0:00

This is the BBC. This

0:03

podcast is supported by advertising outside

0:05

the UK. Deep

0:11

in the ocean, an orca pod is on

0:13

the hunt. These aren't your

0:15

average orcas. These guys

0:17

are organised. Marketing

0:20

team, did you get those social media posts scheduled for

0:22

the SEAL migration? Aye aye,

0:24

Captain. We even have an automated notification for

0:26

all pod managers when they go live. They

0:29

use monday.com to keep their teamwork sharp,

0:31

their communication clear, and their goals in

0:33

sight. monday.com. For whatever

0:35

you run. Even orcas. Go

0:38

to monday.com to dive deeper. What

0:41

do you do with your old tech? Throw

0:43

it in the trash? Drop it in the junk drawer?

0:46

Why not turn it into cash? Why not turn it into cash? With

0:48

Trade-In from Backmarket, you can get paid

0:51

for your old smartphone, laptop or

0:53

tablet. Just visit backmarket.com or download

0:55

our app. You'll get an

0:57

offer in as little as two minutes. Ship

0:59

your old device to us for free and

1:01

get your cash within five days. So

1:03

next time you need to upgrade your

1:05

tech or clean out those drawers, make

1:08

some money with Trade-In from backmarket.com. And

1:10

while you're there, BBC

1:20

Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello,

1:23

it's 965 days since

1:25

Russia began its full scale invasion of Ukraine.

1:28

Today, we're going to talk to a man called

1:30

Elliot Higgins. I've always really said I would really

1:33

like to stop working on Russia, but they keep

1:35

on doing more stuff that's worth investigating. So here

1:37

we are. He is a

1:39

towering presence and some say the

1:42

godfather in the field of OSINT,

1:44

which is open source intelligence, as

1:47

we know it today. And

1:49

what it means is basically finding out

1:52

the things that people, the governments maybe

1:54

do not want us to know or

1:56

disproving the lies that they want us

1:58

to believe. For

2:00

example, Elliot Higgins and his

2:02

team called Bellingcat, they showed

2:04

the route that a Russian

2:07

missile launcher took from Russia

2:10

and into Ukraine where it shot down a

2:12

Malaysian airliner on flight MH17 back in July

2:14

2014 and then went back to Russia. And

2:20

they also amassed the people who poisoned and

2:22

tried to kill Russian opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny

2:24

in 2020, which he did survive, although I

2:26

know you know who died this year. And

2:29

he does all this, not by tricks

2:31

or by covert methods, he does

2:33

it all by stuff that is

2:35

posted online. There's so much to

2:37

talk to him about, especially on the work

2:39

they're doing on the conflict in Ukraine. And

2:41

make sure you stay listening right till the

2:43

end, because we're also going to talk about

2:45

reports that North Koreans, many of them, thousands

2:47

of them, are potentially joining

2:50

the Russian army to get involved

2:52

in this conflict. This is Ukraine cast.

2:55

Ukraine cast from these things. People

2:58

cannot be trusted. Ask pregersion. We

3:00

are not dealing with a politician,

3:03

but with a bloody monster. Is

3:05

there a need for a serious

3:07

opponent? Why? Ukraine is

3:09

unbroken, unbound and unconquered. It's not just

3:12

about Ukraine, it's about the whole future

3:14

of Europe. I don't understand what this

3:16

war is for. Hello,

3:20

this is Victoria Derbyshire in the Ukraine cast studio.

3:23

And this is Vitaliy Shavchenko, also in

3:25

the Ukraine cast studio. And

3:27

today we're talking about online

3:30

investigations, otherwise known

3:32

as open source intelligence ascent.

3:35

And the best man to talk to about all

3:37

this is Elliot

3:39

Higgins, the founder and creative

3:41

director of Bellingcat. Welcome

3:44

to Ukraine cast, Elliot. Thanks for having me

3:46

on. Hi, Elliot. First of all, for our

3:48

listeners right around the world, how would you

3:50

describe yourself? How would you describe Bellingcat? So

3:53

I'm really the self-taught investigator. I'm

3:56

someone who founded an organization to teach other people

3:58

how to do that. that

4:00

organization was Balancat, which does something

4:02

called open source investigation. And that's

4:05

really using publicly available information coming

4:07

from a range of different topics to

4:09

investigate things that are happening many hundreds

4:12

or even thousands of miles away. I

4:14

remember attending one of your

4:17

first presentations 10

4:19

years ago, I think almost to the date, at

4:22

the Guardian, where we talked about MH17,

4:26

the Malaysian Airlines plane

4:29

shot down over Ukraine. And

4:31

I came into that presentation thinking,

4:33

what can that man from Leicester

4:36

tell me about what's going on in Ukraine?

