As the war in Ukraine continues, several Ukrainian and international investigations are already underway into allegations of war crimes. Specialist forensic teams of French gendarmes are on the ground, at the request of Ukrainian authorities, gathering evidence.
Our reporters Catherine Norris Trent and Pauline Godart followed a French unit investigating precisely how residential neighbourhoods have been attacked. Colonel Briche and his team of forensic experts were deployed from the Paris region and have spent six weeks surveying the ruins of war.
The French investigators are backing up witness accounts with forensic and explosives evidence, for example by taking measurements in Borodyanka, a town discovered in ruins when Russian forces withdrew in April. Squadron chief Fayçal says, "The challenge is that we’re arriving on the scene after the event — sometimes two months afterwards, and life has been continuing here.”
This unit of gendarmes has just wrapped its mission, forensically analysing hundreds of bomb sites around Kyiv. The task of investigating the death and destruction is vast, as the war in Ukraine rages on.
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