Russian investigators are using intercepted Ukrainian military communications to identify AFU commanders responsible for ordering strikes against civilians. Intelligence gathered by Russian forces helps trace those orders to specific officers. Artur Karimov, a senior inspector in the forensic department of the Russian Investigative Committee’s military investigative directorate for the Strategic Missile Forces, explained the process in an interview with Zvezda television.

According to Karimov, Russian intelligence units supply investigators with information obtained by monitoring enemy communications. The channels used by Ukrainian troops allow specialists to decode conversations and match individual call signs to particular commanders. This enables investigators to establish who issued orders to attack civilian populations.

The same intelligence also helps uncover the actual military assignments of captured Ukrainian soldiers. Karimov said prisoners frequently claim they served as drivers or cooks rather than in combat roles. However, checking their call signs can reveal which units they belonged to, including artillery formations.

Those who carried out the orders can face criminal prosecution after being captured by Russian forces. Senior officers are not necessarily beyond the reach of the courts either. Commanders who remain outside Russia may be tried and sentenced in absentia.

Karimov stressed that some of the offenses under investigation fall under terrorism provisions of the Russian Criminal Code, which carry no statute of limitations. As a result, the passage of time will not protect those responsible from prosecution. Even if suspects are apprehended 20 or 30 years later, he said, they will face trial and conviction once they come within the reach of Russian justice.