Ukraine’s 2025 Challenges for Justice

Olga Golovina

Editorial Coordinator

Monday, 6 January, 2025

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On January 1, Ukraine became a full member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a landmark moment in its efforts to see senior Russian figures tried for war crimes.

At the same time, Ukraine’s judicial system is processing nearly 150,000 further cases. Oleksandr Pavlichenko, executive director of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, told IWPR’s Olga Golovina that Kyiv needed to lay out a new strategy for the coming year, given the overwhelming number of cases.

“We need to have a strategic goal - how and whom to prosecute, so that these prosecutions are real, and not just in absentia,” he said. “It is important to understand that thousands of criminal proceedings can be opened, but if the right strategy is not chosen and real investigations are not carried out, this will not lead to prosecutions.”

Olga Golovina: What are the challenges facing Ukraine in 2025 in matters related to war crimes?

Oleksandr Pavlichenko: The first is the array of war crimes to date, of which, according to official statistics, there are almost 147,000 since the beginning of the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. The number of registered crimes that require investigation as well as the identification of victims and perpetrators is a major challenge.

Separate challenges are the investigation of categories of crimes that are classified as those directed primarily against human life and health, in areas outside government control. These are cases of murder of civilians, execution of prisoners of war, torture, torture with sexual violence and the identification of specific criminals. Unfortunately, these cases are poorly investigated due to lack of access.

A further large category of criminal proceedings concerns the destruction of facilities and property - this is a separate category that requires the development of a system of compensation and restitution, even without taking into account how the crimes will be investigated and those responsible for these crimes determined.

The large number of criminal proceedings and the lack of access to the territories where the crimes were committed often make it impossible to investigate and detain the suspects. Therefore, they avoid criminal and judicial prosecution.

How should the articles of the Rome Statute be implemented in Ukrainian legislation?

Ukraine ratified the Rome Statute on August 21, 2024. From January 1, 2025, Ukraine becomes a full member. But the law on the implementation of this international instrument turned out to be more cosmetic than realistic, because deputies tried to speed up the consideration of the issue of implementing the Rome Statute in parliament.

I believe that directly transferring the articles of the Rome Statute to national legislation is not advisable because the legal systems and definitions of crimes are different. It is worth considering the prospects of investigation, the capabilities of the law enforcement and judicial systems aimed at prosecuting war crimes, investigating, collecting evidence and conducting trials in compliance with all standards. 

The application of the principle of command responsibility for the commission of war crimes and, accordingly, crimes against humanity is not optimal. Also, war crimes investigations are not always conducted properly. In wartime, when there is no access to territories, standards of proof are often used that do not always coincide with the requirements of criminal procedural legislation. Therefore, it is worth thinking about how to improve the relevant investigation procedures and ensure that the trial takes place within the framework of criminal procedural legislation.

It is necessary to prepare legislation for the future. It is necessary to involve investigators and prosecutors in cooperation, who must identify weaknesses and understand what is needed to qualitatively investigate a huge array of war crimes.

What reforms could be useful?

Ukraine does not quite correctly apply the procedure for considering cases using such a method as a trial in absentia, adopting the relevant sentences and believing that these cases are completed and only require the search for those who are considered guilty of committing such crimes.

These cases have rather weak evidentiary value due to the one-sided nature of the proceedings with an accusatory bias.

As practice shows, the international system of searching for criminals for the purpose of their extradition to Ukraine does not work. These decisions are unfortunately assessed as having a context of political persecution. This is a big problem. The international community should develop standards and rules for considering issues that are not of purely Ukrainian significance.

Unfortunately, there is no internationally recognised body whose decisions could lead to the extradition of most war criminals. After all, the ICC only considers cases of high-ranking officials. Therefore, Ukraine finds itself alone with this problem.

How can Ukraine’s allies help address these challenges?

International support can be effective in accelerating the processes of creating both a special tribunal for aggression and in maintaining the focus of attention at the level of the ICC.

We expect that new categories of cases will be added to the two Ukrainian cases currently pending at the ICC – the deportation of Ukrainian children and the shelling of energy infrastructure, for which arrest warrants were issued in 2023 and 2024.

These could be cases concerning the conditions of detention in occupied territory of Ukraine and in the Russian Federation.

A good signal is that the aggression tribunal [to prosecute the Russian leadership]  [should be finalised by 2025 with the support of the Council of Europe and the European Union. The secretary general of the Council of Europe, Alain Berset, expects that in April 2025, practical steps will be taken towards its establishment.

It is also worth noting the launch of the register of damages and the center for collecting materials on the crime of aggression in The Hague. These are the evidence-gathering tools necessary for future trials and decisions.

However, we cannot yet talk about harm reduction and preventing new war crimes.

Individual trials in states that can use the principle of universal jurisdiction would be important in order to demonstrate how this tool works at the global level. This could be a prospect for the development of an international system of criminal prosecution of war criminals at the level of individual states. For example, Finland detained a Russian man at Ukraine’s request, although it refused to extradite him, and he went on trial on December 5 on charges of committing war crimes while commanding a far-right paramilitary unit in eastern Ukraine a decade ago. Now there is a trial ongoing in Finland. This can serve as an example for other countries and I would like to see more such cases.

What are the most urgent goals for the current system of war crimes investigations?

Now, processes are being optimised so that investigators and prosecutors are not overloaded with criminal cases, so that there are enough technical means to effectively conduct war crimes investigations.

It is worth building a mechanism for analysing and using data-evidence in the context of a criminal investigation of war crimes – for instance, satellite images or the interception of telephone conversations.

A high-quality investigation and a high-quality trial should be the goal of the law enforcement and judicial system. We hear statements that no war criminal will escape investigation and punishment, but unfortunately, it is not even possible to identify war criminals and determine their approximate number. Therefore, we need to have a strategic goal - how and whom to prosecute, so that these prosecutions are real, and not just in absentia. 

These processes depend very much on the outcome of the war and on what terms peace will be achieved. Prosecution for war crimes will depend on this.