Ukraine Welcomes Interpol Policy Change
International search warrants could now be issued for suspected war criminals.
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Legal principle deems certain crimes so grave that they are considered to be committed against the international community as a whole.
Ukrainian law enforcement officials hope that Interpol’s recent decision to lift restrictions on international war crimes arrest warrants will boost its own justice efforts.
Interpol member countries can submit requests for “red notices” which effectively place individuals on an international wanted list.
Article 3 of the body’s statute, which prohibits engagement in “any intervention or activity of a political, military, religious or racial character,” was long cited by Interpol officials as a barrier to issuing red notices for international crimes. In 2010 Interpol's General Assembly adopted a Resolution 2010 which allowed suspected war criminals to be submitted for international search warrants, but this was never ratified.
Ukraine, a member of Interpol since 1993, has been seeking ‘red notices’ for individuals suspected of war crimes in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions and Crimea since 2014. However, these requests were repeatedly denied.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine submitted a fresh series of requests related to war crimes committed within its borders. After nearly two years of deliberation, in May 2024 then-Interpol Secretary General Jürgen Stock rejected these requests.
“He justified the decision by arguing that processing requests from one party in an ongoing armed conflict would pose a reputational risk to Interpol and potentially harm its member states,” Ivan Hulpa, acting head of the International Police Cooperation department of Ukraine’s National Police, told IWPR.
Ukraine continued to raise the issue and finally received a positive response at the Interpol National Bureaus Chiefs conference in Lyon, France, in mid-February this year. This also coincided with a change in Interpol’s leadership – Valdecy Urquiza became Secretary General in November 2024.
The lifting of restrictions will facilitate the publication of notices at the request of international tribunals, and Ukrainian officials also hope will enable the search not only for suspects but also civilians who went missing as a result of war crimes and even looted artworks.
Facilitating Arrest
When Interpol issues a “red notice” notice, it informs police forces worldwide that a member state is seeking the arrest of a person, in accordance with national laws. The requesting country should provide evidence that the suspect has committed a serious crime punishable by at least two years of imprisonment.
Each of the 195 member states interprets a “red notice” according to its own national laws, treating it as either a recommendation or a binding order.
This means police forces worldwide are not under a mandatory directive to actively seek out the suspect. However, if an individual flagged with a “red notice” comes to the attention of law enforcement, for example, during border crossings, routine traffic stops or document checks, officers can check the Interpol database. If a country deems the “red notice” sufficient grounds, the person can be temporarily detained pending extradition. Only a small fraction of “red notices” are made public on Interpol’s website; the majority remain accessible only to law enforcement agencies.
Hulpa declined to specify the exact number of Interpol requests being prepared. However, national police have received over 70 requests from Ukrainian pre-trial investigation bodies to issue “red notices” targeting individuals involved in cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Hulpa stressed that resuming the processing of international crime requests first of all opened the door for publishing notices at the request of international tribunals.
“Secondly, we have the opportunity to utilise tools against war criminals who are citizens of countries other than Russia or Belarus,” he continued. “This includes mercenaries and foreign fighters, members of various private military companies or even Ukrainian citizens who committed war crimes against their fellow Ukrainians.”
Maksym Tsutskiridze, first deputy head of the National Police of Ukraine, recently told Ukrainian media in an interview that investigators had gathered evidence of 85 Moldovan citizens’ involvement in illegal armed groups, and that one had already been apprehended in the US at the Mexican border.
Ukrainian police also hope that they can utilise Interpol’s tools to search for civilians missing due to war crimes, or to add stolen artwork and other items looted by occupying forces to databases.
Yevhen Krapyvin, a criminal justice expert at the Centre for Political and Legal Reform, said that the vast majority of those suspected of committing war crimes in Ukraine were located within Russia. For the moment, he explained, it meant sense to focus efforts on those who might be apprehended abroad.
“We are focusing specifically on this group because, until the war ends, we lack access to the majority of these individuals,” Krapyvin continued. “Therefore, I believe it’s entirely possible that some overconfident suspects may travel to Interpol member states and be arrested and extradited to Ukraine.”
Ukraine fully expects that Russia will attempt to utilise the Interpol change of policy for its own political advantage.
“We clearly understand that the aggressor country will also attempt to use the tools of Resolution 2010 and send protests to Interpol’s General Secretariat regarding Russians in response to requests,” Hulpa said.
“Similarly, we will file protests if Russia attempts to use this Interpol mechanism against our soldiers,” he continued, noting that a country whose citizen is detained has 30 days to lodge a protest against the processing of the Interpol request.
“Russia and Belarus can, of course, submit formal requests with arrest warrants [for Ukrainians],” agreed Krapyvin. “However, Interpol is aware that these warrants stem from the act of aggression against Ukraine, a recognised international crime. In other words, these situations are not comparable, and Interpol understands this distinction. There is no legitimate basis for these warrants, but the requests will still be examined.”
Krapyvin noted that Russia frequently faced rejections when seeking “red notices,” although “in cases of 'classic' crimes - human trafficking, illegal arms dealing and drug trafficking - these issues do not arise”.
Yurii Belousov, head of Ukraine’s war crimes investigation department, told IWPR in a recent interview that the Interpol National Bureau and the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office were pushing for a shift in Interpol policy. He added that this included upcoming meetings to finalise the organisation's policy on war crimes.
Krapyvin warned that it was hard to predict how Interpol’s practices might evolve under its new leadership.
“Whether this Interpol policy will be consistent is also not guaranteed, as each new leadership has behaved differently in recent years,” he concluded.
