Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February 2022, PJI has received numerous requests for assistance from UN, government, and civil society actors, both inside and outside Ukraine. Although efforts to seek justice on behalf of the victims in Ukraine are important, we have been reticent to get deeply involved given that many, many other experts are already engaged in supporting such efforts. PJI endeavors to work in places where we will have the greatest impact as defined by our prioritisation criteria; thus any engagement by PJI in supporting justice efforts in Ukraine must be strategically and narrowly targeted to draw on our strengths without overwhelming our commitments to actors in other, less well-attended-to jurisdictions.

For instance, on March 25, 2022, PJI spoke at a workshop intended to provide European prosecutors and law enforcement with answers to foundational questions about investigating and prosecuting international crimes in the context of the Russia-Ukraine War. The workshop was hosted by the Genocide Network, a crucial hub for the exchange of expertise among prosecutors and law enforcement working on core international crimes — genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The Genocide Network is hosted by  the European Union (EU) Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, Eurojust. Eurojust operates as a specialised hub providing tailor-made support to prosecutors, law enforcement, and judges from across the EU and beyond. Following the invasion of Ukraine, Eurojust’s mandate was urgently amended to establish a Core International Crimes Evidence Database (CICED).

In early 2023, PJI began work with the Global Initiative for Justice Truth & Reconciliation (GIJTR) on a consortium project led by the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience (ICSC) in partnership with the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR), International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR), and TruthHounds. The project’s broad objective was to reinforce civil society’s role in ensuring accountability for war crimes and grave human rights abuses committed during the ongoing war in Ukraine, while its specific objective was to support and empower key Ukrainian civil society actors in their efforts to investigate and pursue accountability for such atrocities. At the same time, the implementing organizations had been working closely with the national investigative authorities in Ukraine since 2014 and continued to do so. Although the GIJTR project came to a close, PJI continued to support our local colleagues in their important documentation work, in partnership with IPHR. In the first quarter of 2025, funding for that project was paused and ultimately cancelled. Nonetheless, our colleagues at IPHR continued their investigation directly applying PJI’s methodology and their own expertise, and ultimately published a report based on their investigation, which is also hoped to lead to prosecutions in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Eurojust continues to preserve and analyse evidentiary material on core international crimes committed in the war, providing that material, when requested, to EU jurisdictions engaged in accountability for these crimes. So far, hundreds of files from various countries, including Ukraine, have been submitted to CICED for preservation and analysis. In 2024, upon invitation from Eurojust, PJI provided three days of training for the Eurojust Analysis team who are working on this evidence.