Bellingcat: the innovative data-driven investigators tracking the moves of the GRU military unit that paid off bounties in Afghanistan

Bellingcat is a pioneer in data journalism. They were the ones to find out the identities of the GRU members tasked with carrying out the the Skripal assassination in the UK. Two years later, it turns out it’s this unit that will have offered bounties for killings of American and British soldiers in Afghanistan. Before any of this exploded into the mainstream there was the work of Bellingcat.

They use location, government and other data, searching image databases and innovative means of gathering information and translating all of it into compelling true-spy-crime storytelling.

Their investigative articles are fascinating, detailed and go back to what many of us expect from journalism: gathering facts and putting stories together, with an added use of innovative technology.

The New York Times: Trump chose to do nothing when Russia offered bounties to kill American soldiers.

Earlier on Friday June 26, 2020 the New York Times published an article describing the bounty and the fact that Trump was briefed about and chose to do nothing. As Project Lincoln said: he stands with the troops. Just not OUR troops.

Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says

WASHINGTON — American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there, according to officials briefed on the matter.

The United States concluded months ago that the Russian unit, which has been linked to assassination attempts and other covert operations in Europe intended to destabilize the West or take revenge on turncoats, had covertly offered rewards for successful attacks last year.

The Unit that paid the bounty is the same one that carried out the Skripal poisoning in the UK

This GRU unit is the same that was involved in the Skripal assassination/poisoning among other subversive/murderous acts in Eastern European countries like Bulgaria.

The officials briefed on the matter said the government had assessed the operation to be the handiwork of Unit 29155, an arm of Russia’s military intelligence agency, known widely as the G.R.U. The unit is linked to the March 2018 nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury, England, of Sergei Skripal, a former G.R.U. officer who had worked for British intelligence and then defected, and his daughter.

Western intelligence officials say the unit, which has operated for more than a decade, has been charged by the Kremlin with carrying out a campaign to destabilize the West through subversion, sabotage and assassination. In addition to the 2018 poisoning, the unit was behind an attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016 and the poisoning of an arms manufacturer in Bulgaria a year earlier.

Before giant newspapers picked up on these stories, Bellingcat was there first. You can read more of Bellingcat’s articles related to GRU’s Unit 29155 here.

In 2018 a documentary was made about them called “Bellingcat: Truth in a post-truth world”

You can watch it on a Dutch website (it’s in English with Dutch subtitles). Click on the image below to watch it.