On 29 August 2019, MPs of the Verkhovna Rada’s 9th convocation took the oath of office. Seven years later, the newly elected — and not so newly elected — representatives still hold their mandates, as martial law remains in force and parliamentary elections cannot be held.

So, what will this Verkhovna Rada be remembered for? The Agency for Legislative Initiatives invites you to look back at Parliament’s journey through the lens of time.

Eighty-four — that is the number of women MPs in the Verkhovna Rada of the 9th convocation as of August 2026. Women chair committees, parliamentary factions and groups, as well as parliamentary delegations. Since 24 February 2022, they have also been actively advancing parliamentary diplomacy.

This is the result both of consistent state policy — including requirements for party lists and additional funding for political parties that complied with the gender quota — and of growing public demand for women’s representation in politics.

One of the first laws adopted by MPs of the 9th convocation abolished parliamentary immunity.

The idea, supported in the all-Ukrainian referendum of 2000, was finally implemented almost two decades later. Since the law was adopted, dozens of MPs have been notified of suspicion of criminal offences. Yet alongside the possibility of holding MPs accountable came the risk of political pressure on them from law enforcement agencies.

‘Button pushing’ had long been an integral part of parliamentary ‘culture’, and even its criminalisation failed to eliminate the problem completely. Finally, in 2021, the touch-sensitive button of the Rada-3 electronic voting system became operational in the Verkhovna Rada.

The voting principle is straightforward: for ten seconds, an MP must keep the voting button pressed with one hand while simultaneously keeping the other hand on the touch-sensitive button. In other words, both hands of the MP are occupied. That put an end to the possibility of multiple voting.

The story of ‘button pushing’ is also an example of how criminalisation does not always work. Adopting a law did not solve the problem; the best solution — a technical one — had been within reach all along.

The electoral victory of the Servant of the People party enabled it, for the first time in independent Ukraine’s history, to form a coalition on its own. Or, more precisely, to become the coalition itself.

In political vocabulary, the phenomenon became known as the ‘mono-majority’. As a result, all power within the ‘Parliament – Government – President’ triangle was concentrated in one political force. Today, however, the mono-majority can hardly adopt any decision without ad hoc support from other factions and groups.

The media dubbed the beginning of the 9th convocation’s work ‘turbo mode’, but the Verkhovna Rada set its real records for adopting legislation during the first months of the full-scale invasion. Between 24 February and 2 April 2022, Parliament sat in plenary on five days, while MPs spent a total of around 2 hours and 23 minutes in the session hall. They devoted roughly 57 minutes directly to considering draft laws and adopted a total of 70 laws and 3 resolutions during that time.

At the same time, the data show a slowdown: draft laws now take longer to pass than at any other point in the convocation, with more than a year elapsing between registration and adoption.

A total of 63 laws were adopted during the 14th session — the lowest figure for the 9th convocation. Given the record-low number of registered draft laws, this points to a substantial decline in legislative activity.

During the term of the Verkhovna Rada’s 9th convocation, Ukraine opened negotiations on accession to the European Union. For Parliament, this means adopting almost 300 laws envisaged by the National Programme for the Adaptation of Ukrainian Legislation to European Union Law (EU acquis). Yet deadlines for fulfilling all of Ukraine’s EU membership commitments keep being postponed, while MPs are voting for fewer and fewer European integration initiatives.

Parliament appears to have become a hostage to its own ambition: despite its declared readiness to adopt the European integration legislation required, it has still failed to establish a separate accelerated procedure, limiting itself to two half-measures in the form of resolutions.

What the data show: only two European integration laws were adopted during the 14th session. This is the lowest number and the lowest share of adopted European integration laws since the 7th session. Such a pace poses a serious risk to Ukraine’s European integration prospects.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Verkhovna Rada has extended martial law 20 times.

At the beginning of the convocation, 424 MPs were serving; today, there are 392. Few of them can have expected at the start of their term to hold a mandate for longer than five years, still less under wartime conditions. With no prospect of elections in the near future, MPs are effectively ‘stuck’ in their seats.

The years of the full-scale invasion have shown that the Verkhovna Rada is adaptable to external change and capable of acting when circumstances demand it. At the same time, the overall pace of legislative work has declined over the years. Yet despite this slowdown, and despite debates about Parliament’s agency and capacity, the institution remains central to major state processes. Foremost among them is steering Ukraine along its path towards membership of the European Union. Both the preservation of democratic order and the trust of international partners depend on the Verkhovna Rada’s ability to function effectively.

Lawyers have a long-standing joke: ‘Crime is organised, but you are not.’ Events of the past few days have added an entirely unfunny reality to that joke — one of ‘systematised corruption’ that the Office of the President apparently wants, at the very least, to ‘control’ and, better still, to ‘lead’.

These were the messages Ukrainians heard on the morning of 19 August in the latest recordings concerning high-level corruption. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) then launched a special operation ‘to expose a criminal organisation led by current and former Members of Parliament, involving high-ranking officials from the Office of the President of Ukraine and other individuals’.

