Bellingcat – Order of Yaroslav The Wise
The third anniversary of the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Russian-occupied territory in the Donbas was marked with a somber ceremony near Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, where the ill-fated aircraft took off on its final flight on July 17, 2014.
For the families of the 298 people who died in the skies of eastern Ukraine on that day, it has been a painful journey of recovery from grief. But they have been helped on their way by a team of online researchers, who may have done more than anyone else — Dutch air-crash and police investigators included — to uncover what befell MH17, and who was responsible.
The team, called Bellingcat, was launched on July 15, 2014, just two days before the shooting down of MH17. Its founder, UK activist Eliot Higgins, had since March 2012 established a reputation as one of the foremost online investigators for his work on videos from the civil war in Syria.
Within hours of the shoot down, Higgins, together with team at Bellingcat, began online investigations of photographs and video coming out of eastern Ukraine connected to the MH17 tragedy. On Nov. 9, 2014, they issued a 35-page report detailing where the Russian-backed forces in the Donbas obtained the sophisticated Buk anti-aircraft missile system that was used to shoot down MH17.
By combing through hundreds of photographs, videos and social media posts, Bellingcat established the route of the Buk system from its base at the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade in Kursk, Russia, down to southern Russia, and across the border into Ukraine.
With the help of other researchers, the team found the probable launch site of the missile in Russian-occupied territory.
Much of the information uncovered by Bellingcat has been submitted to the Dutch criminal investigation into the MH17 tragedy, and may of their findings have been confirmed in reports subsequently released by the Dutch Safety Board and the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team.
So Bellingcat is our friend of the week, and collectively wins the Order of Yaroslav the Wise for uncovering the truth about MH17, and for countering the lies and disinformation about the tragedy put about by Ukraine’s foe, the Kremlin.
Jean-Claude Juncker – Order of Lenin
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is no stranger to gaffes. At the European Union’s Riga summit on May 22, 2015 he greeted Hungarian Prime Minister with the words “the dictator is coming” and “Hello, dictator!”
After shaking Orban warmly by the hand, Juncker then slapped the Hungarian prime minister on the cheek. Rather hard.
But apart from clownish antics, what Juncker says has also frequently gotten him into trouble.
Recently, on July 4, Juncker caused controversy by describing European Union parliament lawmakers as “ridiculous.” He was angered by the fact than only about 30 of the parliament’s members had turned up to hear a speech by Malta Prime Minister Jospeh Muscat.
And only on July 13, at the EU-Ukraine summit in Kyiv, Juncker caused a stir by apparently single-handedly altering EU policy on Ukraine by accepting a plan, put to him by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, to abandon the idea of setting up an anti-corruption court, and instead set up anti-corruption panels in the current, unreformed courts.
The establishment of an independent anti-corruption court in Ukraine was one of the conditions set by the EU and the International Monetary Fund for the granting of further financial aid to Ukraine, and Juncker’s apparent backtrack mystified and then angered Ukrainian civil activists and reformers, as well as corruption watchdog Transparency International.
Activists had thought that the EU was behind them and the plan to set up the anti-corruption court, which would be a body independent of the influence of the president or other politicians.
Juncker’s off-the-cuff announcement threw all of that into doubt, and forced the EU to issue a clarifying statement.
The trouble is, as Transparency International pointed out, anti-corruption panels as suggested by Poroshenko and apparently approved by Juncker would hardly be independent — they would be staffed by old, corrupt judges of the unreformed system, who would be susceptible to the influence of corrupt politicians.
Naming Juncker Ukraine’s foe of the week is a bit harsh, but perhaps awarding him the Order of Lenin would make him realize that the issue of corruption in Ukraine is no laughing matter, and not something for improvised policy-making.