4:39

Leicester, by the way, for listeners around the world

4:41

is a very lovely medium sized city sort of

4:43

in the middle of the UK. Oh, I'm sure.

4:46

And I emerged from that presentation,

4:48

a completely transformed man. You completely

4:51

changed my mind. How

4:53

do you do that? So really

4:55

since the advent of the iPhone

4:57

and the spread of smartphone technology

4:59

and the spread of apps on

5:01

those smartphones, people are continually online.

5:03

And they're not just consuming information,

5:05

but they're creating information. And that's

5:07

not just social media posts, but

5:09

it's photographs, videos that they're sharing

5:11

online. And in terms of

5:13

things like conflict zones, for example, that's where

5:15

there's a lot of interesting information that people

5:17

are just kind of gathering through those devices.

5:20

So what we're doing in part is looking

5:22

for that information and then analyzing it, trying

5:25

to figure out, is this film

5:27

the way it claims to be filmed? And there's various

5:29

things you can do to do that. We have one

5:31

process we call geolocation, which is taking

5:33

a video or photograph and

5:35

then using publicly available information

5:37

such as satellite imagery, reference

5:39

photographs, Google Street View, stuff

5:42

available to anyone to confirm

5:44

that location. And if you

5:46

do an awful lot of that around various topics, you

5:48

can glean a huge amount of information. And

5:50

we're going to talk about some specific

5:52

examples regarding the conflict between

5:54

Russia and Ukraine in a moment. But

5:57

would you say, is this the first digital

5:59

war? Or is that not accurate? Because if

6:01

you think about the civil war in Syria,

6:03

for example, what would you pinpoint as the

6:06

first digital war? I think it really all

6:08

evolved during the various events of the Arab

6:10

Spring. So I remember back in 2010 watching

6:13

Al Jazeera live streams from

6:15

over-toureur-scaring Cairo, the vows between

6:17

the police. But then with

6:19

Libya, you saw more and more stuff being

6:22

shared online by people on the ground. But

6:24

I think it was really Syria where this

6:26

idea of sharing information from conflict zones really

6:28

just grew massively. You had various groups on

6:31

the ground who were filming footage, some were

6:33

armed groups, some were media centres, but

6:35

they were all sharing this on places

6:37

like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. So that

6:39

became a huge resource for gathering information.

6:41

But what was key to this, because

6:44

obviously those sources have their own biases,

6:46

is trying to analyse it and establish

6:48

the truth from fiction. Let's

6:50

now go through some of the more

6:53

recent examples of what you do. Back

6:56

in July, a hospital in Kiev

6:58

called Ochmadet, which is Ukraine's

7:01

biggest hospital for children,

7:04

it was hit with a

7:06

missile strike. Let's

7:08

take a listen. Elliot,

7:12

can you tell us what you

7:14

did about Ochmadet, what you found

7:16

out? So the first thing we

7:18

always do is try and gather as much information about

7:21

the incident as possible. And key

7:23

to that is visual evidence, because you can

7:25

have witness statements, you can have claims and

7:27

counterclaims. But what's really important

7:29

is having that visual evidence to actually

7:31

see what happened. We gathered

7:34

that, we located it where it was

7:36

in relation to the hospital, so we

7:38

knew which way the cameras were pointing.

7:40

And some of those captured explosions, some

7:42

captured the aftermath. But one of them

7:44

actually captured the missile in the air

7:46

as it was flying into the building.

