Yuriy Uhryn (LLM 2025) is a Ukrainian specialising in international criminal law, motivated by Russia’s invasion and the death of a family friend.
“The invasion started in 2014 in Crimea, when I was 10 or 11,” Yuriy says. “Russia was doing a lot of operations in Donetsk and my dad’s friend’s son, who at that time was 23, volunteered to fight. He was from my hometown, my school, my teachers taught him. We were close with his family and just few days after this 23rd birthday he died.
“I realise now how young he was. He was just a year older than I am now. After that it motivated me to bring the truth to other people.
“Before 2022, many Ukrainians, not even mentioning the international community, were slightly blind to Russian war in Crimea and eastern part of Ukraine. I was always trying to bring it to people’s attention. I knew it could happen and it did in 2022.”
Yuriy was an undergraduate law student at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in February 2022, leaving the capital mere hours before Russia’s invasion under the instructions of Russia President Vladimir Putin. He returned to his small hometown in the west of Ukraine, where he would volunteer to help Ukraine resist.
In the meantime, he opted to continue his academic studies and seek to make a difference through law, with the support of family and friends. His studies were disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic and then the invasion, but he has tried to seize opportunities.
“It was never a student experience I dreamt of, but I’m still very grateful to Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, because everything I have now is because of that,” he adds.
Yuriy held an internship with Amal and George Clooney’s foundation for a year and a scholarship at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy.
He then started working for Truth Hounds, a leading non-governmental organisation based in Kyiv, investigating war crimes not only in Ukraine, but also in other countries, like Syria.
He is a recipient of the Chevening Scholarship, which is funded by the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and the Cambridge Trust.
“Cambridge is the best for public international law,” Yuriy adds. “The Lauterpacht Centre for International Law is a good example of that.
Yuriy cites the academics and teachers, plus the opportunity to build connections through networking at Cambridge, as well as the content of his course. He is also motivated to give back to Cambridge, by sharing his work, which includes an investigation into the seizure of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in March 2022. The report is available online and was written by Truth Hounds with the support of Greenpeace Ukraine.
The report, Seizing Power, documents how Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom became an active participant in Russia’s military occupation of the ZNPP and the city of Enerhodar, coercing plant staff, undermining nuclear safety, and facilitating crimes against civilians.
As discussions continue to try to negotiate an end to the war, and while it may be some time before any prosecutions can even be contemplated, documenting evidence is imperative. This was shown with events in the former Yugoslavia leading to prosecutions decades later.
Yuriy adds: “There’s a lot of work which is not public. Hopefully you’re going to see some results. I’m optimistic after two years of being pessimistic.
“It takes a lot of personal courage. Often people can say ‘oh, he’s not impartial, because he’s Ukrainian’. But I’m motivated to put this to an end.”