Over the following two days, videos appeared containing transcripts of recorded conversations involving members of the criminal organisation. Among those named by SAPO prosecutors were Maksym Mykytas, a former MP and businessman who headed Ukrbud and is now involved in a number of high-profile criminal proceedings; Vadym Stolar, a current MP from the banned Opposition Platform – For Life (OPFL) and a businessman with long-standing interests in Kyiv real estate and property development; Iryna Mudra, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine from March 2024 to August 2026, who had previously served as Deputy Minister of Justice of Ukraine; Viktor Dubovyk, Director General of the Directorate for Legal Policy at the Office of the President, who until 2024 headed the Anti-Raiding Office of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine; several officials of Sense Bank JSC, as well as a number of less well-known individuals holding less senior positions. The names of several Ministry of Justice officials were also mentioned.

The published recordings point to the alleged influence of members of the criminal organisation over the Ministry of Justice, the courts and Sense Bank, as well as schemes involving money laundering and corporate raiding against companies owned by third parties, including the use of forged documents. It has all the flavour of the 1990s, except that this is 2026. Hackers have therefore been added to the list as well.

Mykytas, Mudra, Valentyn Yelizarov — Mykytas’s right-hand man — and Dubovyk have already been remanded in custody, with alternative bail set at UAH 30 million, UAH 20 million, UAH 20 million and UAH 7 million respectively.

The High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) will give a legal assessment of the published recordings in accordance with the applicable procedural rules. Given, however, that Iryna Mudra and Viktor Dubovyk had been responsible for judicial reform at the Office of the President since March 2024, we will examine where these figures have taken Ukraine over the past two and a half years. More importantly, what should happen next?

In March 2024, after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed Andrii Smirnov, who had served as Deputy Head of the Office of the President, Iryna Mudra was appointed to the position. Almost immediately afterwards, NABU and SAPO notified Smirnov of suspicion of illicit enrichment. The criminal proceedings against him were later expanded to include allegations of laundering illegally acquired funds and offering a bribe.

Mudra was notified of suspicion before being dismissed from office, placing the Presidential Office in a very delicate position. Both deputy heads, who were supposed to uphold the rule of law, are now experiencing the criminal justice system first-hand. They also have the opportunity to greet one another on the steps of the HACC, just as two other well-known defendants, Vsevolod Kniaziev and Pavlo Vovk, recently did.

Yet in March 2024 it was difficult to imagine anyone less connected to the judiciary than Mudra taking up the position of Deputy Head of the Presidential Office responsible for this area. After Smirnov, who had not dealt with judicial reform at all, the position required someone with genuine expertise. That was precisely why Mudra’s appointment created tension.

At the same time, her lack of knowledge and connections in this sphere also gave some hope that there would be no networks of control over the judiciary of the kind that Vovk, Smirnov, Kniaziev and, to some extent, Oleh Tatarov had already tried to build at national level. At regional level, almost every president of an appellate court has a similar network of their own.

So when, in one of her first public appearances, Mudra said that she sorted judges into ‘baskets’ — those vetted by the new compositions of the High Council of Justice (HCJ) and the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine (HQCJ), and those inherited from the old compositions of those bodies — the judicial system erupted. This was an obvious breach of safeguards for judicial independence and undisguised interference by a political body in the judicial appointment procedure, and it reinforced the behind-the-scenes view that Mudra was an accidental choice for the position.

The same applied to Viktor Dubovyk. Yet it was precisely the two of them who were expected to develop a new reform strategy for the judiciary, since the strategy for the previous period had failed on every count.

A brief digression is warranted here to recall once again that, following the 2016 constitutional amendments on justice, the President was left with almost no powers over the judiciary. The President retains a ceremonial role in appointing judges and swearing them in. The Venice Commission has repeatedly stressed that this role should indeed remain ceremonial, without sorting judges into ‘baskets’ or otherwise interfering with the powers of the HCJ.

The President also has the power to appoint two HCJ members and, following consultations with the HCJ, to submit draft laws to Parliament on the establishment, reorganisation and liquidation of courts. During Zelenskyy’s presidency, we have already seen examples of this: the liquidation of the notorious District Administrative Court of Kyiv (DACK) and the establishment of other courts in its place — one to consider administrative cases involving Kyiv residents and two more to hear high-profile cases concerning central executive authorities. The HQCJ is currently selecting new judges for all of them.

Historically, however, the Office of the President has retained a tradition, dating back to previous Presidents, of defining the strategy for judicial reform. While that may once have been justified by the President’s formerly broad powers, after the 2016 constitutional reform — which was assessed quite positively by the Council of Europe in its 2019 report — such strategies should arguably be developed by the HCJ, following consultations with the Supreme Court (SC). The HCJ is, after all, the constitutional body of judicial governance, modelled on the higher judicial councils that exist in most countries whose reform experience may also be useful for Ukraine.

Perhaps this is why, when Mudra and Dubovyk began working on yet another version of the Strategy for the Development of the Justice System and Constitutional Court Proceedings, the process repeatedly reached a dead end. Initially, this was because the first version of the document was weak and, in many respects, misguided and harmful, forcing the Presidential Office, both officially and behind the scenes, to turn to the judiciary itself for help in developing well-founded proposals for the necessary changes. Later, even a relatively sensible document remained on the President’s desk for a year and a half without any explanation of what exactly Volodymyr Zelenskyy found unacceptable in it.