7:48

We took frames of that video and

7:50

it allowed us to get a silhouette

7:52

shape of the weapon in question. And

7:55

then Russia only has so many different types

7:57

of missiles it fires into Ukraine. we

8:00

compared it against various types of missiles. We

8:02

created 3D models of those missiles to overlay

8:04

with the image. And they showed

8:06

very clearly that it was a specific type of

8:09

Russian missile that was fired at the hospital. And

8:11

it wasn't that there were claims

8:13

and counterclaims. One of the counter claims was

8:15

this was a Ukrainian air defence missile. So

8:17

could it say, no, that's not the case

8:19

because it doesn't fit with those kinds of

8:21

missiles. It's the shape of this specific Russian

8:23

missile. I mean, incredibly effective and

8:25

incredibly useful because as we know, having

8:28

reported on this for two plus years,

8:32

the Russian playbook is it was

8:34

the Ukrainians that did it pretty

8:36

much every time. Well, that and,

8:39

you know, deny, deny, deny and confuse. There

8:41

are all sorts of claims I've seen on

8:43

Russian television. It was a Swedish missile, the

8:46

lot. And another

8:48

example, Elliot, you did a lot of

8:50

work identifying Russian troop movements in the

8:53

lead up to the full

8:55

scale invasion. And I've got in

8:57

front of me a map which

8:59

shows you collected on

9:02

this map, footage from

9:04

TikTok videos, which over

9:06

a period of time, showed

9:10

basically Russian military movements, particularly in Belarus,

9:12

as they built up around the border

9:15

all the while I'm talking about January,

9:17

February 2022, all the while

9:19

when Russia was denying that there was any

9:21

possibility of an invasion of Ukraine. And when

9:23

I click on this map, and

9:26

it's dated as well, 24th of the first 2022, I can see

9:28

from your map,

9:33

blue dots, which signify Russian

9:36

troops, essentially. So there's a few in

9:38

Belarus. And as I whiz along the

9:41

dates, you can, it's the most effective

9:43

illustration of the build up right along

9:45

the border with Ukraine in Belarus. And

9:47

then, you know, the many thousands

9:49

of miles along the Ukrainian border with Russia.

9:51

How long did it take you to do

9:54

that? Well, we have a map, it's

9:56

at ukraine.balancat.com if anyone wants to check it

9:58

out. But it is... a

10:00

map of geolocated videos from the

10:02

conflict. And what's quite unique

10:04

about the 2022 invasion of

10:07

Ukraine is that it would have been

10:09

eight years of work using open source

10:11

investigation by Balincat and other organizations. But

10:13

it's never about just the organizations doing

10:15

the investigative work. It's also about the

10:18

organizations and individuals who learn from us.

10:20

So when Russia was preparing to invade

10:22

Ukraine, you had a whole community on

10:24

the internet who had learned from Balincat

10:26

how to geolocate stuff, were geolocating videos.

10:28

And that then entered a kind of

10:31

pipeline that we were able to use

10:33

to verify those geolocations, do some ourselves,

10:35

and start actually mapping out what these

10:37

things were in very, very rapidly in

10:39

many cases. So we could get

10:42

a near real time map of

10:44

how these movements were happening, what the buildup

10:46

actually was. And this was at

10:48

a time when Zelensky was telling his people

10:50

there's not going to be an invasion. There

10:52

were claims and counterclaims from various communities. Russia

10:55

was still claiming it was a training exercise.

10:57

But you don't just get the troop movements,

10:59

but you're also getting the details of what

11:01

troops they are, military units, what kind of

11:03

activities they would be involved in. So that

11:05

started giving us a very clear picture that

11:08

yes, this was a military build up that

11:10

could lead to a direct invasion. And

11:13

just to be clear, Elliot, so when I

11:15

click on one of these blue dots, it

11:17

will show me a video of someone in

11:19

a town, maybe in Russia, close to the

11:21

Ukrainian border. It's just some citizen

11:24

videoing a tank going through their

11:26

town, for example. Or

11:28

it could be a Russian

11:30

military soldier videoing their weaponry. So

11:32

it's normal people putting this stuff

11:34

up. Yeah, it's a sign of

11:36

our times that people film stuff,

11:38

stick it on social media for

11:41

engagement. And that's the kind of

11:43

thing they're looking for. There were

11:45

so many people on TikTok who

11:47

were hashtagging their town and then

11:49

sticking a video of military convoy,

11:51

really for engagement. They weren't

11:53

acting as our proxy spies on the ground,

11:55

gathering information. They were just trying to get

11:57

clicks. You spent so much of your career,

11:59

Elliot. investigating Russia.

12:02

At the very beginning of this

12:05

all there was the that ill-fated

12:07

flight, MH17, that you investigated. A

12:10

passenger jet with 295 people

12:13

on board has crashed in eastern

12:15

Ukraine. There are unconfirmed reports that

12:17

the Malaysian Airlines flight from Amsterdam

12:19

to Kuala Lumpur was shot down.

12:22

A reporter from the Reuters news...

