The Associated Press and FRONTLINE are examining video, photographs, audio, eyewitness accounts, news stories and official documents for evidence of war crimes. The sources include AP’s journalists on the ground; other news organizations; social media posts; international human rights organizations, the Ukrainian military and government; and local nongovernmental organizations.
Organizations from which AP and Frontline are getting information include: The Centre for Information Resilience, Bellingcat, the International Partnership for Human Rights, The Ukrainian Healthcare Center, Physicians for Human Rights.
The news organizations are consulting with experts in war crimes verification and prosecution to help discern collateral damage from violations of international law.
For reports that have not been witnessed by AP journalists, a team of AP reporters is working to verify the events. Reporters use a variety of tools to geolocate images posted on social media, compare them to earlier photographs or satellite imagery, and confirm their veracity. Journalists seek out corroborating social media posts and published witness accounts, and they try to interview additional witnesses to the events. AP reporters also look for official confirmation of attacks from an array of sources, including the Ukrainian and Russian military and governments, as well as international organizations such at the United Nations. Only after an event is independently verified by the AP do we include it in War Crimes Watch Ukraine.
[Source: https://apnews.com/article/war-crimes-watch-ukraine-methodology-605253557870]