Drones, facial recognition software, digital mapping and data analysis are helping investigators connect the crimes to the people who perpetrated them. JL
Brett Forrest reports in the Wall Street Journal:
Dozens of drones buzzed the skies over Bucha, piloted by investigators who were creating a digital map of the town onto which they can place locations and details of alleged crimes. Investigators from prosecutors’ offices, the security services and the Justice Ministry are reviewing security-camera videos and using facial-recognition software and other high-tech forensic methods combined with lots of shoe-leather detective work. Data specialists are downloading still and moving images from social-media accounts to match Russian faces to alleged crimes.Searching for evidence in the killings of hundreds of people by Russian troops here, Ukrainian prosecutor Ruslan Kravchenko unlocked the double doors leading to a boiler room on the south side of town. The space had been used as an office by the occupying forces.
Two weeks after Russia’s retreat from areas around the Ukrainian capital, local and national authorities are embarking on a wide-ranging probe of alleged war crimes with the aim of building cases strong enough to persuade an international court to hold the Kremlin and its soldiers responsible.
In Bucha, Mr. Kravchenko, the district’s chief prosecutor, says his goal is to identify the perpetrator of each assault, rape and killing allegedly committed during the Russian occupation. More than 400 bodies were recovered from the town’s streets, cellars and hastily dug holes, some bearing signs of torture, local authorities said, others killed by snipers’ bullets while foraging for food.
Investigators from prosecutors’ offices, the security services and the Justice Ministry are reviewing security-camera videos and using facial-recognition software and other high-tech forensic methods combined with lots of shoe-leather detective work in the towns once held by Russian soldiers.
In a blue vest reading “War Crimes Prosecutor,” Mr. Kravchenko, 32, stepped on the cigarette butts and red-checkered playing cards scattered across the boiler-room floor. A blocky military radio sat on a desk beside black headphones, a spiraled cord and a camouflage field jacket.
Mr. Kravchenko leafed through a collection of documents.
A Russian paratrooper had left behind a military ID card.
A soldier born in 2002, in Revda, in the Russian region of Sverdlovsk, retreated without his passport.
A 23-year-old officer from Pskov had left a bank card and coronavirus vaccination certificate.
Mr. Kravchenko and his assistants logged each item, adding to their growing knowledge of who was stationed here. The carnage in Bucha, Mr. Kravchenko said, was indicative of Russian behavior nationwide. “This case proves the whole scale of all crimes,” he said.
Roughly 1,000 people are now investigating the alleged crimes in Bucha. The security services are supplying Mr. Kravchenko with information about which Russian units and troops were stationed in Bucha or passed through it in March. Using satellite images, Mr. Kravchenko and his colleagues are piecing together when and where bodies fell.
Moscow has denied targeting civilians in its military assault on Ukraine.
A group of data specialists is downloading still and moving images from social-media accounts to match Russian faces to alleged crimes. Mr. Kravchenko and his group of 28 investigators have been knocking on doors in Bucha and showing these pictures, a virtual lineup, to witnesses.
A group of lawyers working under Ukraine’s previous president, Petro Poroshenko, is researching the metadata of video clips recorded in Bucha during the occupation to help ensure they can be used as evidence in international courts.
An aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the U.S., Japan and several European countries have pledged support to the investigation. On Monday, a group of investigators arrived in Ukraine from Paris to pursue a separate investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Russia in Bucha and other locations, French prosecutors said.
Dozens of drones buzzed the skies over Bucha on Monday, piloted by investigators who were creating a digital map of the town onto which they can place locations and details of alleged crimes. Carrying clipboards, Mr. Kravchenko and his staff of government lawyers circulated through Bucha, collecting evidence that littered the streets.
Mr. Kravchenko started as a prosecutor in Crimea, and when Russian agents captured the Sevastopol airport there in 2014, he raced with a colleague to the airfield to document the unfolding events. Russian soldiers threatened to open fire.
“As prosecutors, we were obliged to record this,” he said. “I was at the epicenter of military aggression by the Russian Federation.”
In 2016, Mr. Kravchenko led a treason case against former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who asked Russia to send troops to Kyiv during 2014 protests against his government. A Kyiv court convicted Mr. Yanukovych in absentia and sentenced him to 13 years in prison.
Later posted to Debaltseve, in the country’s east, Mr. Kravchenko led investigations into Russia’s military aggression in Donbas, receiving death threats from Russians but nonetheless continuing his work. “Why should I be afraid of them?” he said. “They should be afraid of me.”
In 2017, Mr. Kravchenko received his own conviction in absentia, for legal malpractice, from Moscow’s Basmanny Court.
Last March, in an effort to diversify his experience, Mr. Kravchenko took a new post to focus on white-collar crime. In less than a year, the sleepy Bucha district he had chosen would become a steppingstone for Russia’s assault on Kyiv, returning Mr. Kravchenko to his previous themes.
His office was located less than a kilometer from Antonov Airport in the town of Hostomel, which Russian forces attacked on Feb. 24, the first day of the invasion. Mr. Kravchenko watched through his office window as a battle took shape.
“I saw helicopters flying, and something was exploding,” he said. “Four Russian helicopters were shot down.”
Mr. Kravchenko retreated to Kyiv as the Russian military occupied Hostomel, Irpin and Bucha. Weeks ago, he began to hear from colleagues and witnesses about the killings in Bucha. When the Ukrainian military retook the town, Mr. Kravchenko returned there to see for himself.
“We began to inspect and find more and more bodies in large numbers,” he said. “I didn’t believe that such a horror happened, of such a magnitude. I didn’t believe that it was even possible.”
On Monday, an investigator approached several prosecutors on Yablunska Street, holding a cellophane bag containing two bullet casings. “We picked them up at the scene,” he said. “A man was killed there.”
“Are there any witnesses?” a prosecutor asked.
The investigator said a witness had told him that Chechen soldiers had led a man from his home into the street. “One shot to the head, and that’s it,” the investigator said. “They threw a grenade into the house. The house burned down.”
Emergency services picked up damaged cars from Bucha’s streets and placed them in tidy rows in a makeshift junkyard that had become a pool of evidence allegedly showing targeted killings. More than 50 cars were riddled with bullet holes, most through the driver’s side of their windshields.
Behind Bucha’s St. Andrew’s Church, Mr. Kravchenko and his colleagues exhumed bodies from a mass grave, cataloging their condition before shipping them to a medical examiner.
Mr. Kravchenko scrolled through images on his phone. One picture taken from social media showed a young man smiling in a Russian military uniform and beret.
“We have evidence that this man was involved in a double murder of two brothers,” Mr. Kravchenko said. “We already know his name and have photos. Plus, our witnesses identified him.”
Mr. Kravchenko scrolled further to an array of pictures of a different young man with sandy hair, who was shirtless and smiling, flexing in the sunshine. “He killed four people,” Mr. Kravchenko said. “There is a video.
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