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US State Department announces new program to provide "evidence of Russia-perpetrated war crimes"

7 hr 13 min ago
From CNN's Jennifer Hansler

The US State Department on Tuesday announced the launch of a new program “to capture, analyze, and make widely available evidence of Russia-perpetrated war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine.”

The program, called the Conflict Observatory, “encompasses the documentation, verification, and dissemination of open-source evidence regarding the actions of Russia’s forces during President Putin’s brutal war of choice,” according to a media note from the State Department.

“The Conflict Observatory will analyze and preserve publicly and commercially available information, including satellite imagery and information shared via social media, consistent with international legal standards, for use in ongoing and future accountability mechanisms,” the note said. “This includes maintaining rigorous chain-of-custody procedures for future civil and criminal legal processes under appropriate jurisdictions.”

The information will be shared publicly via an online platform, the statement added.

The State Department said the program is a collaboration with “Esri, a leading geographic information systems company, Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative, and PlanetScape Ai,” and the “the U.S. government has also contributed commercial satellite imagery to these efforts.”

The State Department said it expects international partner organizations to join the program. Reports will be available at https://conflictobservatory.org/ website.

https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-05-17-22/index.html