Ukraine

One month after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, GLAN and Bellingcat formally established the Justice & Accountability Unit and assembled a team made of highly skilled Bellingcat investigators, including those with Russian and Ukrainian language skills, and GLAN lawyers. We began to collect and partially verify open source information about civilian harm, which can be found and downloaded at the Ukraine Civilian Harm Map. 

We decided to conduct our first set of investigations into alleged atrocity crimes taking place in the course of that conflict. Our investigators conduct their research in accordance with the J&A Unit’s methodology, and, once extensively reviewed, their research is input into the presentational database, Uwazi. 

In 2023, we began to accept requests for information from NGOs and legal authorities at a national and international level. This has included working with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and the Clooney Foundation. We have also trained prosecutors, defence counsels, and judges in Ukraine in partnership with the European Union Advisory Mission Ukraine (EUAM). 

We have made our methods, research, and findings available to legal entities involved in accountability efforts in respect of atrocity crimes in the Russia/Ukraine conflict and will continue to do so.