Extradition to Ukraine under Scrutiny: Emerging Trends Across Courts in Europe

When war reshapes a country’s legal system, can extradition still be justified? A recent judgment delivered on 29 October 2025 by the Court of Appeal of Paris (Ninth Investigating Chamber, in case no. 2024/10328) suggests that the answer is far from straightforward. The full text of the judgment is enclosed below.

The French case-law

What makes the judgment particularly significant is the Court’s rigorous scrutiny of the guarantees offered by Ukraine. Despite all basic requirements of extradition being met, those assurances were not deemed sufficient in light of the current situation.

The key finding in the Court of Appeal’s judgment reasoning lies in its assessment of the impact of martial law on fundamental rights, especially the right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It is trite that, in 2022, Ukraine has formally notified derogations to the ECHR and the ICCPR due to the armed conflict and those derogations have been constantly extended up to date (here is the text of the derogations, while their current status may be checked, respectively, here and here).

While such derogations to international obligations are in principle permissible, the Paris Court of Appeal found that – for the purposes of determining surrender of a requested person to Ukraine – they were not sufficiently limited or clearly circumscribed. The Court rejected the idea that emergency measures were confined to active combat zones, emphasizing instead that martial law extends across the entire Ukrainian territory. The fluid and unpredictable nature of hostilities, including attacks reaching cities such as Kyiv and Lviv, makes any territorial distinction uncertain and unstable.

Particular weight was given to the legislative framework governing criminal procedure in wartime, in particular Article 615 of the Ukrainian Code of Criminal Procedure, which allows significant departures from ordinary safeguards, including decisions on detention by non-judicial authorities. This raised serious concerns regarding compliance with the requirements of judicial independence and impartiality.

The Court further noted the structural disruption of the judicial system under wartime conditions, where non-urgent proceedings are widely suspended, in accordance with recommendations issued by the Ukrainian authorities. Against this background, the prospect of a trial within a reasonable time was considered largely theoretical.

Equally important was the Court’s scepticism regarding diplomatic assurances provided by Ukraine, which were considered too general and lacking concrete operational guarantees. Formulaic references to fair trial principles were deemed insufficient to counterbalance the derogations and the systemic impact of emergency measures.

Taken together, these elements led the Paris Court to a decisive conclusion: extradition would expose the individual to a real risk of a flagrant denial of justice.

This judgment follows in the steps of a previous judgment issued by the Court of Cassation on 7 November 2023 (No. 23-82.220, ECLI:FR:CCASS:2023:CR01273), which refused extradition on similar grounds.

Italy and the Netherlands take the stricter approach

This approach is not isolated. A similar but independently developed line of reasoning can be observed in recent Italian case law. The Italian Supreme Court has progressively moved toward a more restrictive approach, reflecting the evolving and increasingly pervasive nature of the armed conflict in Ukraine.

While earlier decisions allowed extradition on the basis of specific assurances – e.g. where detention was to occur in areas far from active conflict zones – the Italian judges have more recently acknowledged that such assumptions no longer reflect reality, in light of the significant expansion in the scope and intensity of the conflict. Relying expressly on what it qualifies as a “notorious fact”, the Court has recognized that military operations are no longer confined to limited regions but now affect large portions of Ukrainian territory, including civilian areas. As a result, general assurances offered by Ukraine are increasingly regarded as insufficient to dispel the risk and extradition is consequently denied by Italian courts (see, most recently, inter alia, Court of Cassation, Section VI, no. 4828 dated 12 November 2025, published 5 February 2026, and no. 1167 dated 30 December 2025, published 13 January 2026).

According to the Italian Supreme Court, the decisive factor is no longer the formal existence of safeguards, but their practical reliability in an evolving war context. Where the requesting State is objectively unable to ensure that the individual will not be exposed to a real and current risk to life, physical integrity, or fundamental rights, extradition must be refused.

Read together, the French and Italian approaches reveal a clear and converging interpretative trend: the obstacle to extradition is not the mere existence of an armed conflict, but its widespread and unpredictable nature.

In a similar fashion, with two judgments issued on 13 October 2025 and 3 March 2026, the Rotterdam District Court denied extradition to Ukraine, relying on the war’s effects on Ukrainian detention conditions, air-raid risk, lack of adequate shelters, and the absence of an effective remedy, and expressly grounding the refusal in Articles 2, 3, and 13 ECHR. It should, however, be noted that the first judgment explicitly dismissed the challenges brought by the requested person concerning a potential breach of Article 6 ECHR, while the second one did not address the matter.

The UK breaks ranks

By contrast, the UK courts have recently taken a divergent approach. In a judgment delivered by the Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 4 March 2026, the court refused extradition on grounds of Article 8 ECHR, but discarded the existence of a risk of an unfair trial contrary to Articles 5 and 6 ECHR, relying on the limited territorial operation of martial law (“The relevant martial-law provisions do not apply in circumstances where ordinary law continues to operate, as is the case in Western Ukraine”) and on assurances from the Ukrainian authorities (“even were there residual risk of prejudice or unfairness, the assurances provide concrete guarantees”).

Conclusions

In light of the above, read together the French, Italian, and Dutch decisions point to an increasingly rigorous level of judicial over extradition requests coming from Ukraine in the context of the ongoing war. At the same time, the recent UK judgment shows that this approach is not uniform across Europe and that the legal scenario is developing and highly debated.

What is, however, clear from these cases is that extradition to Ukraine can no longer be approached as an ordinary cooperation matter, but courts are required to engage in a much more substantive review of whether rights remain effectively protected under wartime conditions.