There are a huge number of war crimes registered by the Office of the General Prosecutor. How many cases are you actively investigating?

In Ukraine this morning, we have more than 48,000 war crimes registered. This number refers to launched investigations, this doesn’t mean that these are definitely, one-hundred percent war crimes, it means an investigation is started. But first let me take a step backwards and explain how it works in Ukraine. In every criminal investigation we have two actors – investigator and prosecutor. The role of investigator is to gather evidence, the role of prosecutor is to lead the work of the investigator and then take this case to court. That is the case since 2012, when the new Criminal Procedure Code came into effect. Essentially, prosecutors are involved from the very beginning. In some cases, we [prosecutors] investigate with national police, in others with security services and so on. I want to emphasise that because the prosecutor’s role is quite different in some countries, so that can be a point of confusion.

Regarding war crimes specifically, the role of our department is to coordinate the whole system of war crimes investigations. But within the department there are different units with different specialisations. We have, for example, one unit that deals only with the crime of aggression. It’s the so-called elite crime. They investigate top officials of Russian policy and military. Another unit handles war crimes cases, where civilian objects have been destroyed with civilian casualties. One more unit investigates violent war crimes – killings, tortures, deprivation of liberty. and where civilians are killed. It’s cases like Olenivka, where Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed, or the case where there is this terrible video of a Ukrainian prisoner of war being mutilated with a knife in eastern Ukraine and the massacres that took place in Bucha.

The other cases that are – I don’t want to say that they are more minor, because all war crimes are very serious, but even in war crimes you see that there is a scale of severity. Let’s say those cases that involve fewer casualties or less serious destruction, these are sent to the regions. The regional prosecutors are, of course, supported in this by a unit [at the central level]. When they [regional prosecutors] are at the point to make charges in war crimes cases, this [central] unit studies their cases and makes recommendations to them, because at the regional level IHL [international humanitarian law] is a new sphere to work in for many of the prosecutors and not all the procedures are well-known to them. So, we [at the central level] also make recommendations to regional prosecutors based on IHL standards.

You mentioned that many prosecutors and investigators are not used to working on war crimes. What are the biggest differences and challenges they face in adapting to working in an IHL framework?

One of the biggest differences for prosecutors and investigators is the need to prove so-called the contextual element. We need to prove that this particular crime is related to the war. We can’t just say, okay, the war started and that’s enough to class it as a war crime. Another difference is that we need to work with the Rome Statute even if we didn’t ratify it. Ukraine recognises the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction [by way of two Declarations to the Court made in April 2014 and September 2015]. Our Criminal Code refers [in Article 438 on violation of the laws and customs of war] to IHL [international humanitarian law] – to the Geneva Conventions and other international documents. So, prosecutors need to work with these IHL standards, documents, and rules which, for many of them, is not something that they used in their day-to-day work in normal times with normal crimes. And of course, related to this, we now have international partners with jurisdiction who are also working on our territory, for example the ICC, so that’s also something that we have to take into account.

The third big difference, or perhaps challenge, is that when someone has been killed during the war it doesn’t mean there was a crime committed. This is difficult sometimes from the moral perspective to explain to the public or those affected. For example, if a Russian combatant has killed our soldier during the battle, it’s not a war crime, or even a crime according to international humanitarian law. And sometimes it can be difficult to explain, during investigations, that we must prove that this crime, if it is indeed a crime according to the national Criminal Code, was not related to military purpose. To give another example. If Russian soldiers have taken the car from a civilian family, we must prove that they have taken it for private purposes, not to, for example, evacuate the military unit to another place. Because if there is information that an evacuation, for example, was the reason then it’s not a crime. However, of course for the family they have lost the car so it’s not easy to understand this. So, in all these cases we must really look at the specifics. If we talk about the attack on civilian objects then we have to prove that there was no Ukrainian military at this time in this particular place – in this school or hospital for example – because, if there was, then it may not be a war crime but a legitimate military target.

Lastly, an obvious and big challenge is that we still have a war on. Sometimes we just don’t have physical access to a crime scene. We don’t have physical access to witness. We don’t have physical access to victims. That’s the challenge number one. We have to use other methods to investigate crimes being committed on occupied territories where we just cannot physically go.

