09/06/2026
In March 2022, while part of Kyiv was still under occupation, Vasylyna Yavorska received a call from the Office of the Prosecutor General: could her team develop guidelines for interviewing prisoners of war?
That moment sits at the heart of this episode of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt — recorded live at the Davidhorn Police Interview Summit in Manchester and hosted by Dr. Ivar Fahsing.
Vasylyna is a Ukrainian lawyer and CEO of JustGroup, and she has led the country's national expert team on investigative interviewing since 2017. She talks about what it takes to shift a criminal justice system away from confession-based thinking, how you build change from the inside out, and why Ukraine's war crimes investigators — having now conducted over 2,000 interviews — may soon be teaching the rest of us.
One exchange that stayed with us: in 2020, 61% of Ukrainian investigators defined a confession as the measure of a successful interview. What Vasylyna is working to replace that with is not just a methodology. It is a different set of values.
Episode 22 is out now. Listen here 👉 https://davidhorn.com/resource-hub/justice-under-fire-reforming-investigative-interviewing-in-wartime-ukraine-ep-22/
Davidhorn is a proud partner of JustGroup.