{"id":777,"date":"2025-01-02T21:08:56","date_gmt":"2025-01-02T21:08:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thanassiscambanis.com\/sipa\/?p=777"},"modified":"2025-01-02T21:08:56","modified_gmt":"2025-01-02T21:08:56","slug":"ukraines-information-war-the-race-to-document-war-crimes-in-kramatorsk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thanassiscambanis.com\/sipa\/2025\/01\/ukraines-information-war-the-race-to-document-war-crimes-in-kramatorsk\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine\u2019s Information War: The Race to Document War Crimes in Kramatorsk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How a missile attack on a train station came to emphasize the role of investigators tasked with combating disinformation about war crimes in Ukraine.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Geolocated and authenticated locations of civilian harm in Ukraine, downloaded from Bellingcat\u2019s \u201cCivilian Harm In Ukraine\u201d interactive map, mapped in ArcGIS Online.<\/em> Image source: ESRI, TomTom, Garmin, FAO, NOAA, USGS, Earthstar Geographics, Bellingcat<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Nicholas Azulay<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day of the missile attack in Kramatorsk, just two months after Russia\u2019s 2022 full-scale invasion, the station was filled with families\u2014including children\u2014in the process of fleeing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A single Tochka-U missile launched at the station produced 50 submunitions that in turn each spewed out 316 metal fragments at high velocity. Those cluster munitions killed at least 58 people and wounded more than 100 more with a viciousness rarely seen in a single attack, according to Human Rights Watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even before Ukraine could count their dead and survey the devastation, an onslaught of disinformation flooded news sites and social media channels. The challenge of documenting who was responsible\u2014for both the attack and the ensuing propaganda\u2014would fall to a small army of NGOs and Open Source (OSINT) researchers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Journalists, researchers, and investigators racing to document the most serious abuses during the war believe that investigating crimes is critical not only to combating disinformation within a hostile information environment, but also to providing a roadmap to accountability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Indiscriminate Attack<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The grotesque nature of the attack\u2014civilians indiscriminately targeted by cluster bombs\u2014outraged Ukrainians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019re such horrible weapons,\u201d said Sam Dubberley, the Director of Human Rights Watch\u2019s Technology, Rights & Investigations Division. \u201cThey\u2019re such perfidious weapons with that kind of indiscriminate nature.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worse, carefully planned Russian disinformation campaigns immediately sowed doubt about who launched the attack. Ukraine\u2019s highly visible President Volodymyr Zelensky was attempting to rally Ukrainians to fight the then only weeks old Russian invasion. Proving that Russia\u2014and not Ukraine\u2019s own military forces\u2014perpetrated the attack, was of existential importance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRussian propaganda said that this was [the] Ukrainians,\u201d said Iryna Subota, a Ukrainian disinformation expert. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Subota, who previously worked at The Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security housed within the Ukrainian government\u2019s Ministry of Culture, spoke about the pre-meditated nature of the disinformation campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[The Russians] published the news about the strike on Kramatorsk some minutes before the strike happened,\u201d said Subota. \u201cThis is one more example how they connect their information warfare and their real physical war against Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of news organizations were there, reported on it, assumed it was Russia, and trotted off to other things as they rightly should,\u201d said Dubberley. \u201cI think we felt we could spend a bit more time with this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dubberly\u2019s team produced Human Rights Watch\u2019s authoritative report on the attack\u2014which features 3D models and visual analysis powered by advanced digital and on-the-ground research methodologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe wanted to fight against this kind of Russian disinformation, and we felt it was a space where we could actually drive some change,\u201d said Dubberley. The Human Rights Watch team was able to prove that Russia controlled the area from where the missile was launched and was in possession of the exact cluster munitions used. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRussian propaganda claimed that Ukrainians shelled it, Ukrainian sources claimed that Russians shelled it,\u201d said Mykyta Vorobiov, a young Ukraine-born journalist and researcher now based in Berlin. \u201cBut Human Rights Watch actually investigated who shelled it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Growing Investigative Network<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For Vorobiov, Human Rights Watch sets a gold standard of human rights investigations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey have the best visualization of data I have ever seen,\u201d said Vorobiov. \u201cThey visualized without graphic content the [path] of the rockets. It\u2019s absolutely fabulous.