Bard College Berlin students contribute to Human Rights Watch report about Russian drone attacks on civilians in Ukraine

On June 3, Human Rights Watch released a major report about Russian drone attacks on civilians in the Ukrainian city of Kherson titled "Hunted from Above: Russia’s Use of Drones to Attack Civilians in Kherson, Ukraine." Students from Bard College Berlin's Digital Verification Corps (DVC) contributed to the research and are mentioned in the Acknowledgement section of the report. Students worked on verifying videos of drone attacks that were posted to Russian military-affiliated Telegram channels.

The DVC is a network of eight universities managed by Amnesty International that uses digital research to document human rights violations worldwide. BCB guest faculty Marija Ristic and Fred Abrahams trained the students in digital investigation techniques and supervised their work in contributing to the Human Rights Watch report.

Abrahams states, “These collaborations flow in both directions: The students learn from working on an active project and the organization, in this case Human Rights Watch, gets research help from a trained and supervised group. Everyone benefits and, for this project, hopefully first and foremost the civilians in Ukraine who are subjected to relentless attacks by drones.”

Liana Sendetska ‘26 is one student involved in BCB’s Digital Verification Corps. “I enjoy the variety of work that DVC does,” she says, “from monitoring police brutality during campus protests to geolocating drone strikes. The work feels meaningful to me.”

Liana notes that she and other DVC students have gained invaluable practical skills in research: how to collect open-source data and store it in a database, how to verify information, and how to archive and preserve it. She adds that in addition to technical skills, “I developed different frameworks of approaching evidence of human rights violations. At DVC, we are encouraged to think of a bigger picture: How can we use our findings to make a change, to collaborate, to bring awareness?”

While seeing their work result in a published report is a significant accomplishment for students in the DVC, Liana also notes mixed emotions: “It's great to see that our work will reach many people through the HRW report, and may influence certain political decisions. However, like any other human rights-related work, there is a sense of being powerless. We have identified clear perpetrators and violations, done thorough research for every attack, and yet this will not stop them from happening. So it is a bittersweet work, but it is work that still needs to be done.”

The full 93-page report from Human Rights Watch can be read here. The Digital Verification Corps’ work on this report forms part of Bard College Berlin's wider Human Rights Initiative with ongoing projects on AI in warfare and police violence in Berlin. 

By: Sophia Paudel, Bard College Berlin Communications

Post Date: 06-03-2025