TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Two analysts from the Ukrainian Molfar Intelligence Institute on Tuesday shared how their teams identify Russian military personnel involved in attacks on civilians and investigate Chinese companies using publicly available resources during a workshop in Taipei.
Speaking first, Daria Verbytska described Molfar’s work documenting Russian strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and residential buildings. She said the group frequently identifies the names, phone numbers, relatives, home addresses, and other personal data of pilots, engineers, and military personnel linked to missile and drone attacks.
Verbytska cited several high-profile cases, including a strike on a children’s cancer hospital in Ukraine. Another case involved a deadly attack on a residential building in Dnipro that left numerous civilians dead.
“There were more than 100 people in the list, and we did it in half a day because it was a question of justice,” she said. She said such investigations must be completed rapidly to ensure accountability while public attention is still focused on the event.
After concluding her portion, Verbytska handed the session to her colleague Nadiia-Anastasiia Kukhar, who spoke remotely via video conference and presented an in-depth overview of open-source intelligence (OSINT) techniques used for corporate and individual research, particularly in China, Hong Kong, and Macau.
Kukhar explained that OSINT relies entirely on publicly accessible material, including social media, corporate registries, online archives, government filings, news reports, and website data. The work can involve background checks, reputational assessments, due diligence reviews, and market analysis.
She outlined common “red flags” in corporate research, such as ties to sanctioned jurisdictions, suspicious financial activity, fraudulent claims, unresolved debts, product plagiarism, or unexplained changes in leadership or ownership structures.
Kukhar also emphasized the importance of understanding political affiliations, cross-border connections, and legal risks. “Everything is contextual,” she said, noting that behavior considered normal in one jurisdiction may be considered high-risk in another.
The workshop covered practical research steps such as analyzing company websites for legal names, privacy policies, and ownership; examining archived versions of webpages to track changes; verifying addresses, management teams, and product claims; conducting image-based searches to detect rebranded or repackaged goods; and identifying financial data from annual reports, investor presentations, court filings, and procurement records.
Kukhar also demonstrated the use of local search engines and China-specific databases while warning participants about digital security threats posed by unsafe browsers, VPNs, and plugins. She recommended using secure browsers, isolating research accounts from personal identities, and maintaining separate sock puppet accounts when conducting sensitive investigations on social media.
“The first rule for sock puppet accounts is they must be unrelated to your personal data,” she said, stressing that analysts should avoid linking phone numbers, email addresses, or personal profiles to investigative activity.
Hong Kong public company information can be accessed through standard registries, similar to UK public company databases. Government registries provide corporate addresses, filings, and ownership data for both public and private companies.
She said satellite images of business locations can show timelines of development and activity. Tools such as Google Earth Pro and Sentinel Hub offer access to multi-year satellite imagery that can be useful for verifying facility activity and historical patterns.
Kukhar also said it was important to work in multiple languages, especially when company names differ in English, Chinese, or Russian. Search engines can provide alternate spellings and addresses linked to the same entity. Web crawler tools and directory scanners can assist with such searches.
To conclude, she offered a case study of an investigation into the Russian military’s use of Chinese drones. Since 2022, many Chinese companies have claimed not to sell drones to Russia, though a cursory OSINT investigation, such as a simple image search, found many such drones or components continued to reach Russia.
Many of these Chinese drones are rebranded under domestic names. Furthermore, drone training schools in Russia teach on some of the most popular drone models available in China. A simple visual comparison showed nearly identical designs between Chinese models and Russian versions.
