Benjamin Strick
@BenDoBrown
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Investigations Director @Cen4infoRes . Past BBC & @Bellingcat . Tutorials: . OSINT/GEOINT. Views my own.
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Pinned Tweet
Hi. I regularly get asked for free training sessions & workshops and love sharing research skills, so I've made these tutorials on YouTube with more coming. I hope it helps.
Here is the
#OSINT
At Home playlist:
This video is a snippet of the content ✌️
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I’ll never forget this video. It was Sasha's last meeting with his parents two years ago on 02/24/22. His parents saw him off as he went to fight Russia’s invading forces. His sister found the video on his iCloud after he died defending Ukraine’s Mariupol.
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A coordinated network of fake accounts posed as Sikh personas to promote the Indian Govt, nationalism & label Sikh activists as terrorists.
They claimed they were
#RealSikhs
, but were far from it. News on our investigation: Here is an explainer thread👇
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A new 'immersive mode' is coming to Google Maps soon, which fuses together billions of street view and aerial images to create a digital model of the world. More here:
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@MAstronomers
In 2018…
From yesterday's
#IceBridge
flight: A tabular iceberg can be seen on the right, floating among sea ice just off of the Larsen C ice shelf. The iceberg's sharp angles and flat surface indicate that it probably recently calved from the ice shelf.
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Six months ago Ukraine’s Kramatorsk train station was bombed, killing civilians trying to flee the war. The Kremlin denied responsibility.
Today, at
@Cen4infoRes
, we publish this report, showing how the rockets were fired from a Russian-controlled area.
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India's Modi Government marketing team is in full drive today. More than 1 million tweets on
#ModirSatheBrigade
pushing it to
#1
on Twitter today during Modi's visit to West Bengal (). As to expect, lots of copy&paste text.
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Huge backlog of trucks waiting to cross the Kerch seen in satellite imagery taken yesterday by
@Maxar
. Backlog is waiting at this abandoned airport: 45.3657456, 36.4088473.
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Google Earth has updated its satellite imagery of many parts of Sudan. Looking over West Darfur city of El Geneina, I am shocked at the level of destruction. In some parts, whole areas have been destroyed and cleared. Location: 13.4469, 22.4151 (dates: April 2023 & March 2024)
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Russian State broadcaster RT photoshopped weapons into an image of a refugee family from Afghanistan 😶
Nothing to see here, just Russian state broadcaster RT photoshopping weapons and explosives onto an image of an innocent Afghan refugee family to portray them as terrorists.
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An influence operation was waged online yesterday to amplify pro-BJP text in the
#AmitShahInBengal
tag, attack opposition, and win over Indian voters. Full report:
This forensic thread details 🧵👇
- HOW it was done
- HOW it spread
- WHO runs them
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The results differ quite a lot between low and high nadir ranges, as you can see. This fundamental flaw by WarOnFakes comes down to very basic things.
The 'proof' that WarOnFakes, and all of the other pro-Russian accounts are using, is proof that they cannot use simple tools.
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I captured five days of tweets using
#WestPapua
&
#FreeWestPapua
tags after a crackdown by Indonesian forces against Papuans in Aug. What I found was a bot network spreading pro-govt propaganda.
Follow this thread for an
#OSINT
journey with a
@Twitter
network analysis
👇👇👇
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NEW
@Maxar
satellite imagery from today (July 30) shows Olenivka Prison in Ukraine's Donetsk where more than 50 reportedly died following an attack at the prison on Friday morning (July 29).
Imagery shows before and after (27 & 29 of July). Location: 47.828530, 37.710802
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Claims are emerging of mass graves, civilian executions and disappearances from recently captured Vysokopillia and its surrounding area in Kherson oblast after six months of Russian occupation.
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A copypasta campaign in India is targeting politically-sensitive tags
#TMCHataoBanglaBachao
&
#KrishokSurokhaAbhijan
on Twitter. I captured data over the past week for analysis.
