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Ukraine's prosecutor general welcomes Europol's war crime investigation task force

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Ukraine's prosecutor general welcomes Europol's war crime investigation task force
Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin (C) a the meeting of the International Working Group on the Environmental Consequences of War on June 29, 2023. (Prosecutor General's Office/Telegram)

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.

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Martin Fornusek

Senior News Editor

Martin Fornusek is a news editor at the Kyiv Independent. He has previously worked as a news content editor at the media company Newsmatics and is a contributor to Euromaidan Press. He was also volunteering as an editor and translator at the Czech-language version of Ukraïner. Martin studied at Masaryk University in Brno, Czechia, holding a bachelor's degree in security studies and history and a master's degree in conflict and democracy studies.

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