Ihor Klymenko: Chief of Ukraine's National Police and Frontline Law Enforcement Commander

Background and Police Career

Ihor Klymenko is a career police officer who rose through the Ukrainian National Police system over more than two decades. His professional background spans criminal investigation, operational policing, and administrative command, giving him comprehensive familiarity with an institution that underwent significant reform following the Euromaidan revolution and the creation of the new National Police of Ukraine in 2015.

The Ukrainian National Police was created in 2015 as part of post-Maidan security sector reform — replacing the Soviet-era militsiya with an institution designed on European law enforcement models, emphasizing community policing, human rights protections, and professional accountability. The reform was imperfect and incomplete, with significant corruption and institutional inertia persisting alongside genuine changes, but it represented a fundamental reimagining of Ukrainian civilian law enforcement.

Klymenko's career encompassed the transition from the old system to the new, giving him knowledge of both the reformed institution's capabilities and its persistent structural challenges. His management of the National Police in wartime draws on this institutional knowledge while adapting it to wholly unprecedented circumstances.

Appointment to National Police Chief (2023)

Ihor Klymenko was appointed Chief of the National Police of Ukraine by President Zelensky in 2023 — one of several senior security sector appointments made as Zelensky restructured his government team in the second year of the full-scale war. The appointment reflected a preference for operational experienced commanders over political appointees in key positions during the wartime period.

His appointment came at a time when the National Police was managing an extraordinary expansion of its responsibilities — conventional policing in Ukrainian-controlled territory, security operations in newly liberated areas, war crimes documentation support, and coordination with military and intelligence services across multiple theatres of operation.

As a minister-level appointment, Klymenko reports to the Cabinet of Ministers and coordinates closely with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the Military Intelligence Directorate (HUR), and the Prosecutor General's Office on the overlapping security and legal functions of wartime policing.

The Unique Challenge of Wartime Policing

Managing a police force in an active war zone creates challenges with few modern historical parallels. The Ukrainian National Police must simultaneously:

• Maintain conventional law enforcement in territory thousands of kilometers from the front
• Operate police functions in active shelling and drone strike zones in frontline cities
• Provide first response to mass casualty events from Russian missile and drone attacks
• Secure liberated territories where the legal, social, and security environment has been radically disrupted by occupation
• Investigate and document war crimes to legal evidentiary standards
• Identify and prosecute collaborators while maintaining due process
• Coordinate civilian evacuation with military and humanitarian organizations
• Maintain public order and combat crime in a society under prolonged stress

The force has suffered its own casualties — police officers killed and wounded in Russian strikes and by Russian forces in frontline areas. Klymenko's command includes managing the human cost borne by the institution itself alongside its operational responsibilities.

Police Units at the Frontline

The National Police has specialized units deployed in and around frontline cities performing functions that cross the civilian-military boundary. Active deployment in cities like Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Kherson, and Kramatorsk means police officers perform their duties under the constant threat of Russian missile, drone, and artillery attack.

Police functions in frontline and near-frontline areas include:

• First response to missile and drone strikes — documenting casualties, securing sites, providing initial emergency coordination
• Maintaining order in areas where civilian populations have partially evacuated, creating security challenges from abandoned property and reduced community oversight
• Processing filtration zones at checkpoints to identify Russian intelligence assets and collaborators attempting to pass as civilians
• Providing protective details for civilian officials and critical infrastructure managers in high-threat areas
• Operating in coordination with Territorial Defense Forces and military Police in the complex security architecture of near-frontline areas

The police presence in frontline cities is also a statement of civilian governance continuity — that Ukrainian state institutions function and protect citizens even under active Russian attack. Klymenko has emphasized this symbolic dimension alongside the operational.

Liberated Territory Policing

The most complex police challenge has been re-establishing law enforcement in territories liberated from Russian occupation. Liberated areas present a concentrated set of problems that exceed standard policing challenges:

Physical environment: Widespread destruction of infrastructure including police station equipment, records, and facilities. Extensive minefield contamination making normal patrol operations hazardous. Booby traps left by Russian forces specifically targeting first responders.

Population complexity: Returning civilians, residents who remained under occupation (some of whom collaborated), displaced persons returning, and family members of those killed or deported create a complex social environment requiring careful management.

Evidence preservation: Liberated areas contain evidence of Russian war crimes that must be documented to international legal standards before it degrades, is disturbed, or is lost. Police units must simultaneously begin security operations and conduct forensic evidence preservation — two activities with partially conflicting operational priorities.

Institutional vacuum: Russian occupation erased Ukrainian institutional presence. Civil registries, property records, court functions, and other state services must be re-established from scratch, with police often serving as a temporary anchor for civilian governance before other institutions reconstitute.

The liberation of Kherson Oblast in November 2022 provided the most extensive test of these capabilities. National Police units entered Kherson city within hours of Russian withdrawal, simultaneously securing the area, beginning war crimes documentation, and restoring basic civilian order.

Collaborator Investigations

Ukrainian law criminalizes collaboration with Russian occupation authorities — providing material assistance, participating in occupation administrative structures, or assisting Russian military operations. Since 2022, thousands of collaborator investigations have been opened, making this one of the largest special jurisdiction law enforcement programs in Ukrainian history.