Report: CC
@TwitterSafety
Here's some findings in this
#OSINT
thread 🧵👇
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The 'evidence' presented by the Russian MoD claiming Ukraine is creating dirty bombs is completely unreliable. Image on the right if from as far back as 2016, if not more.
💬 Russian Defence Ministry: According to the information at hand, two organisations of Ukraine have been ❗ directly ordered to create the so-called
#dirtybomb
.
☢️ The works are at their concluding stage.
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Geolocation of Kadyrov Chechen fighters in Babyntsi (Бабинці). Location: 50.640541, 30.023239 about 35km NW of Kyiv.
Chechens (Kadyrov) in Kiev. According to them, this is an eviction. According to the words, there is no resistance.
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What we know is that their aims were to label Sikh political interests as extremist, stoke cultural tensions within India & overseas & promote the Indian Govt.
So WHO are the
#RealSikhs
?
WHAT was their aim?
And HOW did they attempt to distort perceptions?
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And they're right. It doesn't show March 19 imagery there. Why? Because they have failed to select the filter option of the range of nadir to show all available imagery.
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Blatant denialism coming from a
@FoxNews
staffer on what’s happening in Ukraine.
Here’s 8000+ verified videos and photos documenting Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine:
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This pro-Kremlin 'fact checking' site WarOnFakes appears to be the source of much of the attempts to raise doubt, and promote pro-Russian narratives. The site published an article claiming Maxar had no satellite coverage of Bucha at that time.
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This grim video surfaced online on Jan 4, 2020, just after 9pm. It shows a group of young cadets in
#Libya
hit by a strike for which no one has ever claimed responsibility.
#BBCAfricaEye
&
@BBCArabic
investigated this case for months, and this is what we found. [THREAD]
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One clear look at the source site of
@Maxar
's archive (where they got their screenshot) shows that there is indeed March 19 imagery.
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For the past month I have been watching the tags
#WestPapua
&
#PapuanLivesMatter
.
What I found was a network of Dutch, German & English accounts with fake pics attempting to distort the narrative of independence.
Here's some of the findings in a 🧵👇
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Footage from
@nytimes
shows Russian soldiers leading a group of Ukrainian captives to a courtyard where they were executed on March 4 in Ukraine's Bucha. Such an important piece from
@malachybrowne
& team. Full report:
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Racial hate speech has surged on Twitter, Telegram and other platforms to incite, promote and justify violence against Ukrainians since Feb 2022.
Our research at
@Cen4infoRes
has identified these networks, who they are and how they spread. Full report:
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Geolocation of footage showing what appears to be 10+ bodies on Al-Rashid Street, 7km SW of Gaza. Location: 31.482964, 34.395413.
Footage in comment below.
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Russian forces firing heavily from Trostyanets (Тростянець) in Sumy Oblast yesterday. Location of launch area: 50.481108, 34.965646.
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First, WHO were these accounts trying to be and what did they look like?
The accounts were well-curated. They had relatively high follower numbers & were very active.
The personas were replicated across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
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The Government promoted the
#IndiaAgainstPropaganda
tag earlier this year. Does that count for the West Bengal elections?
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Well done
@FloraCarmichael
@shrutimenon10
for turning this in-depth influence operations research into a newsworthy report. . Also a big thanks to
@elisethoma5
and staff at
@Cen4infoRes
for reviewing this research.
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So how did they make this mistake? When you open up the search filters, by default the library only shows imagery at 30% off nadir (the angle in which the satellite is at when it takes the image, basically).
They forgot to open up that range.
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Good morning. I've been asked by many to explain how I found
@officialmcafee
and his security team. So I did this case study on geoprofiling and imagery analysis for the
#OSINT
community. This should help if you are trying to geolocate a traveler✌️
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This is brilliant work by the team at
@thesundaytimes
using verification work from our Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map from
@Cen4infoRes
to create this piece telling the story of the war through the eyes of Ukrainians
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Let's take a look at some of the accounts. The first pattern identified in this network is the profile images.
