Methodology

Purpose

A context platform, not a news service. Each conflict module explains what happened, where, who is involved, why it matters, and what to watch — and is updated on its stated cadence. Ukraine–Russia is reviewed weekly, while Mali, the Caucasus and Syria are reviewed monthly and updated when major developments are verified. Baseline reference pages are under progressive source review. We are deliberately slower than the news and aim to be more durable than it.

Status and cadence language

Every conflict module describes itself in the same three vocabularies, so a label on one card always means what it means on another.

Publication status — where a module is in its life:

• Public alpha — published and usable, still being expanded and reviewed.
• Preview — in development; reachable for editorial review only, never listed publicly.

Update cadence — how often a module is reviewed:

• Weekly — reviewed every week, with a weekly verified brief. Currently Ukraine–Russia.
• Monthly / event-driven — reviewed monthly and updated when major developments are verified. Currently Mali, the Caucasus and Syria.

Content state — what a given page or brief is:

• Verified brief — a dated developments brief whose every item carries its own reporting window, sources and confidence grade.
• Progressive source review — baseline reference pages being re-verified source by source; each record shows its own review date.
• Demo archive — clearly labelled illustrative samples preserved for transparency, never presented as reporting.

Each module additionally states its analytical type(interstate war, conflict system, regional system, regional transition) and a small set of thematic tags — the "Contains:" line under a module header. Tags describe the kinds of content a module holds (energy, sanctions, displacement, corridor…), drawn from one small shared vocabulary. They are themes, never sides: no factions, no flags, no symbols.

Evidence and sources

We synthesise from public material: official statements, established media, OSINT and geolocation communities, satellite-derived reporting, international organisations, NGO and civil-society data, think-tank analysis, and market data. We do not use leaked, hacked, or operationally sensitive material.

Every citation on the site references a registered source by a stable id; the build fails if a record cites a source that is not in the registry. A source's type classifies how a claim is grounded — an official statement, an international-organisation dataset, an OSINT geolocation — not how true it is. How strongly the evidence supports the claim is a separate judgement, expressed by the confidence grade.Browse the full source registry →

Confidence

Material quantitative claims are presented with an as-of date, a confidence grade, and a source wherever applicable — a value is shown with the context needed to weigh it, not on its own.

• High — multiple independent, credible sources agree; little serious dispute.
• Moderate — credible sourcing with known gaps, wartime distortion, or meaningful disagreement between estimates.
• Low — contested, unverifiable, or single-sourced; published only when the uncertainty itself is informative, and labelled as such.

Where a figure cannot be responsibly estimated, we say so — "not reliably estimable" is a legitimate published value here.

Dates and freshness

Vigil keeps several dates apart on purpose, because a single "updated" stamp hides more than it tells:

• Status as of — the date of the newest evidence supporting the current status or claim.
• Last reviewed — the date Vigil most recently checked the record.
• Published — the date an event, profile, or brief was first made public.
• Reporting window — the period a developments brief covers.
• Data-specific dates — leadership, economic statistics, formation status and equipment status each carry their own as-of date, which a page review never silently advances.

A recent review date does not make older evidence current.Vigil preserves the newest genuinely sourced status date rather than refreshing it to look up to date.

Events and relationships

The site links records to each other with typed, graded relationships, so a broad association never masquerades as a precise one.

What a link binds to:

• Event — a specific occurrence with a defined date or narrow time window.
• Campaign — a sustained sequence of related activity.
• Campaign phase — a distinct period within a wider campaign.
• Theme — a recurring issue connecting multiple events.

How an organisation relates to an event: participant, reported participant, attacking force, defending force, supporting force, affected organisation, historical association, and predecessor/successor involvement. A reported role is never shown as a confirmed one.

How equipment relates to an operator: service or branch operator, documented formation operator, reported formation association, historical operator, captured operator, donor, and prospective operator.

No link is preferable to an unsupported link. Every edge can carry its own confidence, date and sources; where an association cannot be supported, it is left out. See the cross-links on anyevent orForce Atlas record for worked examples.

Safety: context, not targeting

Vigil describes conflicts structurally and historically. We do not publish current unit positions, force concentrations, base coordinates, movement tracking, or anything designed to support targeting. Our content model has no fields for such information — the rule is enforced by the site's build system, not by editorial memory. Front lines on maps are approximate and labelled illustrative. Force information is broad, delayed, and historical.

Map zones. Some maps carry broad coloured zones. Zones are approximate, contextual and non-operational: every zone is source-dated, confidence-labelled, and drawn with deliberately coarse geometry — the build system caps how much detail a zone outline may carry, so a zone cannot be drawn precisely even by mistake. Zones are not a live control map, and their meaning differs by conflict. For Ukraine–Russia, broad control zones do not show tactical boundaries or live unit positions. For Mali, zones show broad influence, activity, access pressure, or administrative context — influence and activity are not the same as territorial control, and no Mali zone claims otherwise. For regional-system modules such as the Caucasus, zones show de facto administration, historical conflict areas and broad corridor bands: a de facto zone is a status description, never a recognition claim; a historical zone marks where a past conflict was fought, never a current line; and old ceasefire lines are never presented as current control. For regional-transition modules such as Syria, an "administered" zone shows the broad administrative reach of a transitional government — deliberately not a consolidated-control claim — and all other zones are influence, activity or integration-status context; the vocabulary structurally cannot draw a front line.

Regional systems and transitions

Some modules cover a linked regional security system rather than a single conflict. Each module states its type — interstate war, conflict system, regional system, or regional transition — and groups its content into declared sub-theatres: distinct arenas whose events, locations, profiles and zones are tagged and validated against the module's own list. Grouping is analytical, not political — placing a record in a sub-theatre implies nothing about status or sovereignty.

A regional-transition module covers a post-war transition: the historical conflict is the backbone, the current transition is the subject, and the two are kept separate as claims. Historical control and battle context are dated as historical; current authority is described as status — "administered", "integrating under agreement", "outside state authority" — with confidence grades, never as settled fact; and disputed authority or autonomy is described through each party's position ("Türkiye considers…", "Kurdish-led authorities describe…", "Damascus states…") without adopting any side's terminology as the site's own voice. Foreign military presence is represented at broad structural level only, exactly as elsewhere on the site.

Regional-system modules apply this site's separation of historical and current claims strictly: entities that no longer exist are profiled as historical; forces that were disbanded carry their dissolution dates; and where sovereignty is contested, the module describes de facto authority, international recognition and each party's position separately — using formulations such as "de facto authorities", "internationally recognised as part of Georgia", or dual place-naming (Stepanakert / Khankendi) — without adopting any side's terminology as the site's own voice.

Neutrality

We describe; we do not advocate. Actors are labelled by role (belligerent, backer, hedger) and bloc, never as "friendly" or "hostile." Neutral framing does not mean false balance: where facts are documented — an invasion, an annexation, a strike on civilian infrastructure — we name them plainly.

Economics

Economic sections explain exposure and transmission channels at the level of sectors, commodities and instrument categories. Nothing on this site is investment advice, and we never recommend, rank, or name securities as opportunities.

Corrections

Errors are corrected in place and logged publicly on thecorrections page, which is never purged. Material corrections are noted on the affected page. If you find an error, we want to know.

Limitations

These bound what any record on the site can claim:

• Public information is incomplete, and some of what matters is never disclosed.
• Wartime deception is deliberate — both sides shape what is visible.
• Organisational structures change faster than they are documented.
• Confirmation is often delayed; early accounts are revised.
• Casualty and equipment-loss estimates are uncertain and contested.
• Economic data in wartime is partial and lagged.
• The available sources carry their own selection biases.
• Translation across languages loses nuance.
• Absence from Vigil does not prove non-existence — it usually means the record has not yet met the publication threshold.

Profile completeness

Every organisation and equipment record states how complete it is, in the same four terms used on its badge:

• Full — reviewed prose, links, dates and sources are published.
• Partial — core information is reviewed, but some sections remain incomplete.
• Stub — a minimum structured identity and relationship record is published.
• Research required — the record remains hidden until it reaches the publication threshold.

Vigil prefers an honest stub over generic or invented prose.

Source registry

Every source Vigil cites is listed in a single registry, with its type, its role, and its stated limitation. Citations resolve against it by stable id, and the build fails on any unregistered reference.Browse the full source registry →

AI assistance

AI tools assist coding, formatting, drafting, and consistency checks. AI output is never treated as a source. Editorial responsibility and publication approval remain human. The full disclosure is on theAbout & Editorial Process page.

The standard

Vigil's standard is not perfect certainty. In conflict analysis, perfect certainty is often impossible. The standard is to show:

• what is known;
• what remains uncertain;
• why a claim is included;
• when it was last supported;
• and how it connects to the wider conflict.

When the evidence changes, the record changes with it.