12:25

Then you identified the two people

12:28

sent in to poison Sergey

12:30

Skripal in Salisbury. Let's

12:32

have a listen to that infamous

12:35

clip of those two people talking

12:37

to RT. What

12:39

were you doing there? Our

12:42

friends had been suggesting for a long time

12:44

that we visit this wonderful town. Salisbury,

12:47

a wonderful town? Yes. There's

12:55

the famous Salisbury Cathedral, famous not only

12:57

in Europe but in the whole world.

12:59

It's famous for its 123 meter

13:02

spire. It's famous for its

13:04

clock, the one of the first ever created

13:06

in the world that's still working. The work

13:09

that you did, Elliot, demonstrated that

13:12

the reason why those two people,

13:15

actually Russian Secret Service

13:17

agents, why they visited Salisbury wasn't

13:19

to see the cathedral but to

13:21

poison that defecting agent

13:23

Sergey Skripal. Why so

13:27

much of your work has been focused on

13:29

Russia? Well a lot of it is really

13:31

about how open source investigation evolved as a

13:33

field. This wasn't something that came from a

13:36

professional community. It was something that came from

13:38

a bunch of people on

13:40

the internet who were interested in some things and

13:42

that really started with the Arab Spring. So

13:45

really that matured in

13:48

a period where Syria was the kind of

13:50

dominant country in regards to what was happening,

13:52

where the analysis was happening. So that develops

13:54

a community around that. Then in 2014 MH17

13:58

happened so there was a lot of

14:00

open open source information about Ukraine and

14:02

what was happening. And again, the community

14:05

was kind of engaging with that. And

14:07

Russia was involved with that, obviously. Then

14:09

Russia got involved with Syria and started

14:11

bombing in Syria. So the kind of

14:13

Syria open source community and the Russia,

14:16

Ukraine open source community came together, really.

14:19

And that's really been the main driver of

14:21

it. But as the community

14:23

has grown, we've been working on more

14:25

diverse subjects. I've always really

14:27

said I would really like to stop working

14:29

on Russia, but they keep on doing more

14:31

stuff that's worth investigating. So yeah, here we

14:33

are. Just briefly

14:35

describe how you proved that those two

14:37

men who were speaking to Russia today,

14:40

pretending they were going to see Salisbury

14:42

Cathedral, were actually who

14:44

they really were. Well, this won't be on the

14:46

bit more of open source investigation than I think

14:48

it's fair to say we normally do. In

14:51

Russia, it's a corrupt police state. And the

14:53

thing with corrupt police states, it's

14:56

that all the information the police are gathering

14:58

is available to anyone who can find the

15:00

right person to supply it. And it's very,

15:02

very widespread. For example, I

15:04

remember reading a Financial Times article from

15:06

around 10 or 15 years ago, where

15:09

they had like a market where DVDs

15:11

with government databases were for sale from

15:13

the back of someone's car. So

15:16

it's very widespread. And we

15:18

realized that these individuals must

15:20

have some sort of footprint in these databases.

15:23

And one of our colleagues who was working

15:25

with us at the time, Trisa Grozev, he

15:28

brought some passport registration forms that had

15:30

been used to register the passports of

15:32

the suspects. And it was

15:35

almost like a joke because we thought, well, there's no

15:37

way. They would just make it really obvious that these

15:39

guys were spies. But they had the phone number of

15:41

the Ministry of Defense stamped on their forms. They

15:44

had a stamp to say that they were working

15:46

for an intelligence service on the forms. That

15:48

kind of gave us the clue that, yeah, these

15:50

weren't the people they claimed they were. But then

15:52

that was kind of like, how do we find

15:54

their real identity? That was using

15:57

clues from previous investigations, We

16:00

knew that in some cases there'd been

16:02

someone arrested during the attempted coup in

16:04

Montenegro a couple of years earlier, who

16:06

had used the same first name, place

16:08

of birth and date of birth in

16:10

his ID and both his real and

16:12

fake ID. So we used that

16:14

same pattern to identify one of the suspects.

16:17

And the second suspect was really a matter

16:19

of kind of doing a profile of him

16:21

and figuring out, where would he have been

16:23

trained? What kind of experience

16:25

would he need? And from that, we can actually

16:27

narrow it down to one military training school and

16:29

identify them as a person who was attending

16:32

that school. And when you get to

16:34

that moment, first of all, how

16:36

do you know you've got to that moment? And

16:39

what does it feel like? Sometimes it

16:41

can be just this kind of

16:43

very careful process of piecing together

16:45

lots of bits of information until

16:47

there's just no likely alternative scenario

16:49

based on information you have. Sometimes it's literally

16:51

you get someone's passport form and they've got

16:54

the Russian MOD's phone number stamped on it.