Most of the accounts in this network used the images of Bollywood actresses & celebrities.
Here is
@jimmykaur3
. It's actually an image of an actress.
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New satellite imagery taken this morning shows smoke coming from the contested Snake Island (45.255721, 30.204173) which Russia announced its withdrawal from today: . 📸
@Maxar
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Closer view of the imagery from today shows the very targeted location on that specific building, located at: 47.828530, 37.710802. 📸
@Maxar
Ukraine's President Zelensky says this prison attack was a 'deliberate war crime by the Russians'.
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This investigation I did in 2021 is getting lots of new attention after recent claims of networks attempting to influence perceptions in India.
Stay alert for tactics and accounts like those seen here, especially where the info targets minority groups.
A coordinated network of fake accounts posed as Sikh personas to promote the Indian Govt, nationalism & label Sikh activists as terrorists.
They claimed they were
#RealSikhs
, but were far from it. News on our investigation: Here is an explainer thread👇
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“Where do you get all of that satellite imagery from?” this is a question I get asked a lot, so here is a
#GEOINT
tutorial on my four fav satellite imagery tools (& their cool features) to help. Oh, and they’re all free and publicly available ✌️
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Many accounts have posted these claims that Maxar didn't have satellites running over Bucha on March 19.
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It’s been six weeks since the Myanmar coup. Despite deaths, violence by security forces, internet shutdowns and night raids, demonstrators brave the streets. This was Hledan, Yangon, last night ✊
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A brilliant visualisation by
@FT
based on the data we've been collecting, verifying and mapping at
@Cen4infoRes
on the Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map: . Well done
@neggeen_s
&
@sdbernard
. Here's the FT piece:
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A good reminder to always double check your satellite sources, here's Korea's Naver Maps with an entire fake forest covering a defence area in Seoul's Yongsan area.
The fake forest can be clearly seen when compared against Google Maps.
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Our Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map is now updated with more than 400 entries, specifically locations and details of units amassed along Ukraine's border. You can see the map we've been working on at
@Cen4infoRes
(with support form the community) here:
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Here is
@Amarjot42854873
? Again - fake. This person does exist and it's not Amarjot Kaur.
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So WHAT was their aim?
We can glean some obvious details from the content the accounts post. Here is some of the Facebook activity we looked at. It shows a strong focus on countering Sikh independence. Note the prominence of tags such as
#PakistanBehindKhalistan
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Over the past 20 minutes, almost 2000 tweets have been uploaded using the hashtags of major Chinese cities (such as #杭州), all with the text "I'm single, can I get a husband on Twitter".
All of the accounts have been made in the past two months, and have zero or few followers.
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I call these accounts sock puppets. They are fictitious online identities attempting to be a specific persona.
And these ones have a story that doesn't just exist on Twitter - let's take a look.
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Grim reporting from Ukraine’s Bucha where bodies are seen lying in the streets, some with hands tied, and reports of large mass graves in the area.
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These fake accounts carry their personas over to different platforms.
We found that 22 accounts that were the same personas on Twitter & Facebook. They used the same image, name, cover photo, and posted the same content.
Here is an example of 'Sanpreet' on both platforms.
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These findings are documented in a full transparent influence operations research report here
@Cen4infoRes
:
This report was shared with teams at Twitter and Meta. All of the accounts identified in this research have subsequently been suspended 👊
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Let's take a look at
@nupurkaur1
. This is actually a photo of the sister of Mubashra Aslam.
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Are we seeing a pattern here?
Here is
@kaurgunjann
with more than 7000 followers.
This is actually actress Mandy Takhar.
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Our Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map now has more than 1100 verified entries and a new 'munitions' category. This has been a big effort by our team of volunteers at
@Cen4infoRes
,
@bellingcat
& the community working on this.
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However, some of the content gained significant traction. For example this tweet about independence groups overseas received more than 3000 retweets and 16,000 likes.
Not bad for a sock puppet with a set list of talking points to promote certain narratives.
