INTERPOL and the Enforcement Gap in War Crimes Cases

[Veronika Vozniuk is a Ukrainian legal and policy professional working on issues related to international humanitarian law, human rights, and the legal consequences of armed conflict.]

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has made significant efforts to investigate and prosecute individuals responsible for war crimes committed on its territory. The scale of the alleged crimes is immense and continues to grow as Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine persists. Against this background, the Ukrainian justice system faces the unprecedented challenge of ensuring accountability and delivering justice to those affected by Russia’s crimes. As of 22 August 2026, the National Police reports 218,493 criminal proceedings concerning violations of the laws and customs of war (under Art. 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). 

Yet the sheer number of cases is not the only challenge facing the Ukrainian justice system. A further, and particularly significant, obstacle is the physical absence of alleged perpetrators from Ukraine’s jurisdiction. As a result, Ukraine has to rely extensively on trials in absentia. As of February 2026, 240 persons had been convicted of war crimes in absentia, while, according to experts, around 97% of war crimes cases reaching Ukrainian courts are heard in the absence of the accused. 

A conviction, however, does not necessarily translate into a sense of justice for victims. This concern is reflected in the words of a victim interviewed as part of a study on accountability for war crimes in Ukraine:

“We [Ukraine] convicted him in absentia – so what comes next?.. He’s walking around, living in another country. That’s why I say: convicting is fine, but then submit a request to INTERPOL, circulate it across Europe, with all the countries we cooperate with, so those countries actually arrest this person if he’s on their territory.”

For at least some victims, then, justice requires that a conviction produce tangible consequences for the perpetrator. To this end, the effectiveness of accountability efforts depends not only on Ukraine’s ability to investigate, prosecute and convict perpetrators, but also on whether those convictions can ultimately be enforced. 

Individuals who are presently beyond Ukraine’s reach may subsequently travel to third states, creating opportunities for their arrest and potential extradition. International mechanisms capable of locating wanted persons and communicating information concerning domestic arrest warrants therefore become an important link between accountability established on paper and its eventual enforcement. In this context, resort to INTERPOL would appear to be an obvious component of Ukraine’s accountability strategy.

INTERPOL Mechanisms in War Crime Cases 

Several information-sharing channels are used by INTERPOL to facilitate international police cooperation, among the most relevant of which for locating persons wanted for prosecution are Red Notices and Diffusions. 

Red Notices are regulated by Articles 82-87 of INTERPOL’s Rules on the Processing of Data and are used to “seek the location of a wanted person and his/her detention, arrest or restriction of movement for the purpose of extradition, surrender, or similar lawful action.” Red Notices are issued on the basis of an arrest warrant or a court order issued by the competent authorities of the requesting state. It is worth noting that a Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant and does not in itself create an obligation for all Member States to actively seek a person concerned. Rather, the legal effect of a Red Notice is determined by the national law of each Member State.

Diffusions, issued under Articles 97-101 of the same Rules, provide a more direct means of transmitting requests for international police cooperation. A diffusion may request the arrest, detention or restriction of movement of a convicted or accused person. 

For Ukraine, such mechanisms of international cooperation have obvious potential value for the enforcement of domestic criminal proceedings and judgements. A person suspected or convicted of war crimes may remain beyond the reach of Ukrainian authorities for years. Should that person enter another state and come to the attention of its law enforcement, e.g. during a traffic stop or a document check, officers may identify that person through INTERPOL’s database. Depending on the national law of the state concerned, the existence of a Notice may serve as a basis for detention pending extradition.

The most significant issue, however, arises at an earlier stage. In war crimes cases, the central difficulty may not be the domestic effect provided for a circulated Notice, but whether INTERPOL will permit a circulation of such a request at all. 

In 2010, INTERPOL’s General Assembly adopted Resolution AG-2010-RES-10, establishing a specific framework for processing requests for international police cooperation concerning genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Resolution allows such requests to be processed when submitted by international tribunals, entities established by the UN Security Council, or INTERPOL Member States. In the latter case, however, an important limitation applies: where a request concerns a national of another member country, the General Secretariat must inform that country, which may prevent the request from being processed by protesting within thirty days. In practical terms, if Ukraine requests a Red Notice for a Russian national suspected of war crimes, Russia may prevent the request from being processed through INTERPOL channels by lodging such a protest.This possibility for a state of nationality to object to the request constitutes a major impediment to the effective use of INTERPOL channels in war crimes cases.

For a long time, however, that was not the only obstacle. INTERPOL has a long history of rejecting Ukraine’s requests related to war crimes. Since 2014, Ukraine has submitted several requests concerning persons suspected of crimes committed in Donetsk and Luhansk regions and Crimea. These requests were declined, with INTERPOL relying on Article 3 of its Constitution which prohibits any intervention of a political or military character. Despite the fact that AG-2010-RES-10 was already in force at that time and expressly allowed for cooperation in relation to war crimes, INTERPOL rejected them as “processing requests from one party in an ongoing armed conflict would pose a reputational risk to Interpol and potentially harm its Member States.” 

