Open Source journalism is instrumental in investigating war crimes and human rights abuses. The New York Times' Pulitzer-prizewinning investigation into the Bucha massacre in Ukraine is an impressive example of how open source tools, mixed with traditional journalism, can play a direct role in revealing the truth in complex situations.

On February 27, 2022, Russian forces arrived in Bucha, 25 miles north of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, remained for a month, and left behind a trail of death and destruction. The bodies of dozens of Ukrainian civilians lined Yablunksa Street. Some victims were found with their hands tied behind their backs and their belongings stolen.

"From the start, there was something different about Bucha... This was the first evidence of what a Russian occupation looked like."

Malachy Browne, Enterprise director, Visual Investigations, The New York Times

The Russian military denied responsibility for the massacre. President Vladimir Putin denounced the claims as "a provocation". However, meticulous and strategic combing-through of closed-circuit TV footage, satellite imagery and accounts on messaging platforms such as Telegram enabled The New York Times to identify Russian paratroopers from the 234th Air Assault Regiment led by Lt. Col. Artyom Gorodilov as the perpetrators.

Malachy Browne, enterprise director of the visual investigations unit at the New York Times, said the team spent "months and months" collecting footage and visual evidence. "We got some of that initially. We got lots of it later on, I mean six months later," he explained.

Browne and his colleagues worked with the satellite company Vantor (paid) to verify there were dead bodies in the area where Ukrainians claimed the massacre had taken place.

"You could see from March 9… there were bodies already there. They were in the exact position as we were seeing in the footage," Browne said.

Next, The New York Times sent journalists into Ukraine to figure out exactly what happened. They visited survivors along Yablunska Street, some of whom possessed video footage they had taken of the Russian unit progressing through the neighborhood. One had recorded residents with their hands tied behind their backs before they were killed. The team used metadata (see Chapter 4) to verify the videos' authenticity.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, is investigating Russian war crimes. The New York Times's investigation into the Bucha massacre could play a vital part in securing justice for Ukraine.