The 2024 has been a starting year for the CyberUA project, with main objectives of establishing close contacts with the national authorities and its project team to roll out the ambitious programme of activities. Throughout the year, the project strived to improve regulations on electronic evidence of war crimes and gross human rights violations, to strengthen skills of criminal justice professionals for identifying, gathering and processing such evidence, and to make international cooperation mechanisms work for access to evidence and data across borders.

The project worked primarily with the prosecutors, investigators and law enforcement officers from the State Security Service, State Bureau of Investigations and the Cyber Police Department, as well as the National Security and Defence Council. More than 20 activities were organised in 2024 under all policy directions of the project.

A few highlights were particularly important as project milestones:

• Ukrainian investigative journalists, media representatives and civil society actors active in support action against the Russian war of aggression received a training on cybercrime, electronic evidence and international cooperation in the context of war crimes and gross human rights violations. This ensured that media and civil society can also support criminal justice authorities in ongoing investigations and prosecutions.
• Critical infrastructure entities and organisations from various sectors of economy were gathered for in-depth discussion on access to electronic evidence and investigation/mitigation of cyberattacks against state and private infrastructure. The national Security and Defence Council of Ukraine initiated the discussions between international experts and Ukrainian organisations, leading to better understand of practicalities of such cooperation.
• The Conference on the exchange of electronic evidence of war crimes and gross human rights violations held in Strasbourg, France, brought together main Ukrainian partners, civil society, and international organisations active in supporting Ukraine’s criminal justice system. This event was intended to showcase to Ukraine and its partners the terms of relevant initiatives that would help Ukrainian criminal justice system to tackle war crimes investigations more efficiently.

The CyberUA project has thus been established on the map of initiatives supporting Ukraine in times of war. Working process and action plan for reforming legislation in line with Budapest Convention and its Second Protocol is underway. Project team is working closely with prosecution and law enforcement training institutions on implementing specialised training sessions developed by the project.

Civil society, media representatives and private sector/critical infrastructure entities are engaged to ensure better access to and exchange of information and evidence concerning war crimes/GHRV. The project plans to further ramp up its support and action for Ukraine throughout 2025.