THE SPY WHO STAYED IN FROM THE COLD
How armchair intelligence analysts are debunking propaganda and uncovering war crimes without leaving home
It was late 2014. Pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine had been attacking government forces, and the Russian military was massing along the border. And though the Kremlin was insisting that it wasn’t operating inside Ukraine, Eliot Higgins was uncovering strong evidence to the contrary—from the comfort of his desk. As Higgins, an independent intelligence analyst in Leicester, England, noticed that Russian soldiers were posting selfies and candids to social-media sites like VKontakte, Russia’s version of Facebook, he came to realize the images could blow apart the official story.
Higgins scoured the soldiers’ images and videos for hints of where they
