ABSTRACT
The Ukrainian criminal justice system faces an extraordinary challenge of ensuring accountability for tens of thousands of war crimes allegedly committed in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in 2014. While affected by the ongoing war, Ukrainian courts have nonetheless continued functioning and examining war crime cases. Ensuring fairness of these historical war crime trials taking place in Ukraine is crucial for their legitimacy. What is more, these war crimes trials are a test of the ability of Ukraine’s legal system to respect human rights and the rule of law. This chapter first provides an overview of war crime trials in Ukraine since 2014. The chapter then proceeds to investigate various issues related to the fairness of these trials and makes some suggestions for improvement. These issues are independence and the impartiality of the judiciary, a lack of expertise in prosecuting war crimes among legal professionals in Ukraine’s criminal justice system, shortcomings of Ukrainian criminal legislation on war crimes, the rights of the defence, and victims’ right to justice.
