| Billy Six | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Personal information | |
| Born | 24 December 1986 Germany |
| Occupation | Vlogger |
| YouTube information | |
| Channel | |
| Years active | 2011–present |
| Subscribers | 23,000 [1] |
Billy Six (born 24 December 1986 in East Berlin, East Germany) is a German independent journalist, activist and vlogger (YouTuber). [2] [3] [4] [5] Six is known for reporting from conflict zones including Libya, Syria, Venezuela, and Ukraine, originally for German newspapers and then his social media platforms. [6] [7] [8]
Six graduated from high school in Berlin in 2006. His professional career started as a business administrator and member of his local parliament of Neuenhagen,. [9] By 2011, Six had embarked on a career in journalism, beginning his journalistic career writing for far-right German newspaper Junge Freiheit. [10] [11] [3] Early in his career, Six covered the refugee situation in Europe, spending a month with refugees, for Junge Freiheit TV. [12] He also covered the war in Libya for Junge Freiheit, in 2011. [3]
Six was arrested in Syria by the Syrian army in December 2012 while working for Junge Freiheit. [13] He was held for 12 weeks under local laws, until he was released after an intervention by Russian diplomats. [14]
By 2016, Six had reported extensively from Ukraine, including on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. [15] On 2 August 2016, on the theme of MH17, along with British journalist Graham Phillips, Six entered the Berlin office of the investigative journalism organisation Correctiv without permission. In the Correctiv offices, Phillips, accompanied by Six, demanded an interview with Marcus Bensmann, who was investigating MH17. Upon being refused access to Bensmann, Phillips repeatedly accused Correctiv of lying, shouting "Lying press!", while filming the incident, and refusing to leave. Correctiv called the police, however Phillips and Six evaded them. [16] [17]
Six was an open and active coronavirus sceptic, describing the pandemic as 'pure scaremongering'. [18] A Bayern hospital which Six had filmed, making it out to be empty, reportedly filed charges against him for unauthorised filming. [18] Six had several of his videos on the theme removed from YouTube, and he was further criticised by Correctiv for his position on, and reporting on COVID-19. [19]
Apparently having problems in Germany due to his covid activism, Six left for some time to Georgia, where he did videos for his YouTube channel, mostly contrasting the situation in Georgia regarding lockdowns and restrictions, with that of Germany. [20]
In late 2018, Six travelled to Venezuela to report on the ongoing crisis in the county, for his YouTube channel. Six had apparently left Venezuela to go to neighbouring Colombia, and was then arrested as he returned to Venezuela, at an inn in Villa Marina , a beach town located in Los Taques Municipality near Punto Fijo. Six was detained in the intelligence prison of the SEBIN, "El Helicoide" by the Venezuelan secret service DGCIM. He was accused of being a German spy, and before a military court indicted of espionage, rebellion, and violation of security zones. Six, who was denied access to a lawyer, declared in his defence that the charges "were without foundation". [21] [22]
Berlin initially gave no comment on the detainment of their citizen. [23] On 13 December 2018, Six began a hunger strike, to draw attention to his situation. [24] [25] Six's case attracted considerable controversy; Reporters Without Borders declared that the allegations were unproven and called for his release. [26] Eventually, the Russian government intervened during a meeting of foreign minister Sergiy Lavrov with Venezuelan counterpart Jorge Arreaza at United Nations Conference on Drugs and Crime in Vienna on 14 March 2019. [27] [28] [29] Six was released the next day and on 16 March 2019, he was granted conditional permission to leave the country. [30] The conditions included reporting to authorities in Germany at 15-day intervals and a ban on him speaking about the incident. [26] [31]
Six has often reported from Ukraine, in the context of the War in Donbas (2014–2022). He has produced multiple videos on the MH17 disaster, spending extensive time in the crash area, carrying out his own investigative research. Six was interviewed by the BBC in the documentary Conspiracy Files: Who Shot Down MH17 (May 2016). [15] The BBC reported "Six thinks two (Ukrainian) fighter jets shot down MH17 - one firing its cannon, the other firing a missile." He has also given an interview to investigative agency Bellingcat on the theme. [32]
In late 2022, Six returned to Ukraine, making YouTube videos, firstly from Lviv, asking people what they thought of Ukrainian Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists leader, Stepan Bandera. Six followed this up with a report from the Ukrainian frontlines, interviewing Ukrainian soldiers in what Six described as 'Putin's lost battle'. Six had then wanted to cross from Ukrainian territory, into territory held by Russia, however his request to pro-Russian American Russell Bentley for help in this was firmly rejected, causing the two to fall out. [33]
As of 2024, Six continues to occasionally post videos on his YouTube channel, from various locations, and post to his channel on Telegram. [34] [8]
Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov is a Russian diplomat who has served as the foreign minister of Russia since 2004. He is the longest-serving foreign minister since the Tsarist era.