This restrictive approach remained in place after Russia’s full-scale invasion. In mid-2022, Ukraine’s National Central Bureau (NCB) submitted a number of requests for Red Notices concerning Russian nationals wanted by Ukrainian authorities for war crimes committed on the territory of Ukraine. Those requests were reportedly under consideration for almost two years before being rejected in 2024 on the same grounds. Ukrainian authorities have not publicly identified the individuals concerned or disclosed the underlying cases.

This position changed in February 2025, when the new Secretary General, Valdecy Urquiza, announced that Ukraine would once again be able to use INTERPOL’s tools in cases concerning genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, within the framework of AG-2010-RES-10. The change was significant: the existence of an ongoing interstate armed conflict would no longer, by itself, prevent Ukraine from seeking cooperation through this mechanism.

Yet AG-2010-RES-10 remains applicable, including its mechanism allowing the state of nationality to protest against the processing of a request concerning its national. The third edition of INTERPOL’s Repository of Practise of Application of Articles 2 and 3 of INTERPOL’s Constitution in the Context of the Processing of Data via INTERPOL’s Information System illustrates how this mechanism operates through anonymised scenarios based on INTERPOL’s practice. In Scenario D (p. 87), an NCB issued Diffusions seeking the arrest of nationals of another member country for offences allegedly committed while they were serving as soldiers during an armed conflict. After obtaining clarification of the charges, INTERPOL concluded that one of them fell within the general category of war crimes and applied Resolution AG-2010-RES-10. The suspects’ state of nationality submitted a protest and, as a result, INTERPOL concluded that the relevant data could not be recorded in its databases.

The origins of the nationality-state objection help to explain the rationale behind the arrangement: AG-2010-RES-10 was adopted against the background of a growing number of disputes over war crimes requests arising from the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, including Serbia’s attempts to pursue nationals of Bosnia and Herzegovina for alleged crimes committed in the context of the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. 

According to the Office of the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, the adoption of AG-2010-RES-10 in November 2010 completed a process initiated by INTERPOL in June 2009 with the purpose of avoiding possible misuse of its mechanisms. Yet its application to Ukraine exposes the opposite risk. Russia does not investigate alleged war crimes committed by its nationals and instead denies such allegations. Allowing it to block Ukrainian requests may therefore transform a safeguard against politically motivated prosecutions into a mechanism capable of obstructing international cooperation. 

Rethinking INTERPOL Cooperation in International Crimes Cases

The limitation described above does not necessarily require suspension of Russia’s right to protest. INTERPOL’s own response to the risk of misuse by Russia might provide a viable alternative.

In March 2022, INTERPOL introduced heightened supervision and monitoring measures in relation to NCB Moscow to prevent potential misuse of its channels. Since then, Russian Diffusions can no longer be circulated directly to other member states and instead must be transmitted to the General Secretariat and checked for compliance with the Rules. Only requests that are found compliant are subsequently disseminated. These measures have received some positive assessments from experts. Importantly, these measures did not exclude Russia from INTERPOL or prevent it from seeking international police cooperation in its entirety. Instead, they introduced an additional layer of scrutiny before information submitted by NCB Moscow could be disseminated through INTERPOL channels. The approach therefore sought to preserve access to international police cooperation while responding to an identified risk that such access could be misused.

Introducing such measures reflects INTERPOL’s recognition that the ordinary safeguards may not be sufficient where a heightened risk of misuse has been identified. However, no comparable safeguards apply when Russia exercises its right to protest under AG-2010-RES-10. Thus, a state whose use of the INTERPOL system has already been identified as needing additional supervision may prevent another member state’s war crimes request from being processed simply by submitting a protest within the prescribed period. 

This does not create a consistent approach to risk. If prior review of Russia’s requests has already been justified by concerns regarding misuse of INTERPOL channels, there is little reason for those concerns to be irrelevant when Russia exercises procedural power capable of preventing information submitted by other states from entering those channels. 

A more consistent approach would therefore be to extend a comparable form of heightened scrutiny to protests submitted by Russia under AG-2010-RES-10. Rather than automatically preventing the processing of a war crimes request once Russia objects, such a protest could trigger review of whether the objection provides sufficient grounds for preventing the use of INTERPOL channels in the particular case.

Such an approach would preserve the protective rationale of the nationality-state objection rather than eliminate it. Russia would remain entitled to raise concerns where it considers proceedings against one of its nationals to be abusive or politically motivated. The difference would be that its protest would not operate as an automatic bar without further scrutiny in circumstances where INTERPOL has already considered additional safeguards necessary to address the risk of misuse by that state.

Photo attribution: “ICPO-Interpol Headquarters in Lyon, France” by Massimiliano Mariani is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0