Michael Sheldon's avatar

Michael Sheldon

@michaelsheldon.bsky.social

953 followers 66 following 35 posts

Researcher at Bellingcat

Reposted by Michael Sheldon

Bellingcat's avatar Bellingcat @bellingcat.com
[ View ]

In a special free edition of our Bellingchat Premium podcast, we talk about covering the invasion of Ukraine using open sources with Bellingcat researcher @michaelsheldon.bsky.social and the @nytimes.com Visual Investigations Reporter @aric.bsky.social.
Listen in on the link below! 👇

0 replies 14 reposts 33 likes

Reposted by Michael Sheldon

Bellingcat's avatar Bellingcat @bellingcat.com
[ View ]

An image analysis by Bellingcat shows an infamous Russian neo-Nazi with ties to the controversial paramilitary Wagner Group may be depicted in a photograph showing a man holding a severed head in Syria... www.bellingcat.com/news/2024/01...

1 replies 17 reposts 53 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

Put it into Google Earth to get a sense of where the remaining flights may have headed.

0 replies 1 reposts 2 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

Put it into Google Earth to get a sense of where the remaining flights may have headed.

0 replies 1 reposts 2 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

Tracing the video from t.me/CinCAFU/648 gives a slightly better overview of what's what in a pretty chaotic radar image. From my understanding, the green track appears to be the A-50, and blue would likely be the IL-22 heading to emergency land at Anapa.

1 replies 2 reposts 1 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

Western battery hanging out in the same spots.

1 replies 1 reposts 2 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

Track marks from the northern site were visible in Sentinel-2 imagery from 01-01.

0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

Looks like the Stroitel S-400 unit recently moved from its usual fields to a different location to the south-west. Snow cover makes the individual components visible even in lower-resolution satellites.

1 replies 1 reposts 2 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

The new Wagner x Stone Island collab is crazy.

0 replies 1 reposts 3 likes

Reposted by Michael Sheldon

Bellingcat's avatar Bellingcat @bellingcat.com
[ View ]

Bellingcat contributor Ollie Ballinger developed a tool to estimate damage in Ukraine. He has now repurposed the tool to estimate the number of damaged buildings and the likely affected population in a given area within the Gaza Strip. www.bellingcat.com/resources/20...

1 replies 47 reposts 100 likes

Reposted by Michael Sheldon

Bellingcat's avatar Bellingcat @bellingcat.com
[ View ]

Over late October and early November, military cargo flights in and out of Kaliningrad were at an uncharacteristic high. Bellingcat went to investigate what these flights could be moving using SAR imagery… www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/11...

2 replies 41 reposts 92 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

The images are aggregates of several Sentinel-1 collects. The first period being for imagery in October, and the second in November.

0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

This location here by Gvardeysk had the most clearly visible change. The northern battery appeared to have completely vacated.

1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

For the past week I've been monitoring Sentinel-1 imagery for S-400 sites in Kaliningrad, some of which appear to have been at least partially vacated. We have an article in the works that will go into more detail.

1 replies 1 reposts 7 likes

Reposted by Michael Sheldon

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

"for participation in the Bakhmut meatgrinder"

2 replies 0 reposts 3 likes

Reposted by Michael Sheldon

Bellingcat's avatar Bellingcat @bellingcat.com
[ View ]

In North-east Nigeria one young man’s execution-style killing is captured on camera.
Here’s how Bellingcat and Reuters traced the young man in blue shorts to find out where he was killed www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/11...

2 replies 13 reposts 39 likes

Reposted by Michael Sheldon

Bellingcat's avatar Bellingcat @bellingcat.com
[ View ]

When the US Department of Defense published a video seemingly showing a UFO in the Middle East, Bellingcat contributor Nathan Patin and data scientist Logan Williams went to work using open-source techniques to verify claims of the unidentified flying object.

1 replies 21 reposts 88 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

Not something you see every day. A Russian soldier with a thermobaric TBG-7VL round (thanks @godin.bsky.social for the ID). Presumably summer 2023 in Zaporizhia oblast.

0 replies 1 reposts 4 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

Playing around with S1 large scale change detection on Burevestnik AB. Displayed are composites of the mean S1 returns over 180-day periods starting at January 2022 and 2023, respectively.

0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Reposted by Michael Sheldon

Bellingcat's avatar Bellingcat @bellingcat.com
[ View ]

After a photo was posted on Telegram on Monday apparently showing the disgraced Russian General Sergey Surovikin- open source researchers hurried to geolocate it. The general’s whereabouts have been unclear since a June falling out with the Kremlin. www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/09...

1 replies 16 reposts 51 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

Looking at a comparison between September 10 and 30 shots by a PlanetScope Super Dove shows the empty spots left behind by the system.

0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

Sentinel-1 imagery combined from September 29, October 11, and 23 show much weaker returns at the air defense site.

1 replies 0 reposts 2 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

The system is also visible here in a composite of Sentinel-1 images from August 7, 12, and 24.

1 replies 0 reposts 3 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

Looking at the S-300V4 site at Burevestnik AB, which was recently reported to have been moved off the Kuril Islands. The systems are clearly visible in Google Earth imagery dating to early August 2022.

english.kyodonews.net/news/2023/08...

1 replies 1 reposts 3 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

Correction: Not at Chekalov's funeral, but at a separate cemetery.

0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

AWS Rekognition gives a high degree of similarity between the picture at Nadezhdin's grave, and the picture in the 47news article.

1 replies 0 reposts 0 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

Another of the graves read Aleksei Viktorovich Nadezhdin, with the apparent birth year of 1978. He was arrested for murder in 2015 after he returned fighting for Russia in Donetsk.

47news.ru/articles/857...

1 replies 0 reposts 0 likes

Michael Sheldon's avatar Michael Sheldon @michaelsheldon.bsky.social
[ View ]

While at the Chekalov funeral today, Fontanka took pictures of graves visited by Wagner affiliates with red roses.

They recognized one convicted criminal by the name of Andrei Levandovsky among the graves.
t.me/fontankaspb/...

1 replies 0 reposts 0 likes

Reposted by Michael Sheldon

Bellingcat's avatar Bellingcat @bellingcat.com
[ View ]

Russia’s operation to smuggle grain from occupied Ukraine is evolving. A new investigation by Bellingcat, @scrippsnews.bsky.social & Lloyds List has tracked ships taking grain from Crimea direct to Iran. Grain exports have also begun from other occupied ports

3 replies 69 reposts 80 likes