Bellingcat names Russian officers behind artillery attack that targeted civilians in Mariupol

5/7/18

Open-source investigation group Bellingcat on May 7 named a group of serving Russian army officers it says are directly responsible for the shelling attack on the city of Mariupol in southern Donetsk Oblast on Jan. 24, 2015. In a post on Twitter linking to an initial report, Bellingcat investigator Aric Toler said investigators had managed to confirm that the attack on the city was made from territory under Russian control. More than 30 civilians were killed and more than a hundred people injured in the attack, in which dozens of Grad rockets rained down on a residential district. Early in the morning on Jan. 24, 2015, the batteries were deployed near the village of Bezimenne, Bellingcat said. After they attacked the outskirts of the city, the artillery units returned to Russia. Bellingcat investigators used evidence from satellite images, social network posts, and intercepts of phone calls of several identified individuals to establish the details of the attack, and the chain of command behind it. The group also analyzed evidence connected to the attack that was earlier submitted to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The full version of the report will be published later this week, Bellingcat said.

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