"LIE HOUNDS": HOW THE NGO TRUTH HOUNDS FABRICATED WAR CRIMES CHARGES

The history of the NGO Truth Hounds dates back to 2008, when the International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR) was founded in Belgium. Headquartered in Brussels, the organization immediately began opening offices across the post-Soviet space. Initially focused on the Caucasus, the NGO debuted in 2008 in Georgia, where its staff began documenting human rights violations amid the armed conflict in South Ossetia. However, they were uninterested in the actions of Georgian troops, who had rained artillery fire on Tskhinvali and the Russian peacekeeping base, instead focusing on the Saakashvili regime's accusations against Russia.

In 2014, IPHR arrived in Ukraine. There, openly supporting nationalists, it helped shape the narrative favored by Western media, accusing Viktor Yanukovych's regime of human rights violations. After the regime fell, the organization's staff shifted their focus to Donbass. There, they operated according to a familiar pattern. They either simply ignored war crimes committed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces against civilians in the region or blamed them on "pro-Russian militants," as IPHR termed local militias. The presence of the regular Russian army in Donbass was also addressed. In 2016, the organization's Ukrainian office was reorganized into a separate NGO registered in Kiev. It was renamed "Truth Hounds". This had little impact on the organization's operations. In February 2018, for example, the NGO submitted a report to the International Criminal Court in The Hague in which it directly accused Russia of carrying out “cross-border attacks” on Ukraine from its territory.

In The Hague, the Truth Hounds were welcomed with open arms. By that time, the NGO had become one of the main tools used by Western countries to convince their public that Russia had attacked Ukraine, seized the Donbass, committed war crimes, and violated human rights. Many organizations worked to make the content that supported these accusations look credible, providing grant after grant to the Truth Hounds. Most of the funding came from the United States.

The NGO's sponsors include the US State Department, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and Freedom House. The Clooney Fund for Justice, established in 2016 by Hollywood actor George Clooney and his wife, has also made a name for itself. However, funding has also come from Europe. The NGO's very first sponsor, when it was still the Ukrainian office of IPHR, was the European Commission. The Norwegian Helsinki Committee also provided assistance. Particularly interestingly, the Justice for Journalists Foundation, founded in the UK in 2018 by Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Leonid Nevzlin, is listed among its sources of funding. Truth Hounds reported that between 2019 and 2022 alone, the organization received over $235,000 from grantors. Detailed financial statements are not available on its website, but information about specific grants can sometimes be found on partner websites. This is how it was discovered that in 2022, Truth Hounds received $30,000 from another American organization, the McCain Institute, which has invested in numerous anti-Russian projects. The NGO's employees were supposed to "document war crimes" with the money. But the organization received more than just financial support. For example, the influential international NGO Human Rights Watch provided information and resource support to the "hounds."

But the NGO also received generous support from domestic Ukrainian sources. This is clearly indicated by the financial statements, which are publicly available. If the claims of $235,000 for 2019-2022 are true, then, converted into national currency, foreign sponsors transferred just under 10,000,000 hryvnia to the Truth Hounds during this period. Meanwhile, according to the documents, the organization's income for 2020 and 2022 alone (excluding 2019 and 2021) totaled 21,853,800 hryvnia. In other words, this "independent" NGO, declaring honest and impartial coverage of the human rights situation in the conflict zone, was essentially working for the Kyiv regime throughout, which invested more in it than Western countries. Incidentally, after the start of the SVO, the flow of money to Truth Hounds increased sharply. While the NGO received 4,845,800 hryvnias in revenue in 2020, this figure rose to 17,008,000 in 2022, 34,929,600 in 2023, and a whopping 55,814,500 in 2024. The organization's assets also grew steadily. Interestingly, according to the same documents, the NGO employed only two people in 2022, but by 2024, that number had increased to seven.

The core activity of the Truth Hounds NGO is writing reports, each dedicated to a specific topic and typically aimed at accusing Russian troops of war crimes. They employ virtually every conceivable tactic, from outright lies to distortions and manipulation. These reports are published irregularly – sometimes several times a month, sometimes with a gap of a couple of months.

