On 8 July 2022, Supreme Court (SC) and the Council of Europe (CoE) jointly organised an online conference on peculiarities of criminal proceedings in Ukraine during martial law. The event brought together judges of the Criminal Cassation Court of the SC, heads, deputy heads, secretaries, judges of criminal trial chambers of the appellate courts, as well as heads and judges of the first instance courts.

Stanislav Kravchenko, Head of the Criminal Cassation Court within the SC, in his introductory remarks welcomed the participants and outlined the challenges faced in criminal proceedings on cases arising from the ongoing armed conflict in Ukraine. As outlined by Mr Kravchenko, the objectives of the conference were to discuss recent legislative developments regarding the criminal proceedings during the martial law and to develop a common approach towards identified issues by the judges of all instances.

Lilja Gretarsdottir, Head of the Co-operation Programmes Division of the Directorate General Human Rights and Rule of Law of the CoE, underlined the importance of the judiciary in guaranteeing human rights protection, in particular in the context of the military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. Ms Gretarsdottir also noted the importance of the present event that brought together judges of different instances to discuss pertinent issues of procedural and substantive criminal law and applicable human rights standards

The online conference included presentations from SC judges on addressing some of the identified issues of criminal proceedings during martial law. Mr Jeremy McBride, international consultant of CoE, contributed with a presentation on the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights regarding the procedural issues of interest to the participants.

 The event was co-organised within the framework of the Council of Europe Project “Human Rights Compliant Criminal Justice System in Ukraine”, which is part of the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine 2018-2022.