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe biggest thing about visual investigations is they’re very compelling,\u201d said Evan Grothjan, a researcher at SITU Research, a visual investigations outfit that frequently partners on digital investigations with Human Rights Watch. Grothjan worked closely with Human Rights Watch on another project documenting crimes in Ukraine, this time in Mariupol. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grothjan, who has a background in filmmaking and formerly worked at The New York Times, recalled how new technologies were hailed as the end of war because of their ability to communicate their true horror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[But] the more information we got, didn’t suddenly make these things better,\u201d said Grothjan. \u201cIt just made them overwhelming in a different way, and I think visual investigations or this moment we’re in now is just the current response to that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Human Rights Watch is among the small army of NGOs investigating, documenting, and disseminating research on war crimes in the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But while Human Rights Watch spent months investigating what happened in Kramatorsk, battles continued to rage on social media platforms like Telegram, which has become ubiquitous with the rapid dissemination of conflict imagery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTelegram became the source of information for most Ukrainians,\u201d said Vorobiov. \u201cJournalistic standards in Ukraine degraded because of this, because [accounts] can publish and say whatever they want without being journalistic and neutral.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, digital open source intelligence (OSINT) communities and accounts proliferated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One OSINT project, DeepStateMap (DeepStateUA on Telegram) has nearly 800,000 followers. Unlike Human Rights Watch, DeepState has direct ties to the Ukrainian government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ukrainian government is well aware of the power of open source imagery. The government hosts an official website for anyone to virtually upload evidence of war crimes, as well as its own think tank-like Center for Countering Disinformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Competing Objectives<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Independent media\u2019s relationship with the Ukraine government has soured, however. While Ukrainian journalists are vital to efforts to document war crimes, they feel increasingly pressured to comply with government censors and dominant narratives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey cannot write anything that differs from the government\u2019s position,\u201d said Vorobiov. \u201cEvery time when a person publishes something which in my opinion aligns to a standard of neutrality, like Human Rights Watch, that person gets accused of […] not choosing a side.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like independent Ukrainian media asking difficult questions of its government, Human Rights Watch also has a strained relationship with Ukrainian public opinion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pro-Ukraine advocates, including many in online OSINT communities, supported the United States\u2019 plan to provide cluster munitions (the same type of weapon used in the attack on Kramatorsk) to Ukrainian forces. The United States\u2019 most recent efforts to supply landmines to the country has seen similar support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Human Rights Watch\u2019s blatant opposition highlights a noticeable tension between investigators like those at Human Rights Watch, for whom ending the use of cluster munitions and other indiscriminate weapons represents an organizational priority, and amateur investigators who chiefly want Ukraine to win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe harsh reality of that is if you use cluster munitions in Ukraine, whoever is using them, they will harm civilians, be it today, tomorrow, five years time,\u201d said Dubberley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similar controversy ensued when Human Rights Watch published a report warning that Ukrainian and Russian military bases were too close to civilian objects, a violation of international law. Critics derided the findings, some of which were backed by digital satellite imagery, as equivocating Russian and Ukrainian endangerment to civilians. Amnesty International, which published a similar report, faced particularly harsh criticism on social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps then it is no surprise that Human Rights Watch\u2019s reporting in Kramatorsk strikes its most resounding chords in the personal anecdotes, like those shared by Alina Kovalenko who lost her mother Tamara. Tamara was a retired electrical engineer who had a passion for planting roses. Alina wants those responsible for her mother\u2019s death to be held to account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked about the future of digital forensic investigations despite hostile information environments, Grothjan is optimistic about the ability to tell human stories. \u201cI hope that [this] is able to keep blossoming and digital investigations can really continue to be on the local level, working with activists and victims and victims’ families,\u201d said Grothjan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How a missile attack on a train station came to emphasize the role of investigators tasked with combating disinformation about war crimes in Ukraine. Geolocated and authenticated locations of civilian harm in Ukraine, downloaded from Bellingcat\u2019s \u201cCivilian Harm In Ukraine\u201d…<\/p>\n

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