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NEW Satellite imagery taken over Ukraine's Mariupol on November 30 shows Mariupol's bombed drama theatre surrounded by a large protective screen.
Images below show before (29 March) & after (Nov 30)
📸
@Maxar
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New footage from
@NPU_GOV_UA
follows accounts of CCTV footage and interviews showing how Russian forces, reportedly linked to 1st Battalion of the 104th Regiment of the 76th Div of military unit 32515, entered Irpin and abused civilians. Full video:
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NEW Satellite imagery shows impact of conflict in Ukraine's Soledar. Imagery is from
@Maxar
dated 1 Aug 2022 & 10 Jan 2023
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Today marks nine months since Russia waged a horrifying war on Ukraine. We've investigated and mapped more than 6600 entries of strikes, casualties, graves and the impact on Ukrainian civilians. Here is our map at
@Cen4infoRes
, free for the world to view:
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Finding fires from space is a helpful skill for verification, monitoring and digging a little deeper into conflict, environmental and other research fields. Here's a YouTube tutorial I've created on how to find fires from space, from home. 🛰️
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In a few hours I pulled 3000+ tweets using China location tags #北京, #杭州 & #重庆. These tags are dens of spam.
Red lines indicate interactions between accounts (generally normal activity). Orange nodes are lone accounts, almost all of which spam the tags with dating ads.
Over the past 20 minutes, almost 2000 tweets have been uploaded using the hashtags of major Chinese cities (such as #杭州), all with the text "I'm single, can I get a husband on Twitter".
All of the accounts have been made in the past two months, and have zero or few followers.
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That same tag, as seen on Twitter, shows extremely similar content. Again targeting Sikh independence.
You can see much of the content had few interactions.
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The tag
#Remove1991WorshipAct
is trending in India today. In fact, it was sitting at
#3
in the country a few hours ago.
There's a campaign pushing a specific narrative behind it in a very coordinated way.
Let's take a look at how it works👇 /1
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Many of the personas were present on Instagram as well.
Note: the accounts had significantly less success with metrics on Instagram and Facebook in comparison to the traction they gained on Twitter.
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Today's
@CNN
: "Musk secretly ordered his engineers to turn off his company’s Starlink satellite comms network near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet"
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Satellite data over Gaza shows near blackout of the area since October 10, with Gaza remaining without power since then.
This imagery shows NASA VIIRS data from October 6 and 12 with nighttime city lights in shades of yellow. The change indicates area-wide power outage.
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The coordinated fake network also amplified concerning narratives that attempted to define what 'real Sikh' and a 'fake Sikh' is.
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The fake network of accounts also attempted to push specific narratives about the farmers' protests using messaging claiming that ‘Khalistani terrorists’ hijacked the protests.
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Russia is building new long trenches along Crimea's shores. The trench line seen in this
@planet
imagery from March 2 is at least 3.6km, running along the beaches just west of Yevpatoriya (video attached shows on-ground reference).
Video allegedly showing long trenches in the western Crimea, under construction in Yevpatoriya.
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I captured data using the Twitter API on three tags used by the network:
#RealSikhsAgainstKhalistan
,
#SikhsRejectKhalistan
&
#RealSikhs
.
I've set out that data using
@Gephi
to show the core network of primarily fake accounts and the wider network of amplifiers in the outer ring.
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Hi Twitter, having spent a lot of time on
@googleearth
, I've built up a collection art visible from space. I'd like to share some of my favs with you all in this thread 🛰️🎨
First up is the 'grandma' from Ella & Pitr in Pavilion 3, France, located here: .
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These images are heartbreaking. A father holds his 13yr old son’s hand after the boy was killed during a Russian strike in Ukraine’s Kharkiv today. More here: .
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And here is 'Gunjan' - also copied across to Facebook.
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Here is the Google Drive with a Google Document containing text packets of suggested tweets, and a folder with images for the network to pump out through Twitter.
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There appears to be an copy & paste campaign waged over the past hour to spam the text "Prices will rise to $14.88 per gallon to support the Ukrainian Nazis".
