In key political regions for Russian interests, Viory has agreements with universities, newsrooms and some of the largest journalism bodies such as the African Union of Broadcasting. www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/06...
Viory offers journalists training in fact-checking and #OSINT for verification.
OSINT is indeed very useful. Here's how I used it to prove that Viory is not the independent organisation it claims to be.
June 8 Sentinel-2 imagery over southern Lebanon shows a large amount of destruction in two villages near Beaufort Castle, an area the IDF has been active in since earlier this month.
Similar to many of the villages further south, much of Yohmor and Arnoun appear to have been destroyed by the IDF.
US special forces seized an oil tanker that our joint @bellingcat.com @thetimes.com project linked to the Kinahans. In March we covered how we found a bill of sale listing former UFC fighter Mounir Lazzez, a friend of Daniel Kinahan, as the director of a company that purchased the ship in 2023.
Bellingcat found mulitple links between the digital infrastructure of Viory and Ruptly news agency, a branch of Russia Today.
In response to our findings, both Viory and Ruptly denied any connection between their agencies. “Viory is a UAE-based, privately held, self-funded and 100 percent privately owned organisation, and receives no funding, direction or instructions from any state media,” Viory told Bellingcat.
Bellingcat
How do journalists investigate communities designed to stay hidden? On Thursday we'll be joined by the @cnn.com team who exposed the Motherless "sleep" community. Together we'll go behind the headlines to explore the risks of reporting in private online spaces.
Join live: discord.gg/bellingcat?e...
Bellingcat found that Ruptly domains were sending performance data to Viory-linked domains, Viory's corporate owner used Ruptly's SSL certificate and the two agencies had four shared IP addresses. Test domains and backend tools appear shared, with both agency names written across sites and URLs.
