On May 29, 1982, BBC correspondent Robert Fox witnessed the Battle of Goose Green – a remote location in the Falkland Islands, then contested by Britain and Argentina. His account of what had happened was broadcast on the radio 24 hours later – it had taken ten hours to reach a satellite phone aboard a warship, and another eight hours for his text to be deciphered in London.
Since the days of Fox, the Internet, satellite or cell phones have radically changed the way we are informed about wars. In the Russian offensive war against Ukraine, the news seems to reach us in real time. There are huge amounts of data circulating that are publicly accessible.
Analyzes of open source information (OSINT) have also contributed to the processing of war events – for example, the attack on the apartment building in Dnipro. But OSINT analyzes also entail dangers:
From a rocket and a Christmas garland
On January 14, 2023, the Russian army fired a missile from an airplane at a nine-story civilian apartment building in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro – far from the front lines. The house collapsed and the occupants were buried under the rubble of the building. The attack claimed more civilian casualties than any other attack in this war, killing at least 30 people.
The images of the survivors are disturbing. One photo in particular has been circulating on social and Ukrainian media: a young woman crouched among the ruins of the building, holding a stuffed animal and a golden Christmas garland. Her name is Anastasia Shvets. She lost her parents and her pet in the attack, her partner died at the front, she writes on her New York Times verified Instagram channel.
The names of those in charge of Dnipro
To find those responsible for this alleged war crime in Dnipro, the organization Molfar, together with journalists from the Ukrainian platform «Наші гроші. Львів» on the flag – using open source information from Googlemaps, the Russian Facebook clone VKontakte or images on social media.
In less than two days, 44 names were identified in this way. Molfar reported on Sunday:
Molfar is a global OSINT community that counts on 35 analysts and more than 200 volunteers. These evaluate publicly available data on the war in Ukraine to identify war crimes, refute Russian propaganda, or create “a complete archive of the war’s events”.
The 44 identified Russians all belong to the 52nd Guards Regiment. In addition to military names and careers, the names of family members (in some cases including their phone numbers or email addresses), passport numbers, car registration numbers, or other publicly available information were also published.
The analysts also note that the regiment was also responsible for the June 2022 attack on a shopping center in the city of Kremenchuk, which killed at least 30 people, including a child.
Attack on the shopping center in the city of Kremenchuk
The civilian target
In further OSINT investigation, Molfar wanted to prove that the Russian army had deliberately hit a civilian building. This is done on the basis of the geo-data of the building and known information about the missile type.
Molfar relied primarily on photographs for the exact geo-data of the destroyed house. In a thread on Twitter This data from the collapsed house is confirmed by means of a video and the sound wave of the impact that can be heard in it.
The destroyed house has the geodata: 48.418922, 35.068075
According to the Ukrainian government, Russian-made K-22 missiles were used in the shelling of the apartment building. Molfar confirms this on the basis of OSINT analyses.
The maximum range of this type of missile is 600 kilometers, but when used at great distances, deviations from the target of several hundred meters may occur. Since the distance from the point of impact to the nearest energy infrastructure system is 3.7 kilometers – if only there are other residential areas in the vicinity of the destroyed house – the Russian army deliberately fired at a civilian object, Molfar concludes.
From satellite images and Telegram
OSINT analyzes have accompanied the war since day 1.
They even served to predict the outbreak of war: using commercial satellite images and video footage of Russian convoys on TikTok, journalists and researchers have supported claims that Russia was preparing for an invasion.
On February 24 at 3:15 p.m tweeted Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute in California “Someone is on the way”. Less than three hours later, Vladimir Putin opened his war. Lewis captured the first troop movements of the war using data available through Google.
Since then, professional and amateur analysts have followed the war and the frontline in real time by geolocating images. Satellite images still play a role in tracking the war – troop movements, war crimes and the extent of the damage.
But while satellite images are good for documenting Russian battalion deployments in open fields, they are harder for smaller companies to track. OSINT analysts usually use Telegram or the Russian Facebook VKontakte for this.
In the first 80 days of the war in Ukraine alone, a total of ten years’ worth of footage was shared directly from the front on Telegram, Matthew Ford of Sweden’s Defense University told The Economist. And this despite the fact that since 2019 in Russia there is a law that prohibits soldiers from uploading sensitive photos or videos.
For armies trying to maintain operational security, this wealth of data is a nightmare.
And the shared data could have deadly consequences, Rob Lee of King’s College London tells The Economist: In December, a Russian posted photos to VKontakte of armed forces at a country club in Kherson province. His post was geotagged. Shortly afterwards, Ukrainian missiles landed there. The Russian survived the missile strike – and posted another video. This allowed Ukraine to assess the damage on site. And that’s just one of many similar events.
Of puzzle pieces and fragmented realities
But OSINT analyzes are not only a blessing for Ukraine and the West. Experts warn they would be tempted to view the war in a distorted way: “The images we see of this war are not necessarily representative of how it is being fought”says Lee.
Open source information is an infinite number of puzzle pieces that do not show the whole picture. The result is that one can make “an almost infinite number of pictures” with the individual puzzle pieces and thus fool oneself. This creates “fragmented realities”.
Another problem is that data can be manipulated. The Ukrainian armed forces quickly realized that deliberately distributing film footage is an effective strategy for reporting on the war – sometimes with the omission of date, time and location stamps “to give the impression that older attacks were also months later. it’s still a big deal,” said Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute in a recent podcast.
OSINT analyzes have been and likely will continue to be part of the story of how the war in Ukraine is being told.
Soource :Watson
I am Amelia James, a passionate journalist with a deep-rooted interest in current affairs. I have more than five years of experience in the media industry, working both as an author and editor for 24 Instant News. My main focus lies in international news, particularly regional conflicts and political issues around the world.