Many of the profile pictures of these accounts appear to be GAN-generated.
@TwitterSafety
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An army of Chinese & Russian-named bots is attacking a Chinese businessman who has been critical of China's response to
#COVID19
Over 48hrs I captured tweets on tags #郭文贵 &
#milesguo
. This THREAD is an
#OSINT
analysis of how the network operates 🤖👇🤖
cc:
@TwitterSafety
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Looks like I made it to
@NH_India
!
This is an important case - police accused climate activist
#DishaRavi
of using a Google Doc and ‘Twitter Storm’ to defame India. It's literally the same tactic I found the BJP using to interfere in
#WestBengal
politics.
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Behind this map we have a database of almost 2000 entries that have been stored and preserved in a manner that can be relied upon by justice & accountability mechanisms. We are happy to support any judicial efforts with this verified material.
We stand ready to assist German prosecutors as they investigate possible war crimes in
#Ukraine
, including the use of cluster munitions & targeting of civilians.
Working with our partners inc
@bellingcat
&
@mnemonicorg
, we've verified & archived a huge number of incidents.
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This video, filmed exactly three years ago on Monday morning, February 1, 2021, caught part of Myanmar’s military coup unfolding in the background. The situation has since grown into a violent war for democracy against bloodthirsty regime resulting in countless civilian deaths.
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We've updated our crowdsourced map today for the second time, adding more than 100 new verified entries of the grim footage of events in Ukraine after a wave of Russian bombardments.
Big effort by all of those volunteering their time on this.
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New images show crash site of the IL-76 reportedly used by Wagner that crashed in Mali on September 23.
Footage of the Russian Ilyushin II-76 that crashed in Mali 3 days ago resulting in the loss of 140+ Wagner mercenaries.
The aircraft (EW-412TH) was registered in Belarus and was reportedly flying from Minsk - Mali - Istanbul however, the footage suggests a complete loss of the
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For those investigating the horrific activities that occurred in Ukraine's Bucha, it might be helpful to cross-reference what we know now with past verification from the area. Our Russia-Ukraine map at
@Cen4infoRes
has a number of entries of that area.
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What is happening in Sudan is threatening to become the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, with indications of ethnic cleansing, famine and homes being burned down. Important coverage by
@lindseyhilsum
,
@Zahra_ZW
,
@munksoren
from Adre Camp, Chad.
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There was also a common theme throughout the network of fake personas to retweet or tweet about the Indian Armed Forces and Indian Army content.
This content was unique as it was not related to Sikh independence much like the other content.
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The endless monitoring, analysis and investigation of these networks I have done here is in my free time, without funding and outside of my day job 😅
Whether it's in West Bengal, Uganda, US or UK, all of these networks should be investigated and documented.
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Praise be. Someone opened the tap on Afghanistan satellite imagery on
@googleearth
- I'm seeing several locations that were completely blurred for ages that are now visible.
Here is a shot I made last month, and here is one I've made today
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We have just updated the map which now has more than 9000 verified and geolocated videos and photos.
Zooming in on
#Bakhmut
shows verified Russian positions on eastern flank (green) and scale of damage in its centre.
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This one is my favourite. MoD claims this is some sort of proof of "Scientific research reactor".
Image on the left is from the Beloyarsk NPP in Russia and image on the right is a flipped version of an old clip about the Novosibirsk Scientific and Industrial Complex
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NEW report at
@Cen4infoRes
looks at how
@PayPal
,
@Patreon
&
@buymeacoffee
are being used to fund pro-Kremlin propaganda 'journalists' such as Patrick Lancaster & UK-sanctioned Graham Phillips. Important reporting by
@elisethoma5
.
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While the fake personas appeared to gain significant traction on Twitter, their tweets and images were also linked, embedded, or reposted on news sites and blogs indicating platform breakout.
Below are two examples of this.
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Satellite imagery shows new rows of graves being added almost weekly in Russian-occupied Kherson in Ukraine’s south.
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