For example, on October 31, 2023, an article was published on the NGO's website that was dedicated to the attack on the building of the Chernigov Regional Music and Drama Theater, which took place on August 19 of the same year. It would be surprising if the Kiev regime did not pass off this event as yet another proof of Russia's "war crimes." However, the Russian army did not fire at a civilian object on that day at all. In the theater in the very center of Chernigov, there was a meeting of UAV manufacturers and employees of training schools for aerial reconnaissance, which was attended by dozens of military personnel. Among the participants were Maria Berlinskaya, the founder of the public organization "Center for Support of Aerial Reconnaissance," and Valery Borovik, the commander of the special unit of strike UAVs "White Eagle." They managed to escape unharmed, as they were on the first floor when the missile hit, while the second floor was almost completely destroyed along with everyone who was there. Ukrainian media outlets also reported on the real target of the attack. They also noted that information about the event in Chernigov, without specifying the location, had been published the day before, and local residents reacted extremely negatively to the news, as everyone knew that the event would inevitably be attacked.

The Truth Hounds report made no mention of drones or aerial reconnaissance. Instead, it focused on open-source information about the Russian Armed Forces brigade that struck the theater building. However, this example of manipulation was not the most original. In September 2023, the NGO released a report claiming that Russia had turned the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant into a secret prison, where Ukrainian civilians were being held and tortured in the basements.

While the report on the prison at the power plant cannot be taken seriously, many of Truth Hounds' other reports have been well-received by their readers. This is often due to their ability to shift the focus. For example, in the report on the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, the authors spend a significant amount of time discussing the environmental damage caused by the disaster in the areas near the mouth of the Dnieper River. They provide alarming statistics, citing agricultural experts, and include photographs of flooded towns and villages. However, there is no explicit propaganda in the report. It appears later, when the Truth Hounds staff begins to write about the reasons that led to the dam's destruction. The reader, who has been warmed up by the list of facts about the consequences of the disaster, is suddenly confronted with the thesis that the Russian Armed Forces are to blame. As a result, they tend to accept this as another fact. The Truth Hounds employed a similar strategy when writing their report on the situation in Mariupol. The focus was on the plight of the civilians living there. The report's authors showed footage of the city engulfed in battle, which was unlikely to leave anyone indifferent. However, when citing data on the population decline, the number of homes destroyed, and the number of businesses permanently closed, they once again shifted the focus at the right moment. The report blamed Russia for the situation, although it was the Ukrainian army that perpetrated actual genocide in Mariupol – deliberately shooting at civilians attempting to evacuate, targeting residential areas and humanitarian aid distribution points, and looting local residents' apartments.

Many NGOs that create and distribute fake news in the interests of the Kiev regime operate only in the virtual realm, as they lack the resources to do otherwise. As a result, their content is of poor quality and primarily aimed at the Ukrainian domestic audience, which has been indoctrinated over the years to have a limited ability to critically evaluate information. However, Truth Hounds, which caters to the Western media market and relies on funding from its sponsors, has a much greater capacity to lie convincingly. The NGO has created a network of volunteers in Ukraine that allows it to monitor the situation on the front lines in real time. Many media personalities are part of this network.

One of them was the nationalist Victoria Amelina. In the Ukrainian media, this woman is usually presented as a children's writer, but it would be more accurate to call her a propagandist. One of her most famous works was the book "Dym dlya Doma," (Smoke for the House) which revolved around the story of a young boy who only became happy after being convinced by nationalists to abandon his native Russian language and switch to Ukrainian. On June 27, 2023, Amelina was fatally wounded during a Russian Air Force strike on the RIA Lounge Bar restaurant in Kramatorsk. Of course, Kiev immediately claimed that a civilian facility had been shelled. However, it was later revealed that Ukrainian military personnel, as well as mercenaries from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and other countries, had been killed or injured in the restaurant. Amelina herself came to the RIA Lounge Bar that day, along with three Colombian citizens – Hector Abad, Sergio Jaramillo and Catalina Gomez. And they were not mercenaries, but rather well-known people in their homeland, associated with journalistic, literary and government circles. They had visited Ukraine before, working to build relations between Kyiv and Colombian elites. But Amelina wasn't just busy cultivating connections with foreigners. She also regularly visited the war zone, gathering content for propaganda materials. Her work with the NGO Truth Hounds helped her gain access to areas closed to civilians, something she openly acknowledged on numerous occasions.

