US Permanent Representative to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield is impressed by the work of Ukrainian forensic experts
Today, November 8, as part of a one-day visit to Ukraine, the DNEC of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine visited the Permanent Representative of the United States to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield. Also, the expert institution was visited by the US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink.
The American delegation was told in detail how the evidence base is currently being collected in the process of recording war crimes committed by the Russian occupiers. In particular, how the examinations are carried out using equipment provided by American partners. For example, the unique forensic laboratory recently transferred by the US government in the format of humanitarian aid has become extremely important. Thanks to the DNA research conducted with its help, it is possible to quickly document the events that took place in the regions subjected to Russian aggression. We are talking about both the destruction of housing and critical infrastructure.
Thanks to the technical and other practical assistance of our international partners, law enforcement agencies are able to form more quickly and qualitatively the evidence base of the cynical disaster and violations of all possible conventions and rules that the Russian military is currently pursuing in Ukraine. In particular, law enforcement officers were able to accurately establish, using modern technical equipment, data on hundreds of thousands of representatives of enemy forces who crossed our border with weapons from February 24, 2022.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield observed quite aptly that this war would end when those who started it ceased aggression. She also expressed a remarkable impression of the work that Ukrainian experts manage to perform, visiting one of the specialized laboratories of the DNDEKC.
The US ambassador to the UN saw how much difficult work various specialists had to perform there in the conditions of war. She was emotionally struck by what she saw - those remnants of missiles, shells and weapons, equipment that our law enforcement officers had to seize in different regions of the country after Russian shelling and the tragedies to which they led.
According to the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Mary Akopian, it is much more effective for our international partners to show by visual examples what is really happening in Ukraine than to send vivid presentations or read huge reports with arrays of data and information or statistics.
“Unfortunately, as the territories are liberated, we continue to record facts indicating that genocide has been committed against the Ukrainian people. Since the beginning of the de-occupation measures, the police in Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kherson regions alone have found the bodies of 868 civilians, 24 of them children. DNA identification of the dead and missing, collecting evidence about the crimes of the Russian occupiers, so that each of them is responsible for what has been done before the law, is perhaps the largest task in the history of Ukrainian forensics. And today we really need technical and professional support in these matters,” said Mary Akopian.
Currently, more than 42 thousand criminal proceedings have been opened by the National Police and other law enforcement agencies specifically for war crimes of the Russian Federation. The Ukrainian side is very grateful to the US government for providing the first and so far the only mobile laboratory, which helps our forensic experts and investigators to travel to the scene and fully form the evidence base, in particular, to collect DNA samples for further research without wasting time.
Mary Akopyan also said that the American side was informed about the current needs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, in particular regarding the number of reagents required for expert services and modern equipment that can simultaneously process a huge amount of research and analysis.
Meanwhile, the director of the DNDEKC of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Serhiy Krymchuk said that at the moment the service has 10 full-fledged forensic laboratories in its resource. In addition to such additional laboratories, instruments are needed to quickly determine DNA profiles. It would be good if they were in every region of the state. This would help speed up the identification of those killed, both civilians as a result of hostilities and military, improve work with their relatives, and, after victory, involve them in routine police activities. So far they are in 7 territorial units, but thanks to the help of partners, there is hope that there will be positive changes here.
Department of Communications of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine
