A Ukrainian man whose apartment was ransacked tracks his missing AirPods for clues on Russian troop movements

• A man told Insider his AirPods disappeared from his apartment in Ukraine during Russia’s occupation.
• The man, Vitaliy Semenets, used Apple’s “Find My” feature to trace them to a region in Russia.
• The devices’ apparent path aligns with the one thought to have been taken by Russian forces.

A Ukrainian man says he has been tracking the location of his AirPods for clues on Russian troop movements after his apartment was looted during the occupation of his home city.

Vitaliy Semenets told Insider that he used Apple’s “Find My” feature to track his AirPods, which were taken from his home near the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and found that they were in the Belgorod region of Russia, across the border from Ukraine.

“They were in somewhere in Russia,” he told Insider, adding that it surprised him so he decided to post to Instagram about it.

“Thanks to technology, I know where my AirPods is now. It was looted by russians orcs from my home in Hostomel,” Semenets said in a post on Instagram.

Semenets told Insider he and his family left the city of Hostomel in the first few days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and traveled to Mukachevo in the west of the country. He said he returned to his home in Hostomel on Saturday after neighbors who had remained in the city sent him videos showing his apartment had been ransacked.

Hostomel is located northwest of Kyiv, from where Russian forces began withdrawing earlier this month after six weeks of fighting in which they failed to capture the capital city.

Semenets, who told Insider he had alerted Ukrainian intelligence about the movements of his AirPods, said the Find My feature showed they were last activated April 9. A screenshot of the feature showed the ear buds to be close to Russia’s border with Ukraine at the time. The devices have not updated their location since, Semenets said.

Semenets said the location of his AirPods reflected what he had been hearing from Ukrainian authorities about Russian troop movements. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday that Russian forces had started a new offensive in the Donbas, a region of eastern Ukraine that borders Russia.

Semenets also discovered that some of his other electronic goods were missing, including his Nintendo Switch and his Microsoft laptop. He is unable to track those devices, he said.

Semenets sent pictures of his home to Insider, describing it as “badly damaged.” He said his wife’s car was also damaged by shelling in the city.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said early this month that Russian troops had been looting Ukrainian homes and selling some of the stolen goods in Belarus. Leaked CCTV pictures indicate some troops have sent items like washing machines, laptops and e-scooters to their families back in Russia, The Times reported.