Task
You have three sources all relating to the current conflict in eastern Ukraine, all presenting evidence that the Russian government is sponsoring the separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, and even supplying them with troops and weaponry.
You can access the essential reading from the Reading List link in the Toolbox on the KEATS course home page.
Reading
Bellingcat, ‘MH17: The Open Source Investigation. Three Years Later’, July 17, 2017.
Maksymilian Czuperski et al., Hiding in Plain Sight: Putin’s War in Ukraine (Washington DC: Atlantic Council 2015).
Ilya Yashin & Olga Shorina (ed.), Putin War (Moscow: Free Russia Foundation 2015).
Write a short (500-word maximum) essay on ONE of these reports, providing your assessment of the accuracy and validity of its claims. The following questions may help shape your analysis.
- Who has produced this report? Do you think that there are any inherent biases that might have affected its analysis?
- What types of evidence are presented in the report?
- What measures have the authors taken to verify their evidence?
- What challenges have the authors faced in gathering and assessing the evidence they have used to justify their conclusions?
- Use other evidence available to assess and critique your source, bearing in mind potential issues related to their authenticity and accuracy.
Essential readings
Bellingcat, ‘MH17: The Open Source Investigation. Three Years Later’, July 17, 2017. Maksymilian Czuperski et al., Hiding in Plain Sight: Putin’s War in Ukraine (Washington DC: Atlantic Council 2015). Ilya Yashin & Olga Shorina (ed.), Putin War (Moscow: Free Russia Foundation 2015), http://www.4freerussia.org/putin.war/. Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, 'Bellingcat and How Open Source Reinvented Investigative Journalism', New York Review of Books, June 10, 2019.