26 April: Ukraine is teaming up with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and American companies to gather digital evidence of atrocities committed by Russians during the ongoing war in the country.
Alex Kobzanets, a FBI special agent who used to work as a legal attache for the agency in Ukraine, said that Ukrainian authorities are collecting data from battlefields and towns destroyed by the war since Russia invaded the country last February.
The data includes cellphone information, forensic analyses of DNA samples, and body parts collected off battlefields. Kobzanets said that the FBI has experience in working through such data and analyzing it.
He also said that the next step is to work with national U.S. service providers to obtain subscriber information and geolocation information, where possible.
The cooperation between Ukraine and the U.S. reflects their common interest in countering Russian cyberattacks, which have plagued both nations for years. Kobzanets added that the FBI had been helping Ukraine to identify Russian collaborators and spies operating in Ukraine and the Russian forces that were operating outside of Kiev as the invasion was happening.
Illia Vitiuk, head of the Department of Cyber Information Security in the Security Service of Ukraine, said that while the number of Russian attacks against Ukraine has increased in the last few years, they have become more targeted in recent months.
He said that it is very difficult to prove who is responsible for the attacks in a criminal case, and that it is very important to get as much information about Russian cybercriminals as possible.
“We do believe that this case about cyber war crimes is something new,” he said. “This is where we have seen the first full scale cyber war.”
The Russian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.