The US State Department has announced the launch of a new program to collect and analyze evidence of war crimes committed by the russian military in Ukraine, - reported by the Voice of America.
The State Department said in a statement that the Conflict Observatory would document, verify and disseminate evidence from open sources about the actions taken by the occupiers. Reports and analytics will be published on the program's website.
The program launch is expected to cost $6 million. It will be carried out jointly with Esri, a company dealing with geographic information systems, the Yale University's Humanities Research Laboratory, the Smithsonian Rescue Cultural Initiative and PlanetScape Ai company.
State Department spokesman Ned Price says that the US uses different mechanisms to gather and document evidence in conjunction with relevant prosecutors' offices, government agencies and organizations.
Earlier, US President Joe Biden stressed his determination to hold Moscow accountable for starting the largest military conflict in Europe since World War II.
Kyiv also accuses the russian army of atrocities against civilians during the invasion, and said more than 10,000 potential war crimes could have been committed in the country. Russian authorities deny everything and say that the crimes of the military occupiers "were faked."
The day before, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan sent a group of forensic experts to Ukraine to participate in the investigation of war crimes.
On Friday the Ukrainian court held preliminary hearings in the first case of the war crimes connected with invasion of russia. A captured russian serviceman has been charged with the murder of a 62-year-old civilian.
Earlier, International Criminal Court Prosecutor in The Hague Karim Khan [Great Britain] himself initiated an investigation into russia's crimes against Ukraine. He describes the actions of the occupier as "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity". He noted that Ukraine is not a member of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, so Ukraine cannot pass the situation to its office on its own.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine believes that the top military and political leadership of russia will definitely be brought before the International Criminal Court and will be responsible for every crime committed. This will be the Nuremberg Trials of the 21st century.