The Junge Freiheit is a German weekly newspaper on politics and culture that was established in 1986. Junge Freiheit is politically conservative, right-wing, nationalistic and described as the "ideological supply ship of right-wing populism" in Germany.
RT is a Russian state-controlled international news television network funded by the Russian government. It operates pay television and free-to-air channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in Russian, English, Spanish, French, German and Arabic.
Zvezda is a Russian state-owned nationwide TV network run by the Russian Ministry of Defence. As of January 2008, Zvezda's CEO was Grigory Krichevsky, previously known for his work on Vladimir Gusinsky's NTV channel in the late 1990s.
The State of Israel is represented in the Russian Federation through an embassy in Moscow and a consulate-general in Yekaterinburg. Russia is represented in Israel through an embassy in Tel Aviv and a consulate in Haifa. Russia is a member of the Quartet on the Middle East. For many years, Israel was a haven for Russian Jews. This was especially the case during the aliyah from the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1990s. Israel and the Soviet Union, Russia's predecessor state, were on opposing sides during the Cold War. However, the relationship between Israel and Russia has improved significantly since the early 2000s, with the election of the more pro-Israel Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and the election of the more pro-Russia Israeli leader Ariel Sharon. Putin has had a close relationship with long-serving Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Censorship in Venezuela refers to all actions which can be considered as suppression in speech in the country. More recently, Reporters Without Borders ranked Venezuela 159th out of 180 countries in its World Press Freedom Index 2023 and classified Venezuela's freedom of information in the "very difficult situation" level.
Marcus Bensmann is a German journalist noted for his eyewitness coverage of the 2005 Andijan massacre in Uzbekistan. For his coverage, he was subsequently charged with providing "informational support to terrorism" and forced to leave the country that had long been his primary "beat".
Eliot Ward Higgins, who previously wrote under the pseudonym Brown Moses, is a British citizen journalist and former blogger, known for using open sources and social media for investigations. He is the founder of Bellingcat, an investigative journalism website that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence. He has investigated incidents including the Syrian Civil War, the Russo-Ukrainian War, the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. He first gained mainstream media attention by identifying weapons in uploaded videos from the Syrian conflict.
David Schraven is a German journalist. From 2010 to 2014, he was head of investigations at Funke Mediengruppe. From 2007 to September 2014, he was treasurer of German association of investigative journalists Netzwerk Recherche. In 2014 he founded Correctiv.
Igor Nikolayevich Bezler, known by the pseudonym "Bes" is one of the pro-Russian rebel leaders whose group controlled the local police department in Horlivka.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17) was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down by Russian-controlled forces on 17 July 2014, while flying over eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed. Contact with the aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, was lost when it was about 50 kilometres from the Ukraine–Russia border, and wreckage from the aircraft fell near Hrabove in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, 40 km from the border. The shoot-down occurred during the war in Donbas over territory controlled by Russian separatist forces.
Bellingcat is a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence (OSINT). It was founded by British citizen journalist and former blogger Eliot Higgins in July 2014. Bellingcat publishes the findings of both professional and citizen journalist investigations into war zones, human rights abuses, and the criminal underworld. The site's contributors also publish guides to their techniques, as well as case studies.
RT UK, also known as Russia Today, was a free-to-air television news channel based in the United Kingdom. It was part of the RT network, a Russian state-controlled international television network funded by the federal tax budget of the Russian government. The channel's head was Nikolay Bogachikhin. Launched in 2014, it ran live broadcasts for seven years and ceased broadcasting from London in July 2021.
Correctiv is a German nonprofit investigative journalism newsroom based in Essen. It is run by CORRECTIV – Recherchen für die Gesellschaft gemeinnützige GmbH, which also runs the online journalism academy Reporterfabrik.
There has been censorship and media control during Venezuelan presidential crisis between 2019 and January 2023.
Rüdiger Lucassen is a German politician for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and, since 2017, he has been a member of the Bundestag.
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The Insider is an independent online newspaper specializing in Russia related investigative journalism, fact-checking and political analytics. It was founded in 2013 by Roman Dobrokhotov, a Russian journalist and the owner of the newspaper. The newspaper is known for exposing fake news in Russian media. The editorial office of the website is located in Riga, Latvia. Andris Jansons is the editor-in-chief of the website.
Graham William Phillips is a British journalist, self-styled 'indie journo', documentary filmmaker and former YouTuber who is under UK Government sanctions for "producing and publishing pro-Russian disinformation and propaganda about the Ukraine War". The sanctions on Phillips are an asset freeze.
Patrick Lancaster is an American vlogger, podcaster and influencer. Although described as pro-Kremlin, Lancaster has been called a double agent due to his videos covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine regularly revealing compromising Russian military information, which is used against Russia by Ukrainian forces, western intelligence agencies, and western media. Lancaster is known for regularly filming staged scenes and attempting to pass them off as real, and has been referred to as a fake master.
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