Schemes (Skhemy) is an award-winning investigative news project run by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service that focuses on exposing high-level corruption. It was created in the wake of the 2014 Maidan Revolution.
A new report by Schemes, the investigations unit of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, reveals the names and identities of Russian soldiers responsible for laying antipersonnel mines in Ukraine. The mines are banned under an international agreement, which Ukraine is party to but Russia is not.
Ukrainian lawmakers on February 7 voted to dismiss Yuriy Buhlak from the Central Election Commission after he left Ukraine for the United States 12 days before Russia launched its ongoing invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Tax data shows that shopping-center firm Epitsentr K, a Ukrainian military donor, for years paid a manager who cultivated close ties with the pro-Russian forces in the occupied part of the Donetsk region while managing a firm nearly identical to Epitsentr K, Schemes has found.
An analysis of satellite images by Schemes, RFE/RL's Ukrainian investigative unit, indicates that Russia is actively building up its production capacity for military equipment and developing new factories as it continues to reorient its economy toward its war against Ukraine.
After the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a purportedly private military group called Redut has widely been tipped as Wagner’s potential successor as Russia’s key mercenary force. A new RFE/RL investigation reveals that Redut is, in reality, a secretive network operated by Russian military intelligence.
RFE/RL has found documentary evidence that Russia is attacking Ukraine with cruise missiles that Kyiv handed over to Moscow in the 1990s. The serial numbers of numerous missiles that hit targets in Ukraine match those of missiles listed in the 1999 agreement on the weapons handover.
RFE/RL producer Vira Hyrych is among the numerous journalists killed in Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. A year later, her son says those responsible must be held accountable. Schemes, an RFE/RL investigative unit, confronted key figures in the Russian chain of command.
A flash drive left behind by fleeing Russian forces in Ukraine contains hundreds of documents, including citations for medals, which identify key officials involved in handling civilians who allegedly hold anti-Russian views in occupied areas. Many of those civilians say they have been tortured.
Serhiy Mak says he spent 25 days locked in the cellar of an office building in Kherson, southern Ukraine, where he was tortured by a Russian man nicknamed "The Specialist." Mak spoke to RFE/RL after Ukrainian forces liberated the city from Russian occupation.
A Russian commander stabbed an elderly Ukrainian woman to death during the retreat from Izyum, according to a soldier in his unit. Evidence of the alleged war crime first emerged from a phone intercept by Ukrainian intelligence.
A Ukrainian man spent months digging through the wreckage of an apartment block to find the body of a close friend from his school days. Pavlo Holub lives in Izyum, and he carried out this work during the six-month Russian occupation of the town before it was liberated by Ukrainian forces.
An investigation by RFE/RL journalists shows connections between the metallurgical empire of Vladimir Lisin, one of Russia's richest oligarchs, and Russia's military industries. Unlike many of Russia's politically connected industrialists, Lisin and his companies have mostly avoided sanctions.
An RFE/RL investigation exposes how Russian oil or oil products are evading sanctions and arriving in the European Union. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Russian ships are barred from docking at EU ports. So how do these shipments end up there?
Seventeen people were killed during the monthlong occupation of a Ukrainian village called Andriyivka, which when the war began had a population of just over 1,000. Using a variety of evidence including eyewitness testimony, RFE/RL has mapped where, when, and how the victims died.
A Russian air base on Ukraine’s annexed Crimean Peninsula suffered massive destruction from several explosions on August 9, satellite imagery made available on August 10 shows.
Satellite images bolster accusations that Russia is transporting huge quantities of stolen Ukrainian grain to Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria. RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service has documented a series of shipments through the largest grain terminal in Russian-occupied Crimea.
