Stephanie Turenko, Тoronto.
People all over the world know that Russia is not only fuelling the war in eastern Ukraine, but also providing soldiers to fight disguised as Ukrainian rebels or separatists. The New Pathway has provided numerous proofs of the Russian military presence in Ukraine starting from almost a year ago when we printed an image in issue #23, August 7, 2014, of a Russian Armoured Personnel Carrier in Ukrainian territory with the Russian military unit insignia from Samara region, Russia. Nevertheless, many Western broadcasters, including BBC recently, continue to say what is taking place in eastern Ukraine is “civil war”.
On June 16, 2015, Vice News, an international news organization created by and for “a connected generation” which provides an unvarnished look at some of the most important events of our time, highlighting under-reported stories from around the globe, and getting to the heart of the matter with reporters who call it like they see it, posted a video to their website titled “Selfie Soldiers: Russia Checks into Ukraine”. In this 23 minute video, Vice News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky follows the digital footprints of one Russian soldier, tracking him from eastern Ukraine to Siberia to prove that Russian Soldiers are in Ukraine.
Ostrovsky primarily used the Russian Facebook website VKontakte, where people share their thoughts, photos and locations openly. He calls for help from another fellow journalist, Elliot Higgins, who “has made a name for himself using photographs freely available online to pinpoint the exact location of militants everywhere from Syria to Siberia”. The two journalists in the beginning of the news report look at photos together of soldiers in eastern Ukraine. Higgins is currently working with an American think-tank called the Atlantic Council to “produce a report that shows anyone with an internet connection can prove for themselves that Russia has fought in Ukraine”. Using open source and social media, such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, researchers can analyze photos and videos that soldiers are posting online, specifically ones of “military vehicles appearing in Russia then Ukraine, or vehicles that are unique to Russia then end up appearing in Ukraine, time and time again”. In Higgins’ mind, there is no doubt that there is evidence of Russia’s involvement in Ukraine.
Vice News decided to lead its own investigation by following one Russian soldier because he was very active through posting many photos on Russian social networks. The news team decided to find the various locations where the one particular soldier had been. Some photos were easy to recreate because there is a feature on these website to “geotag” your location, in other words, it literally says where in the world you took the photo and shows the location on a map. Other places were more difficult to find, but through using visual clues, like a destroyed army checkpoint with turquoise housing in the background, Ostrovsky of Vice News was able to successfully follow the soldier and recreate the photos the Russian soldier posted online in the exact locations. He traced the soldier from Moscow, to Taganrog, a city in southern Russia 40 miles from Ukraine where thousands of Russian soldiers train in military exercises.
Ostrovsky goes to a military camp and to a Ukrainian border village which further confirms that Russian troops are in Ukraine. Finally, Ostrovsky visits the hometown of the Russian soldier in Siberia. He meets the Russian soldier’s wife and even gets to speak to the soldier on the phone. Ostrovsky posted his replica photos on his on VKontakte page and told the soldier to have a look and say what he thought. The soldier denied he posted any of those photos on his own personal page and told Ostrovsky he must be mistaken.
It is amazing that today we are able to be detectives from our own homes through the use of social media. Soldiers are openly posting photos and videos online for the world to see. Ostrovsky from Vice News took it a step further and physically went to the various locations to prove that Russians are in fact in Ukraine.
The news report concludes with Ostrovsky saying “The Russian government is trying to portray a civil war between good Ukrainians who want to join Russia and bad Ukrainian nationalists who don’t. But the reality of the situation is that the conflict is being artificially fuelled not just with arms but with actual troops sent by Moscow in a bid to prevent Ukraine from integrating with the western world. And it’s Russian soldiers who are posting the proof online themselves”.
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