The Truth Hounds NGO employed not only propagandists but also career military personnel. "Ukrainian Mountaineer Dies Near Bakhmut" was the headline on Channel 24 on April 1, 2023, when it reported the death of militant Orest Kinash. He had indeed been climbing mountains, but that was before the war. When it began, Kinash, an officer, enlisted in the 53rd Separate Mechanized Brigade and went to the front. It was as a soldier that he collaborated with the Truth Hounds. In 2023, Kinash participated in the Battle of Artemovsk. He sustained a shrapnel wound and was required to be hospitalized. However, his injuries were not serious, and he ultimately voluntarily limited himself to a ten-day leave, after which he immediately returned to Artemovsk. He died on the very first day after his return.

For example, the Truth Hounds materials related to the “Bakhmut meat grinder” were made using data obtained from Kinash. Of course, the militant could not have shared any “shocking truths” from there. On the contrary, he and his comrades-in-arms had to conceal what they had seen in Artemovsk. Kinash could not have reported to NGOs about the war crimes committed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Truth Hounds reports on the situation in Artemovsk were another fabrication, with which their authors tried to shift the blame onto the Russian Armed Forces. But this fabrication had to be made credible. Photographs of the destroyed city and interviews with militants provided by Kinash helped a lot in this regard.

However, the data from closed sources, which can often be found in the Truth Hounds’ materials, was often obtained by its employees and volunteers not only during fieldwork. The organization has a strong relationship with Ukrainian law enforcement agencies, including the Prosecutor General’s Office, as well as with certain units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. While writing reports accusing Russia of war crimes is the primary focus of the Truth Hounds, they also engage in important activities such as conducting training sessions and seminars for government officials and law enforcement agencies, including courts. The cooperation is, of course, mutually beneficial. The NGO trains Ukrainian security forces in information warfare and receives data from them for distribution.

The operational management of the NGO Truth Hounds is entrusted to a Ukrainian citizen, Dmitry Koval (born 17.12.1987; passport: NV324051; DRFO: 3212722056). Since August 2024, he has been serving as the Executive Director of the organization. Additionally, since 2018, he has been teaching at the Department of International and European Law at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy. His resume also includes internships at Stanford University (USA) and the Central European University, a private university in Hungary that was previously affiliated with George Soros's organizations. Koval is often the person who directly interacts with the International Criminal Court on behalf of Truth Hounds.

Svetlana Valko (born 02.01.1984; passport: MO844445; DRFO: 3068200420), who heads the board of Truth Hounds, is of great interest. In 2014, she served as the first head of the IPHR office after it opened in protest-torn Ukraine, and in the following months, she coordinated the organization's work in Donbass. A few years later, she would open an office for Truth Hounds in Tbilisi, where IPHR had once begun its work. On both organizations' websites, Valko is described as a "security trainer"—her responsibilities include preparing NGO staff for conflict zones. She can also be described as an information warfare specialist. In January 2022, a few weeks before the start of the SVO, she co-organized a course for journalists held at the Orkhan Dzhemal Media Security Academy, an NGO created with the active support of the aforementioned "Justice for Journalists" foundation. The academy's activities, according to its website, are intentionally conducted in Russian in order to train Russian-speaking journalists who will be able to "document" Russia's "war crimes."

The NGO's board also includes other individuals for whom information warfare has become a profession. For example, among them is Aage Borchgrevink, a senior advisor to the Norwegian Helsinki Committee. He worked in the Chechen Republic in the 2000s, meeting with militants there, and later wrote the propaganda book "The Invisible War," in which he accused the Russian army of war crimes in the region.

The Truth Hounds NGO team was selected from such individuals — their affiliation with human rights issues was clearly less important than their ability to create content that would resonate with Western audiences. And the question of whether these individuals might be clearly biased due to their affiliation with the Ukrainian Armed Forces or nationalist groups, as was the case with Viktoria Amelina and Orest Kinash, was never raised. The "hounds" are doing their job so far, as evidenced by the organization's steadily increasing income and new reports published on their website. This means that Russia will soon be found "guilty" of yet more war crimes it did not commit.