On December 17-18, 2023, the Strategic Session of the Department of International Legal Cooperation of the Prosecutor General's Office took place at the Training Center for Prosecutors of Ukraine with the support of the Council of Europe. The event was co-organized by the EU Poject "PravoJustice».

Following the commencement of full-scale military operations on the territory of Ukraine, the Department encountered new challenges in its work. Specifically, a series of Ukrainian extradition requests were rejected by European states for various reasons, including concerns about the potential physical danger to the extradited individuals, conditions of detention, and fairness of judicial proceedings. Meanwhile, significant personnel changes and a process of reorganization occurred within the Department during the recent period.

This event served a dual purpose: strengthening the Department's team, defining strategic needs, and identifying current challenges. A crucial component was a series of training sessions focused on analyzing the specifics of international legal cooperation, particularly in the context of the ongoing armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine.

The facilitator of the Strategic Session was Mr. Hennadii Chuprykov, the national consultant of the Council of Europe. International experts from the Council of Europe, Mr. Jeremy McBride and Ms. Catherine Carrie, as well as the national consultant Mr. Nazar Kulchytskyi, served as speakers during the training sessions. The event was attended by 24 prosecutors from the Department, including 15 women and 9 men.

The Strategic Session was supported within the framework of the project "Fostering Human Rights in the Criminal Justice System in Ukraine", which is part of the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine "Resilience, Recovery, and Reconstruction" (2023-2026).