16:56

And it's like, well, that's more obvious than

16:58

we kind of would expect in

17:00

these situations. But you gave the example

17:02

of the Russia Today interview where the

17:04

two scriptable suspects were there saying, we're

17:06

just innocent sports nutrition salesmen.

17:09

And at that point, we'd actually

17:11

already received the forms, the passport

17:13

registration forms that showed that they

17:15

definitely weren't innocent sports nutrition salesmen.

17:18

So washing that, I think for us,

17:20

was very amusing to see them going

17:22

through that experience, knowing that

17:24

24 hours later, we'd be publishing our first

17:26

article showing that they weren't who they claimed

17:28

to be. Sure. A very important election is

17:31

coming up in November, as you will know,

17:33

Elliot, in the States. And

17:35

a lot depends on the outcome

17:37

of that election. The head

17:39

of America's national

17:42

intelligence, Avril Haines, says that Russia

17:44

is the most active foreign threat

17:46

to our elections. Have you

17:48

seen any evidence that Russia

17:51

is already meddling in those

17:53

elections in the States? Oh yeah, absolutely.

17:55

There's ongoing campaign on social

17:58

media. It seems to be mainly...

18:00

focused on Twitter and Telegram at

18:02

the moment, where videos are being

18:05

produced to mimic news organisations, and

18:07

that's included the BBC and Bellingcat,

18:09

where there's various very precise stories.

18:12

There's one today claiming that I

18:14

had said that the coverage of

18:16

the recent hurricane in the US

18:18

was fuelled by Russian

18:21

propaganda. The thing that's really

18:23

interesting about this is they always

18:25

have a certain number of likes and retweets

18:27

that all come from bots, and all the

18:29

views are all artificial. So while

18:31

they're doing these campaigns, their

18:34

actual reach to actual authentic

18:36

audiences is pretty much zero.

18:39

Really, this is about them scamming

18:42

their pay masters, saying, look, we've got all

18:44

this engagement, but all the engagement is fake.

18:46

But obviously, they aren't saying we're using bots

18:48

to get this engagement. So in a way,

18:51

it's actually fake, fake news. How do you

18:53

know the engagement is fake? Tell

18:56

our audience how they would spot that? Or

18:58

is it not easy for us to lay

19:00

people to spot? For one thing, they wouldn't

19:03

spot it because it wouldn't come into their

19:05

feeds. But if you come across on these

19:07

posts, currently, when you come across them, they

19:09

always have a QR verified code with them,

19:12

which no other organisation uses. And it seems

19:14

they've got this idea that this makes their

19:16

stuff more authentic. So that's something

19:19

to watch out for. But when you actually look

19:21

at who's retweeted them, in one

19:23

case, it's all these brand new accounts

19:25

that have been, they've all got Turkish

19:28

names, there's four or 500 of them

19:30

usually, they've been created within the last

19:32

month, so they're all October 2024 at

19:34

the moment. And

19:36

they're all very inactive, they've reshared

19:38

two or three different things. And

19:41

generally, it's other things

19:43

in this campaign. And there's a

19:45

second bot network, which is really

19:47

like all these really dodgy kind

19:49

of cryptocurrency type bots that retweet

19:51

loads of different things in different

19:53

languages, they're all adverts for mobile

19:55

games, Bitcoin type stuff and scams.

