[6] Bellingcat publishes the findings of both professional and citizen journalist investigations into war zones, human rights abuses, and the criminal underworld.

[16] In March 2012, he started a blog under the pseudonym "Brown Moses", named after a song by Frank Zappa,[17] through which he published his research into video footage of the Syrian Civil War.

Their conclusion that Russia was responsible was later confirmed by the Dutch-led international joint investigation team (JIT), which found in a report dated 25 May 2018 that the downing of MH17 was initiated by the Russian military.

[28][22] Bellingcat has received grants from Civitates-EU,[32][33] Porticus [Wikidata] the Brenninkmeijer family philanthropy, Adessium Foundation, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), PAX for Peace,[22][34] the Dutch Postcode Lottery, the Digital News Initiative,[35][36][22] Zandstorm CV and Sigrid Rausing Trust.

[39] The Bellingcat website noted it receives financial contributions from various companies as well as special discounts and in-kind donations such as software access and platform resources.

[40] In a press conference, Russian officials said Ukrainian forces had destroyed the flight and presented radar data, expert testimony and a satellite image.

A man claiming to be a Spanish air traffic controller in Kyiv stated in interviews that two Ukrainian fighter jets followed the Malaysian plane.

Based on evidence from open sources, primarily social media, the report links a Buk missile launcher that was filmed and photographed in eastern Ukraine on 17 July to the downing of the MH17 flight.

[48] On 21 December 2016, Bellingcat published a report which analysed cross-border Russian artillery attacks against Ukrainian government troops and in support of pro-Russian separatists in the summer of 2014.

Bellingcat utilises a network of contributors who specialise in open source and social media investigation, and creates guides and case studies so others may learn to do the same.

[60][non-primary source needed] In February 2017, Bellingcat published an article detailing how rudimentary drones were being used by ISIL to drop explosives onto opposition targets.

[61][non-primary source needed] In September 2016, Bellingcat released a fact-checking article in response to Russia denying the bombing of hospitals in Syria.

[62][non-primary source needed] In March 2017, Bellingcat published an investigative report on the bombing of a mosque in Aleppo that killed up to 49 civilians.

[64][non-primary source needed] In May 2018, in partnership with Forensic Architecture and Venezuelan journalists, Bellingcat collected, timed, and located nearly 70 pieces of evidence related to the El Junquito raid, including videos, photographs, leaked audio of police radio communications and official statements, asking for more material to determine if rebel police officer Óscar Pérez and his companions were victims of extrajudicial killings.

[75] In June 2019 Bellingcat reported that major-general Denis Sergeyev had travelled to London as "Sergei Fedotov", and appeared to have commanded the operation, making and receiving many telephone calls with a single Russian "ghost phone" without an IMEI.

Bellingcat analysed position data from Sergeyev's phone to trace his movements in London, following its successfully gaining access to travel, passport, and motoring databases for the suspects.

Robert Evans refers to the manifesto as shitposting, defined as "the act of throwing out huge amounts of content, most of it ironic, low-quality trolling, for the purpose of provoking an emotional reaction in less Internet-savvy viewers".

[5] This followed the appearance of a video on social media in July 2018, initially dismissed as "fake news" by the government of Cameroon before later acknowledging that 7 soldiers had been arrested for the massacre.

[86][88] The 2022 documentary film Navalny features Bulgarian Bellingcat journalist Christo Grozev uncovering the details of a plot that indicates the involvement of Putin.

[89] According to later investigations, the same team of FSB officers has poisoned several other people in Russia, including opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza and writer and poet Dmitry Bykov.

[94][95] Bellingcat reported on an information operation in Indonesia targeting the West Papuan independence movement with pro-Indonesian government content.

BBC journalist Benjamin Strick wrote that "The campaign, fuelled by a network of bot accounts on Twitter, expands to Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

Bellingcat interviewed various acquaintances of Maria, who told them her cover identity: a girl left behind by her mother on a holiday to the Soviet Union for the 1980 Summer Olympics.

[101][102][103] Kristyan Benedict, an Amnesty International campaign manager, told The New Yorker in 2013 that many organisations had analysts but that Higgins was faster than many established investigation teams.

"[108][109] In February 2023, it was reported that Bulgarian investigative journalist and Bellingcat director Christo Grozev chose to live in exile from his home in Austria due to the alleged threat posed to him by the Russian security services and collaborators in Vienna.

In the New York Review of Books, Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, digital journalism lecturer at the University of Stirling, states that Bellingcat has had an influence on how established journalism outlets and research institutions conduct open-source investigations:Bellingcat's successes have encouraged investment in open-source research capability by much larger and long-established media institutions (such as The New York Times Visual Investigations), human rights organisations (Amnesty's Digital Verification Corps; Human Rights Watch's soon-to-be-launched OSINT unit), think tanks (the Atlantic Council's DFR Lab), and academic institutions (Berkeley's Human Rights Investigations Lab).

Daniel Fried, a retired diplomat who served as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs under former President George W. Bush, said that "The advantage of having Bellingcat doing it is that you don't have to have a sources-and-methods debate within your government.

[119] In 2019, Christo Grozev and his team received the Investigative Reporting Award from the European Press Prize for identifying the two men who allegedly poisoned Sergei and Yulia Skripal.

The film explores Bellingcat's investigative journalism work, including the Skripal poisoning and the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shootdown.

A joint investigation between Bellingcat and The Insider, in cooperation with Der Spiegel and CNN, has discovered voluminous telecom and travel data that implicates Russia's Federal Security Service in the poisoning of Navalny, ordered by the highest echelons of the Russian government.