Ukraine: The Database Helping Solve War Crimes

Tetyana Dotsyak

Kyiv-based TV correspondent

Friday, 14 March, 2025

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During the occupation of the Kupyansky district, in the east of the Kharkiv region, a gang of Russian soldiers spent months causing havoc.

Locals describe a campaign of threats, theft and violence. One farmer from the village of Kolodyazne, who asked to remain anonymous, described how the gang stole his entire harvest.

“So that I didn’t disturb them taking the grain, they staged daily terror: they threatened me, pulled the trigger of the machine gun bolt, promised to kill me and my family, shot above my head and said that they would shoot us all,” the farmer said.

Another man, Volodymyr Nogin, a security guard in an agricultural enterprise in the village of Petro-Ivanivka, described how in June 2022 he was detained and beaten. The Russian soldiers stole both his phone and his laptop. 

“They said that I was passing information about them to someone, but there was not even the internet there,” Nogin recalled. “They said - we will shoot you and no one will look for you.”

Nogin remembered one crucial detail from his ordeal - the name of the leader, Lyubchenko. When his village was liberated, he reported this to investigators. 

This was one of the first cases that Kharkiv investigators managed to solve using the SORC database, a vast digital collection of intelligence based on material Russian forces abandoned during their subsequent retreat from the region.

Investigators established that the man in question was the commander of the 101st Rifle Regiment of the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic, Serhiy Lyubchenko. They identified other crimes committed by his gang, including theft of over 2.5 million euros worth of grain from two farms, which was then sold to Russia.

This led to a suspicion being declared against Lyubchenko and other members of his gang. Currently, all the accused are wanted.

"We were able to prove the theft of 10,000 tonnes of grain, the seizure of weapons, power plants, computer equipment, and a large number of cars,” explained Serhiy Bolvinov, the chief investigator of the National Police in the Kharkiv region. 

“The victim knew only the commander's last name and this testimony was very useful; we were provided with a list of servicemen from this regiment, this unit. SORC helped us with this.”

Evidence for Proceedings

When Russian troops fled much of the Kharkhiv region during the successful Ukrainian counter-offensive of autumn 2022, they not only left behind equipment and weapons, but also a swathe of documents and hard-drives containing critical information. 

“They left lists of personnel, award letters, data on commanders, soldiers, sappers, snipers, call signs, names of issued weapons, combat logs, where they recorded who exactly gave the order to fire, to go to combat positions,” Bolvinov said. “For us, this is physical evidence in thousands of criminal proceedings on war crimes.” 

In addition, police officers spent months examining 27 torture chambers and painstakingly recording evidence including fingerprints and DNA traces. 

Following this, cadets at the National University of Internal Affairs spent two years helping Kharkiv investigators fill the SORC database. 

The amount of information it contains is huge; for example, 11,000 residents were interviewed in the de-occupied city of Izium alone.

“We had to save all this, because God forbid someone finds out where this physical evidence is stored – a rocket attack and everything will be destroyed,” Bolvinov said. 

“Therefore, we scanned every piece of paper, and Kharkiv IT specialists helped us with this. They created a system and provided servers; we hid them underground.”

Maps stored in the SORC database show the locations of shelling by enemy missiles, multiple launch rocket systems, drones, photos and videos from the scene as well as the results of expert assessments. 

This can be used to establish the direction of a rocket or location of a military unit, and even the name of the commander who gave the order to shell, said Bolvinov.

“For example, a missile is stuck in a building, we conduct an expert assessment – the type of ammunition, how it is tilted, and we build the trajectory of movement,” he continued. “Using OSINT data, geolocation, satellite imagery or reconnaissance, we establish from which settlement it was launched, who was stationed there, and who gave the order to fire. We also measure the crater – what size it is, what shape it is – this helps to establish the direction of the strike.”

The database was used to identify a number of senior Russian officers – including Alexander Zhuravlev, previously involved in the shelling of the Syrian city of Aleppo with cluster munitions – implicated in the shelling of Kharkiv with cluster munitions on February 28, 2022.

The attack, carried out using the Smerch multiple launch rocket system, killed eight people and destroyed a number of residential buildings.

Investigators established the type of weapon, the location of the multiple launch rocket system, its affiliation with the 79th Guards Rocket Artillery Brigade of the Russian Federation and found out that the occupiers shelled Kharkiv from the Belgorod region. 

Access to the system is limited, and only investigators working on criminal cases on war crimes can use it. There is information sharing with investigators from other parts of Ukraine too.

“There were also incidences when a Russian soldier committed a crime in Bucha, Kyiv region,” Bolvinov explained. “Then the unit was withdrawn and they entered the Kharkiv region, where they were stationed and committed [more] war crimes. Thanks to communication with the Security Service of Ukraine, with the Main Directorate of Intelligence, which gave us access to these documents, the SORC database also contains data from other regions.”