Ukraine's Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin welcomed on Nov. 23 Europol's decision to establish an open source intelligence (OSINT) task force to support the investigation of war crimes in Ukraine.
So far, 14 countries have agreed to support the German and Dutch-led Operational Taskforce (OTF) to help identify suspects and their involvement in war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide crimes committed in Ukraine, Europol said on Nov. 21.
The "unprecedented" scope of open-source data, thanks to the growing role of social media and the internet, "can greatly assist investigators in verifying and recording instances of war crimes," the EU's law enforcement agency noted.
"This development marks another significant milestone in our ongoing cooperation since Europol has become a participant in the Joint Investigation Team (JIT)," Kostin wrote on the social media platform X.
Europol joined the JIT, an international coalition for the investigation of Russia's war crimes in Ukraine, on Oct. 5.
The prosecutor general told the media earlier in November that Kyiv has collected evidence of 109,000 Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
