Bellingcat and The Insider: a GRU colonel coordinated a project by a former RT employee that published fake news about the MH17 crash

GRU Colonel Sergei Chebanov coordinated the publication of the Bonanza media project dedicated to the crash of the Malaysian Boeing in the Donbass, as well as the trip of its employees to the self-proclaimed LPR. This was reported by Bellingcat and The Insider with reference to call billings and Chebanov’s correspondence provided by hackers.

Bonanza media in 2019 was founded by former RT employee Yana Erlashova and Dutch blogger Max van der Werff. They produced a 28-minute film about the disaster and published documents from the Joint Investigation Team obtained as a result of hacking its servers, insisting that Russia was not involved in the disaster. This did not follow from the documents, noted Meduza . They also talked about a Ukrainian fighter jet in the sky before the crash, a version denied .

In the summer of 2019, during screenings of their film, Yerlashova regularly called Chebanov on a number that he registered in the name of a non-existent elderly Georgian woman, investigators say.

At the beginning of January 2020, Erlashova, while preparing a trip to the LPR to shoot a new film, called RT audio equipment rental services and sent Chebanov by mail a photo of her passport and the passport of RT operator Vitaly Biryukov, which, through the assistant to the head of the GRU Andrei Ilchenko, was handed over to the Deputy Foreign Minister of the LPR Anna Soroka. Soroka replied that the visit must be coordinated with “faces and AP.”

employees Bonanza media filmed in Donbass on January 15-19, note Bellingcat and The Insider . At this time, Erlashova called Soroka, and Ilchenko, when they got to the border, called the “high-ranking customs chief.”

In February 2020, Erlashova also coordinated with Chebanov by mail a promotional post for another film about MH-17, and in May, an article by a Dutch journalist working with RT about the trial in the disaster case. After this, clauses critical of Bellingcat were added to the material , which “completely whitewashed the story with their highly-likely approach .”