Not only is there a huge number of cases but there’s a vast volume of evidence to sift through, particularly open-source intelligence. How are you handling the processing and sorting this volume of evidence? Is it manageable?

Yes, this is very much true – there is a huge volume of information that we have to process. I’m always making an example which is very understandable for people in their regular lives. Imagine you are a project manager handling 30,000 projects and every day you have 300 or 400 new projects added to your to-do list. Of course, you don’t have enough time to understand what these projects are about. This is the situation now in Ukraine. Every day more cases are being registered [under Article 438]. In the time we are speaking, there will be new cases registered. It’s a huge challenge for the whole law enforcement system and for us at the prosecutor’s office. But, from another perspective, it’s a great opportunity for the law enforcement system to be transformed into a modern system using modern technologies and solutions. And we are working in this direction. We are making plans to scan all materials relating to war crimes, to make it easy to locate a document or a paper or search for information on a particular person or place. When we have it just in hard copies, as we do now, then it’s just not possible. It makes analytical tasks very challenging. Right now, we are actively designing and searching for solutions that will make this type of analysis much easier, more practical.

We are also in the process of establishing specialised war crimes units in regional offices. This isn’t something new, it’s something we’ve been fighting to set up for quite a long time. It’s important to have on-the-ground prosecutors [in the regions] who have been trained, because right now we have a specialist department on the top level but not on the regional level. Because at the regional level investigating war crimes, it’s like a part-time job for them, because there are still other crimes being committed and they have to investigate and prosecute those too. If we create a war crimes infrastructure, let’s call it that, of investigators who work specifically on war crimes at the regional level that would increase and improve the effect of our work.

Another area we are working hard on with experts, both government and non-government, is on standards for investigations. Because, you know, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. In typical cases, or perhaps I should say in many cases, the formulation or the practice is the same. If you have a detailed manual or guidelines, very practical ones, then you should be able to take it and use it, like a detailed algorithm. In relation to this, we are also working on a database to accumulate best practices and information relevant to particular war crimes. And this also related to what I talked about before, assisting regional investigators and prosecutors. Rather than searching the internet they would have access to an officially approved documents, like a manual or checklist, that would bring the materials they need together in one place. Again, this would help make our work more effective, to save time.

Given the number of cases registered, how are you deciding which cases to prioritise when it comes to using your, presumably limited, time and resources?

Again, this is part of the strategy that we are working on developing with our international partners – the strategy for criteria for selection of cases. For example, we talked about the attack of civilian objects with casualties. This would definitely be a priority compared to attacks on civilian objects without casualties and, of course, an attack with mass casualties would be prioritised over an attack with one person killed. But also, what we have already discussed and agreed with our partners from other institutions is that the priorities may be different for different departments or at different levels. So far example, there may be one priority agreed with the Office of the Prosecutor General, with the national police and security service and others at the regional level. Of course, I am not saying that we shouldn’t investigate everything – we should investigate everything that’s obvious. But let’s take this example of cases with mass casualties, these can be investigated at the central level while those with fewer or none can be given to the regional level.

Different crimes also require different types of investigation. If you talk about some categories of case, like the crime of aggression or deportation cases, which touched all of Ukraine and affected millions of people, it can’t be taken by any region alone because they don’t have this helicopter view. It’s a matter of scale. If you talk, for example, about the one case where someone is being kept, let’s say in a basement somewhere, or a filtration camp, these are just examples of deprivation of liberty. But filtration camps are not about one camp or the decision of one person. It’s about a system which has been used to filtrate and move Ukrainians on a large scale and it needs to be investigated from this overview perspective. So, these crimes must be investigated at the central level.

Another criterion, when it comes to case selection, relates to prisoners [of war]. Screening is necessary, it is obligatory, and we are making this process better and more effective with the help of experts. And, if during this process we get the information that someone has been involved in a serious war crime, then we will go deeper with our investigation. That’s why our first verdicts [in war crimes cases] mostly involve prisoners of war [as the accused]. It’s not because we don’t want to focus on the top level, but because if they [the accused] are here it’s just much easier for us to conduct the whole scale of the investigation when we don’t have access to the person alleged to have committed this crime. So, screening is also an important factor in determining which cases to select.

