Russia: Moscow banned Bellingcat website

Russia today banned the investigative journalism website from operating inside the country Bellingcat and to its main partner in the region, calling them security threats.

Netherlands-based Bellingcat revealed the involvement of Russian-backed soldiers in the downing of the Malaysian Airlines jet over eastern Ukraine in 2014 and that agents of Russia’s notorious FSB had attempted to poison its critic. Kremlin Alexei Navalny in 2020.

Russia’s attorney general said the actions of Bellingcat and its affiliate The Insider “constitute a threat to (…) the security of the Russian Federation.”

Both sites will be added to Russia’s “unwanted” list, which bans them from operating in Russia and makes cooperation with them illegal for Russian organizations and individuals, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

Its founder Bellingcat Elliott Higgins dismissed the ban, tweeting: “Bellingcat has no legal or financial presence (in Russia) nor does it have staff there, so it’s unclear how Russia expects to enforce the ban.”

Insider is legally based in Latvia, a move intended to protect it from Russian authorities.

He has worked with Bellingcat on most of the site’s major investigations over the past five years, including tracing the movements of the people behind the poisoning of Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal in Britain.

In an attempt to crack down on dissidents, Russia has labeled dozens of international non-governmental organizations and civil society groups “undesirable” and hundreds of domestic organizations and journalists opposed to the Kremlin as “foreign agents”.

The crackdown has intensified since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, a campaign the Kremlin describes as a “special military operation”, with almost all independent organizations outlawed or forced into exile and with new laws punishing criticism of the armed forces with up to 15 years in prison.

RES-EMP

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