Klymenko's National Police handles collaboration investigations in coordination with the SBU (Security Service) and the Prosecutor General's Office. The legal framework distinguishes between different levels of collaboration — from active participation in Russian military or administrative structures (most serious) to passive compliance under duress (least serious) — a distinction that requires investigative fact-finding rather than blanket prosecution.

The collaboration investigation program records:

• Thousands of open cases as of 2024-2025 across multiple categories
• Convictions across a range of offenses from providing information to Russian forces to actively participating in occupation governance
• Ongoing investigations in newly liberated territories following each significant liberation event
• International scrutiny over due process standards, with human rights organizations monitoring for overly broad investigations

The political sensitivity of collaboration investigations — some cases touching on prominent individuals and raising questions about the line between collaboration and survival — makes this among the most politically complex elements of Klymenko's command portfolio.

War Crimes Evidence Collection

The Ukrainian National Police is a principal first-responder institution for war crimes evidence collection. When Russian missiles strike civilian areas, police document the scene — recording evidence of what type of weapon was used, where it landed, what it damaged, and what civilian casualties resulted. This documentation, when conducted to evidentiary standards, becomes court-admissible evidence in both Ukrainian and potential international proceedings.

Key aspects of police war crimes evidence work:

• Strike documentation: Police forensic units respond to every significant Russian strike, documenting weapon remnants, impact patterns, and civilian effects per a standardized protocol developed in cooperation with international prosecutors.
• Casualty documentation: Systematic recording of civilian casualties including cause of death analysis — distinguishing combat-related from direct civilian targeting to establish the pattern evidence needed for international legal proceedings.
• Chain of custody: Maintaining evidentiary chain of custody for physical evidence and digital documentation is technically demanding in an active combat environment. Training and protocol adherence are ongoing challenges.
• Coordination with prosecutors: Police evidence collection feeds the Prosecutor General's Office database of war crimes cases that has grown to over 100,000 individual incidents. The interface between initial police documentation and prosecutorial case building has been progressively streamlined.

The police war crimes documentation role has brought the National Police into partnership with the ICC, Eurojust, and bilateral justice mechanism involving EU and UK prosecutors. This international legal partnership has provided training, equipment, and standardization support for Ukrainian police evidence collection operations.

Maintaining Civilian Security Under Bombardment

Managing civilian security in a country under continuous missile and drone attack requires police to serve simultaneously as law enforcement and as a component of the civil defense system. Key functions:

• Air raid alarm response coordination with State Emergency Service, military, and civil defense authorities
• Enforcement of curfews and wartime movement restrictions — managing the line between security necessity and civil liberties in an environment of genuine threat
• Rapid response to strike sites with combined first response and evidence documentation protocols
• Counter-intelligence function identifying potential spotters or signal assets in civilian populations that might be assisting Russian targeting
• Black market and looting enforcement in areas affected by strike-related disorder or evacuation

Evacuation Coordination

The Ukrainian National Police has played a central role in organizing civilian evacuations from frontline areas — coordinating with military, local administrations, and international organizations to move civilians from high-risk zones. Police presence is essential for maintaining order in evacuation processes that can otherwise become chaotic and dangerous.

Police units have operated in areas under active fire to facilitate evacuation — a function that has cost police officer lives. The organization of mass evacuation under the Kharkiv region shelling of 2024, the ongoing management of evacuation from Donetsk Oblast communities, and the regular processing of civilians moving away from frontline areas have all required sustained police coordination at significant human cost to the institution.

Police Institutional Reform in Wartime

Klymenko has continued reform efforts within the National Police even during wartime — recognizing that the institution must develop capabilities it did not previously possess while maintaining operational continuity. Reform priorities under his command include:

• Forensic capacity building: Expanding Ukraine's forensic science capacity to handle the volume of war crimes evidence collection while maintaining domestic criminal investigation capability
• Digital evidence management: Building secure digital systems for managing the enormous volume of war crimes evidence documentation in ways that meet international legal standards
• International cooperation protocols: Standardizing Ukrainian procedures to meet EU and international legal interoperability requirements, facilitating cooperation with European law enforcement
• Corruption counter-measures: Maintaining anti-corruption oversight in a wartime environment where emergency powers and resource scarcity create corruption risk

2025–2026 Status and Priorities

As of early 2026, Klymenko continues as National Police Chief. The operational priorities of the force have evolved with the conflict's trajectory:

• Sustained war crimes documentation pace as Russian strike campaigns continue and liberated territories require investigation
• Expanding collaboration investigation backlog as case volume grows and prosecution capacity is strained
• Continued frontline security operations in cities under ongoing Russian pressure, particularly in Kharkiv Oblast, Sumy region, and Donetsk Oblast
• Preparation of civilian security infrastructure for potential future liberated territories — applying lessons from Kherson and Kharkiv to plan for other significant liberation events
• Integration of postwar planning into police institutional strategy — understanding that Ukraine will eventually need to re-establish policing in all currently occupied territories, requiring planning work that begins now

In public communications, Klymenko has been a consistent voice for the maintenance of the rule of law even under wartime conditions — arguing that Ukraine's adherence to legal process, including in collaboration investigations and war crimes documentation, is both ethically required and strategically important for Ukraine's relationships with Western legal systems and institutions.

Frequently Asked Questions