19:57

And then so what they're doing

19:59

is they're actually buying the

20:02

use of bot networks to promote their

20:04

tweets, all inauthentic. But if you

20:07

actually look at retweets, it becomes very apparent that

20:09

this is all inauthentic behavior. I know you will

20:11

have been asked this many times, and we have

20:13

to for the benefit of our listeners. Are you

20:15

a spy? Do you work for MI6 or the

20:18

CIA? I'm not, but- How do we know you're

20:20

telling the truth? Well,

20:22

the thing we do at Bellingcat is we

20:25

try to be as transparent about how we're

20:27

funded, how we work, all our sources are

20:29

transparent. So we try to be

20:31

as transparent as possible. Unfortunately, in

20:33

Russia, we've been declared an undesirable organization

20:35

and a foreign agent. So there are

20:37

risks associated with being transparent at the

20:40

moment. So we're not going to put

20:42

our home addresses online or anything like

20:44

that. Sorry,

20:46

just to explain, what's the significance of being

20:48

described as a foreign agent? What

20:50

does that mean for you and your safety

20:52

and your colleague's safety? In terms of Russia,

20:54

any Russian site that cites us now can

20:56

get into legal trouble. Anyone who partners

20:59

with us or works with us inside Russia

21:01

or outside of Russia can basically be prosecuted

21:03

by the Russian state at the moment. Most

21:06

people just ignore it because Russia doesn't

21:08

really have much legal reach outside of

21:10

Russia. So it doesn't affect us

21:12

in many ways, but it does mean

21:14

that we get a lot of funders who are

21:17

donating to us, who are very

21:19

concerned that their operations that might

21:21

touch from Russia in terms of

21:23

supporting NGOs there could be affected

21:25

because Ballincat and other NGOs have

21:27

been declared foreign agents. And there's

21:29

actually an upcoming European Court of

21:31

Human Rights case that will be

21:33

coming to its conclusion in a

21:35

week or two that is directly

21:37

about Ballincat and other organizations being

21:39

called undesirable organizations and how that's

21:41

been really encroaching our freedom of

21:44

speech. The work that you've done,

21:46

Eliot, has upset a lot of

21:48

people in the Kremlin. You know that and you

21:50

also know what happens to

21:52

the people that upset

21:55

the Kremlin after investigating the

21:57

poisoning of Alexei Novailin and Sergei Skripal.

22:00

Do you feel safe? I

22:02

feel probably less safe than I

22:04

did before I started doing this work, but

22:06

I certainly don't feel extremely unsafe

22:08

or anything like that. A lot of it

22:11

comes down to making sure that I'm personally

22:13

careful about my security and

22:15

where I go. I'm not sharing

22:18

on social media my location minute by minute

22:20

or anything like that. A lot

22:22

of the attacks really come from cyber attacks. We've

22:25

been targeted by phishing campaigns, hacking attempts, and

22:27

that kind of thing. Yeah, I

22:29

mean, there's always a risk presented with that. And

22:31

it's something we take very seriously at Bellingcat and

22:33

we take steps to mitigate that as much as

22:35

possible. Is it true that your

22:37

mum's been doorstep by Russian state media? Yeah,

22:40

a few years ago, Russia

22:42

Today sent someone to my hometown. They actually

22:45

sent me a message in the morning saying

22:47

they were coming to film the Diwali Festival

22:49

in Western. Would they be interested in, you

22:51

know, would I be interested in doing an

22:53

interview? And I thought that's really weird

22:56

because that is Diwali Festival isn't for three or four

22:58

weeks. And when I looked into them,

23:00

they're just on a piece for Russia Today attacking the

23:02

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. I thought I know where

23:04

this is going. Then they turned

23:06

up at my first of all, my accountant's

23:08

office asking about where I was, like the

23:10

secretary of the accountant's office would know. Then

23:13

my office building, which I was using as

23:16

basically a P.O. box demanding to see me.

23:18

And then they turned up to my old

23:20

house where my mother was at the time

23:22

and door stepped up, which I thought was,

23:24

you know, I mean, it really shows how

23:26

low they'll go with regards to going after

23:29

people they don't like. I think you've talked

23:31

in one interview about playing geolocation games with

23:33

your son. Is

23:35

he going to follow in your footsteps? Well, he's

23:37

very bright. So I think he's catching on very

23:39

quickly. He's nine. So

23:41

I'm not doing anything like that. It's a bit of

23:43

a way to go. It's more like

23:45

these old photos from London and stuff like that. But yeah,

23:47

he's picking up on it. So maybe one day. Yeah.

23:50

A pioneer of what's

23:53

known as O-cent now.

23:56

But how has your role and

23:59

your job. changed

24:02

compared to the very early days of online

24:05

investigations. Is it different

24:07

now? Yeah, very much so. I used

24:10

to do a lot of, well, pretty much all

24:12

the investigations myself, and then I was part of

24:14

a team of volunteers who came together to do

24:16

that. Now it's about me making

24:18

sure that we have, you know, our staff

24:20

is able to do that work, that they

24:22

have all the resources they need, the connections

24:24

and the help they need. I

24:26

also work on a lot of the

24:28

kind of theory around this work. You

24:31

know, why do people get drawn into

24:33

conspiracy theories and disinformation, and how do

24:35

we kind of disrupt that process? A

24:37

lot of my focus at the moment is

24:40

on education, both at university level and at

24:42

secondary schools, and thinking how do we teach

24:44

young people to positively engage with information online?

