entitled “Right-Wing Azov Battalion Emerges as a Controversial Defender of Ukraine” is but one recent example of a story intended to minimize Azov’s Nazi proclivities by admitting that some of it is true, but in a way as to argue that the Russian objective of de-Nazification of Ukraine is not valid.

The Post article reports that “while the Azov is now fighting for a Jewish President whose relatives were killed fighting the Nazis, they have continued to be fodder for Russian propaganda as Putin seeks to convince Russians that his costly invasion of Ukraine was necessary.” The Post continues that interviews with Azov fighters and one of its founders, as well as experts who have tracked the battalion from its beginnings, provide “a more nuanced” picture of its current state, which is more complex than what is conventionally known.

One of the “experts” cited by the Post is a man named Michael Colborne who is identified only as someone who monitors right-wing groups and has authored a book on the Azov movement. “There are clearly neo-Nazis within its ranks,” said Colborne. “There are elements in it who are, you know, neo-fascist and there are elements who are maybe more kind of old-school Ukrainian nationalist,” he said. “At its core, it’s hostile to liberal democracy. It’s hostile to everything that comes with liberal democracy, minority rights, voting rights, things like that.”

A Google search, however, quickly revealed that Colborne is a researcher for Bellingcat and runs its far-right monitoring project called Bellingcat Monitoring. “My approach to the book is hugely impacted by the work I do at Bellingcat and particularly our far-right monitoring project, Bellingcat Monitoring,” he said in an interview published on March 29. “We use open-source research techniques to research the far right in Central and Eastern Europe. So much of my book, as the reader will quickly learn, is drawn from open sources—social media (especially Telegram), for example—and uses publicly available information to try and paint a picture of the Azov movement.”

Colborne calls Azov “a multi-pronged, heterogeneous far-right social movement that grew out of its namesake military unit, the Azov Regiment, and exert at least some influence on Ukrainian politics and society despite its small numbers (e.g., at most 20,000 members estimated at some points in the past). It continues, even during the current invasion, to evolve and grow and adapt, and is probably one of the most PR-savvy far-right movements I’ve ever seen. But it’s not some invincible far-right force—it’s had its struggles, its ups and downs, and isn’t about to take over Ukraine in some flight of Russian propaganda fancy or become some mass Fascist movement of hundreds of thousands like the 1930s.”

In an op-ed published on Feb. 22 in the New Statesman, Colborne declares: “yes, the far right is a problem in Ukraine, but it doesn’t in any way justify the actions of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, as he threatens Ukraine with military intervention.” The Azov movement, he says, “is being more frequently dropped online by people who want to give Putin a free pass to do what he wants in Ukraine.”

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Yes, I know about Bellingcat - selling crap since 2014

”Bellingcat is a supposedly amateur run, supposedly independent, source of image analyses on controversial images. Its operator, Eliot Higgins has been praised by The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian. He was the subject of a BBC piece on 27 September 2018.[1] Robert Parry termed Bellingcat's analysis of satellite photos about Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 an "amateurish [and] anti-Russian... fraud".[2] Robin Ramsay noted in 2021 that: “Among [Bellingcat]'s current personnel we have a former British Army officer, a former employee of GCHQ, former members of the US Department of Defense, the US Secret Service, the US Army and the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office.” [3] Another commentator claimed that Higgins has constantly been a source of dis/misinformation on Syria and Ukraine: "It's not so much ‘Bellingcat’ as ‘smell a rat’." ~ Wikispooks observations.

and this…

“The security services outlet Bellingcat would publish some photos of big missiles planted in the sand. The Washington Post, Guardian, New York Times, BBC and CNN would republish and amplify these pictures and copy and paste the official statements from government spokesmen. Robert Fisk would get to the scene and interview a few eye witnesses who saw the missiles being planted, and he would be derided as a senile old has-been. Seymour Hersh and Peter Hitchens would interview whistleblowers and be shunned by their colleagues and left off the airwaves. Bloggers like myself would be derided as mad conspiracy theorists or paid Russian agents if we cast any doubt on the Bellingcat “evidence”. Wikipedia would ruthlessly expunge any alternative narrative as being from unreliable sources. The Integrity Initiative, 77th Brigade, GCHQ and their US equivalents would be pumping out the “Iraqi WMD found” narrative all over social media. Mad Ben Nimmo of the Atlantic Council would be banning dissenting accounts all over the place in his role as Facebook Witchfinder-General. Does anybody seriously wish to dispute this is how the absence of Iraqi WMD would be handled today, 16 years on?

What we are seeing is the terrifying rise of the zombie state narrative in Western culture. It does not matter how definitively we can prove that something is a lie, the full spectrum dominance of the Establishment in media resources is such that the lie is impossible to kill off, and the state manages to implant that lie as the truth in the minds of a sufficient majority of the populace to ride roughshod over objective truth with great success. It follows in the state narrative that anybody who challenges the state’s version of truth is themselves dishonest or mad, and the state manages also to implant that notion into a sufficient majority of the populace. These are truly chilling times.” ~ former British ambassador Craig Murray in his 2020 article: The Terrifying Rise of the Zombie State Narrative“.

SeerOfJustice @Justice_Seer

@CraigMurrayOrg "It is however an important reminder to take Bellingcat as a source with a pinch of salt." 😂😂WE DO! Tbh: @bellingcat has GOT TO BE a branch of the "security services". It's so amateur and embarrassing as befits the British comedy caper "Carry On Up the Kremlin/#SkripalHoax"!

On 9 October 2018, at a press conference on College Green, Westminster, independent journalist Graham Phillips questioned Eliot Higgins about his NATO, CIA and George Soros funding which caused mayhem:

On yer bike SellingCrap - we see you!