What’s your response to critics who question whether Ukraine can hold fair trials during an ongoing conflict?

Let’s say the quality standards have been seriously increased since February when we first started working in these conditions [following Russia’s wholescale invasion of Ukraine]. Because then there was no clear understanding of how to deal with prisoners of war, what this kind of investigation should look like. Now we are doing it from an absolutely different perspective. And that has been communicated to the regions that these types of crime need to be give even more [investigative] scrutiny, not less. It’s not okay to say: “He is a Russian, we suspect Russians, okay then let’s send this guy to court. We have a photo of a Russian guy and his [social media and electronic communications] passwords that’s enough.” Because this is not enough. We have the huge scrutiny of the international community on our work. And Russians also would then blame us and say that we don’t follow standards for fair trials and that we are just blaming prisoners of war for military actions they are doing, which are not themselves a crime.

I try not to look too much at the public opinion because it’s difficult. You know, the public is not one group. So sometimes we are criticised for why, in over half a year, we have just eight verdicts. And then the next day you are criticised because in this time we already have verdicts and that is too fast. So, I ask: “Come on you guys could you please just decide. Is this good or bad? Too fast or too slow? Tell us what to do!” We always will be criticised and that’s why it’s so important that we follow [fair trial] standards. I wasn’t in this unit from the beginning, but since I came in at the end of May, we have really stopped to review all cases and ensure we are working at the correct standards. Sometimes it’s difficult from a moral perspective but it’s important to understand that even those these are Russians, and we want them to be prosecuted, we shouldn’t make mistakes. We shouldn’t give them a chance to say that we didn’t follow fair trial standards. We are learning more and more skills and knowledge of IHL. Again, in this regard too, quality is a number one priority for us. We are really trying to ensure that we follow IHL. It doesn’t mean we don’t make mistakes, sure we do. But we are really trying to ensure that we follow best practices.

How do you handle the emotional toll of this work? And does it impact your ability to do your job objectively?

You know it’s really important to not be too emotionally involved in all these cases. Because what Russian soldiers are doing here, it’s sometimes difficult to even to understand or explain. I’m saying that, sometimes, you know, we just are faced with clear evil. It’s difficult to understand what they’ve done against children or women or men. It’s really, really horrific things. I don’t want to say that we get used to it, but we have to try not to be emotional because otherwise it’s just not impossible to investigate we would lose ourselves – our moral stability, our emotional stability. We just try to investigate as we would a normal crime. But, particularly in the beginning, it was so shocking. It was really very difficult to stay stable when you face cases like in Bucha or Irpin. When you talk to victims or their relatives, it’s very hard.

At this stage I could say I have become acclimatised to it, but then again with Russians there is always something new. Just when you think you’ve already become used to what they’ve done and you don’t emotionally become involved, then the next day they commit some new horror and you need several days to, let’s say, come back. Before [the Russian invasion in 2022] I was involved in investigating police misconduct and torture cases [in Ukraine]. We had one case that involved a rape in a police station, she survived fortunately, but it was an extremely shocking case for the whole country. With the Russian invasion though, it’s just not possible to compare it in terms of the scale of cruel crimes that have been committed. We understand that we are facing an absolutely different culture, an absolutely different mindset. What we can do, what our front in this fight is, is to document these crimes as best we can. To not give them the chance to escape justice.

We must have a bullet-proof mind, to not take this too emotionally. We just work. When you start thinking that it’s someone’s daughter, someone’s son, someone’s child – we [prosecutors] all have children – then you can start you lose yourself. Sometimes I have to stop myself, and say: “Okay, I’m in too deep. I need to come back. I need to calm down and then proceed.” It’s not always easy, but what else can we do? Otherwise, you would go crazy. You can’t be too emotional, too empathetic. Unfortunately, for prosecutors and investigators, if you go to deep in that then we cannot do our work. You would just not be able to do this.