24:47

How do we not just teach them, you

24:49

know, how to fact-check a headline, which they

24:51

probably won't ever see because they don't read

24:53

newspapers anymore? How do we actually make them

24:56

participants in investigations about things they care about?

24:59

And more importantly, how do we actually make sure

25:01

there's impact from that? Because I think the worst

25:03

thing we can do is teach young people that

25:05

the truth is really important, but when they find

25:07

the truth, nothing happens, because

25:10

that just reinforces the cycles of

25:12

distrust and powerlessness that draws

25:14

people into online communities that, you

25:16

know, drive them towards conspiracy theories

25:18

and fringe ideologies. Finally, Elliot,

25:21

I wanted to ask you about something that's

25:23

mystified me for ten years. What

25:25

is Belling Cat? What does that name

25:28

mean? It comes from a fable called

25:30

Belling the Cat. The

25:34

fable about Belling the Cat. Long

25:38

ago in a certain town, all

25:40

the mice met together and tried to decide

25:42

what to do about a certain cat. And

25:45

it was suggested to me by a friend of mine,

25:48

a piece of juke, who runs the Byline Times, I'm

25:50

really bad at coming up with clever names. So

25:52

I called him up and said, you know, you're

25:54

a writer, so give me some good ideas. And

25:57

he suggested that. And it's about a group of

25:59

mice who are very afraid. afraid of a large

26:01

cat. So they have a meeting and

26:03

they're discussing what they should do. And someone comes

26:05

up, well, one of the mice comes up with

26:07

the idea of putting a bell on the cat's

26:09

neck. But then an old wise man tells them

26:11

that, you know, it's good to have the idea

26:13

of doing that, but who's brave enough to do

26:16

it? And no one wants to step forward to

26:18

volunteer. So we're teaching people how to bell the

26:20

cat. And initially it was going to

26:22

be bellingthecat.com. But when I looked it up on GoDaddy, it

26:24

was about $4,000 to buy. So

26:27

I just did Bellingcat and that was 40. So I

26:29

went with that. Elliot,

26:32

thank you so much for being with us on Ukrainecast and telling

26:34

us about your work. Thank you. Thanks

26:36

for talking to us. Thank you. Are

26:45

you a professional pillow fighter or a nine to

26:47

five low cost time travel agent or maybe

26:50

real estate sales on Mars is your profession? It

26:53

doesn't matter whatever it is you

26:55

do, however complex or intricate. monday.com

26:58

can help you organize, orchestrate and

27:00

make it more efficient. monday.com

27:02

is the one centralized platform

27:04

for everything work related. And

27:06

with monday.com, work is just

27:08

easier. monday.com

27:11

for whatever you run. Go

27:13

to monday.com to learn more. I'm

27:16

Sumi Somosganda from the Global Story podcast,

27:18

where we're asking how the U.S. election

27:20

could impact the war in Ukraine. With

27:23

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump neck and neck

27:25

in the polls, President Zelensky's

27:28

campaign to ensure crucial funds

27:30

don't run out is increasingly

27:32

uncertain. So will the

27:34

result in November change his nation's fate?

27:37

The Global Story brings you unique perspectives

27:39

from BBC journalists around the world. Find

27:42

us wherever you get your podcasts. Thank

27:48

you to all of you who've sent

27:50

in questions and messages, especially Mary Margaret

27:52

in Santa Cruz, California, Karen in Ventura

27:54

County in Southern California and Pippa in

27:56

North Yorkshire here in the UK. Right.

27:58

Have a listen to this question. Hi

28:00

Ukrainecast, it's Sasha here. I've

28:03

read a few reports of North

28:05

Korean officers having been killed in

28:07

a missile strike near the city

28:09

of Donetsk. Does BBC

28:11

verify have any further information about that?

