Ukraine war: Kyiv working with FBI, US companies to collect war crime evidence

Ukraine is working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and US companies to collect the evidence of war crimes by Russia, such as geolocation and cellphone details, the news agency Reuters reported on Wednesday (April 26) citing officials. FBI special agentAlex Kobzanets said Tuesdaythat Ukrainian authorities are collecting digital information from battlefields and towns ravaged by the war.

Addressing a cybersecurity conference, Kobzanets said, "Collection of that data, analysis of that data, working through that data is something theFBIhas experience working through." He said this work includes looking into cellphone details, forensic analysis of DNA samples, and the analysis of body parts collected off battlefields.

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"The next step is working with national USservice providers, and transferring that information...obtaining subscriber information, obtaining geolocation information, where possible," the FBI special agent added.

Kobzanets also said that for the past year and a half, FBI had been working on helping Ukraine to identify Russian collaborators and spies operating in the war-torn country and Russian forces were operating outside as the invasion happened.

Reuters reported that American security companies have been a major part of Ukraine in its efforts to fend off Russian cyberattacks, which it has fought since 2015.

Illia Vitiuk, head of the Department of Cyber Information Security in the Security Service of Ukraine, said that while Russian cyber attacks (against Ukraine) have grown in the last few months, they have become more targetted in recent years.

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"It’s very important for us to get as much information about Russian cybercriminals...because we collect all this information and put it into our criminal cases,"Vitiuk said.

Russia has not responded to the above developments so far.

In latest news on the ongoing war in Ukraine, prominent Kremlin critic Yevgeny Roizman, wen on trial on Wednesday over the accusations of discrediting the Russian army over its offensive. A report by the news agency AFP said that Roizman, 60, the former mayor ofYekaterinburg, is last prominent opposition figure in Russia who is still in the country and not jailed.

On Tuesday, a Russian missile strike on a local history museum in Ukraine'sKupiansk killed two people and injured 10 others.Rescue workers dug through mounds of rubble to retrieve the bodies after the strike. Ukrainian authorities said a Russian S-300 missile was used in the strike.

(With inputs from agencies)

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