28:14

Thank you, bye. This

28:16

is absolutely fascinating, the

28:19

idea, the notion that there are

28:22

many North Korean troops in

28:24

Ukraine. What do we know? Okay,

28:26

here's what we know so far. President

28:28

Zelensky of Ukraine has

28:31

been speaking of an increasing alliance

28:33

between Russia and North Korea. He

28:35

says that people, that's the word

28:37

that he's used, people from North

28:39

Korea are being transferred to Russian

28:41

occupying forces in Ukraine. Then he

28:43

said yesterday in fact that North

28:45

Korea is actually involved in the

28:47

war. And as our listeners

28:58

have noticed, there have been

29:01

media reports suggesting that North

29:04

Korean officers are

29:06

in occupied parts of Ukraine, helping

29:08

Russia build military training

29:11

grounds, observing Russian forces

29:13

train and conduct warfare.

29:16

And most recently, this morning, there

29:20

have been reports about 3,000... Not

29:22

just reports, this is from James

29:25

Waterhouse, our Kyiv correspondent. He's just

29:27

filed this to say a source

29:29

in Ukraine's military intelligence has told

29:31

the BBC that Russia's

29:33

army is forming a unit of approximately 3,000

29:36

North Korean citizens close to

29:38

its border with Mongolia. That

29:40

will probably or likely be

29:42

sent to Kursk region, Russia,

29:44

which has seen an incursion

29:46

by Ukrainian forces. But

29:49

guess what we've not seen yet, Victoria?

29:51

Nothing in terms of video

29:54

or photo evidence, verifiable

29:56

OSINT evidence. Sure. Once

29:59

or if they... It's only a matter of time,

30:01

isn't it? If they arrive there in numbers

30:03

of any significance, we are going to see pictures.

30:05

Yeah. And the Kremlins say the

30:07

idea that North Korea is sending personnel is

30:10

another hoax, quote unquote. But

30:13

yeah, we'll soon find out, won't we? Because

30:15

we always do. Please do

30:17

keep on sending your thoughts and questions to our

30:19

usual number, which is plus 443301239480. Or

30:26

you can email us at

30:28

ukrainecast at bbc.co.uk. Vitaly,

30:32

we've got this voice note from a

30:34

friend of ours, a friend of the podcast,

30:36

Vitaly Pashchenko, our student in Kyiv

30:39

who graduated. Do you remember? We were there

30:41

on the day he graduated. Got him up

30:43

on FaceTime. It was such a happy day.

30:45

So he graduates despite the war going on.

30:48

Obviously, we love him. We follow his story. We

30:50

follow his progress. He is going to be one

30:52

heck of a diplomat one day. Have

30:54

a listen. Hello, Victoria and Vitaly. I

30:57

just wanted to let you know that

30:59

I had an extremely lovely encounter the

31:01

other day with the director of British

31:04

Council in Ukraine who listens to the

31:06

podcast. I asked him a

31:08

question during the International Cultural Diplomacy

31:11

Forum in Kyiv last Tuesday. And

31:14

he immediately recognized my voice and

31:16

said, Vitaly, are you by any

31:19

chance the same Vitaly who appears

31:21

on UkraineCast? And

31:23

I immediately blushed in response. Mr

31:26

McGiven was very kind to compliment my

31:28

English and there was even a round

31:30

of applause. He said

31:32

that my voice is quite famous in Britain

31:35

and I would love to believe that is

31:37

indeed the case. So we had

31:40

a wonderful time networking. And yeah,

31:43

we just had such lovely

31:45

memories of UkraineCast. So

31:47

hope you are well. Oh, I

31:49

love that story. His voice is famous in the

31:51

UK, not just in the UK, to everybody who

31:54

listens around the world. He's got every reason to

31:56

be famous. That's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What a

31:58

wonderful story. Thank you so much. much for Tali.

32:01

You know I love a voice note. I feel

32:03

like the voice notes have dropped off a little

32:05

bit. So if you would indulge me

32:07

and send some voice notes, we'll play them in

32:09

the next episode. And wherever you're listening in the

32:11

world, take care. Goodbye. Ukraine

32:14

cast from BBC News. I'm

32:27

Sumi Somesgandar from the Global Story podcast,

32:29

where we're asking how the US election

32:31

could impact the war in Ukraine. With

32:34

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump neck and neck

32:36

in the polls, President Zelensky's

32:38

campaign to ensure crucial funds

32:40

don't run out is increasingly

32:43

uncertain. So will the

32:45

result in November change his nation's fate?

32:47

The Global Story brings you unique perspectives

32:50

from BBC journalists around the world. Find

32:52

us wherever you get your podcasts.