After yet another failure to secure the President’s signature on the relevant decree, Mudra publicly stated that the Strategy’s non-approval did not prevent its implementation. Yet even the draft submitted to the President has not been made public. It is rather difficult to implement something that does not formally exist. There must be approved indicators, deadlines, responsible actors and all the other elements that distinguish reform from PR about reform. But defining those indicators, and above all being able to monitor implementation, requires real powers — either through a legislative framework or through a power vertical. As we have already established, following the 2016 reform the President, and therefore the Presidential Office, has almost none. That leaves only one option: building a power vertical.

In light of recent events, it is becoming clearer what the Presidential Office’s ‘reformers’ were actually doing. First, there were attempts to place their own people in key public positions. But with the Presidential Office having long since run out of a reserve bench, Viktor Dubovyk personally entered most competitions for top positions. Owing to the principled stance of representatives of international partners — with three such representatives currently sitting on each of the relevant selection commissions — he failed to secure any of them.

Second, Mudra and Dubovyk appear to have tried to use their positions to influence individual court decisions. Serhii Stasiuk, a judge of the Commercial Court of Kyiv, whose name was mentioned during the hearing on the preventive measure for Maksym Mykytas, proved to be far from the last judge to be named.

During the hearing on the preventive measure for Valentyn Yelizarov, the names of judges Pavlo Horbasenko of the Northern Commercial Court of Appeal, Roman Boiko of the Commercial Court of Kyiv, Serhii Narizhnyi of the Commercial Court of Kyiv Region, Anatolii Ivchenko of the Commercial Court of Kyiv and Olena Kuzmyshyna of the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal were also mentioned.

Admittedly, while Stasiuk, Boiko, Ivchenko, Narizhnyi and Horbasenko were mentioned in the context of decisions in specific cases, Kuzmyshyna simply ‘didn’t get a scarf’, even though she had invited Mudra to her birthday celebration, where ‘all the court presidents’ were supposed to be present.

During the hearing on the preventive measure for Iryna Mudra, conversations between Mudra and Mykytas were read out in which she said: ‘I got him the ruling’ and ‘the appeal was fully upheld; we changed the bankruptcy practice’.

We are likely to learn the names of at least some judges of the Pecherskyi District Court of Kyiv as well, most of whom have been obstructing the qualification assessment of their suitability for office. Attempts by the current HQCJ to conduct that assessment ended with searches by the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) and pressure on the HQCJ from the Temporary Investigative Commission associated with Serhii Vlasenko and Maksym Buzhanskyi.

Some courts were also searched, but it is for NABU and SAPO to decide whether and when to make that information public.

Third, our own sources have told us about informal contacts between Mudra and certain representatives of the HCJ and HQCJ. If those discussions concerned the reform Strategy or deadlines for the judiciary to fulfil particular international commitments, there is no problem. But if Mudra or Dubovyk mentioned specific names or expressed wishes during those meetings — for example, regarding the appointment of particular individuals to specific judicial positions — then there is a serious problem. That would amount to unlawful influence on decisions of judicial governance bodies, which those bodies should have reported.

Fourth, in one of the recorded conversations, a voice resembling Mudra’s can be heard saying that corruption should not be fought but rather ‘systematised and controlled’. Coming from a person whose responsibilities included building a rule-of-law system in Ukraine, this sounds like a verdict not only on her, but on the very existence of a dedicated Deputy Head of the Presidential Office responsible for the judiciary.

Yet this is not only about particular words. There are also concrete actions that are easy to see if one looks closely: President Zelenskyy’s decrees appointing judges. Most such decrees in recent years have been INDIVIDUAL. Under Poroshenko — and even Yanukovych — individual decrees existed but were more the exception than the rule. Under Zelenskyy, individual decrees have become the norm.

Naturally, no one in the Presidential Office was prepared to take such risks in competitions such as the one for the High Anti-Corruption Court. Judges vetted by international experts could quite easily have reported offers of personal contact with representatives of the Presidential Office. The President’s decrees appointing judges to the HACC and its Appeal Chamber are therefore collective decrees, even though HCJ submissions concerning those judges reached the Presidential Office at different times.

By contrast, the 13 presidential decrees appointing first-instance and appellate judges, signed on the same day as the decrees concerning HACC judges, were individual. More interesting still, not every appointment submission resulted in a decree. In some appellate courts, for example, decrees appointing one or two judges were not signed. What prevented all of them from being appointed? One might try to explain this by saying that it was impossible to process all the submissions at once. But there is a catch: the unsigned decrees concern judges whose appointment submissions were among the first to reach the Presidential Office.

For example, the HCJ considers candidates for a particular appellate court over the course of a month and sends appointment submissions to the Presidential Office as each candidate is considered. Yet, strangely, submissions concerning the last candidates are acted upon before those concerning the first. Administratively and technically, this is impossible, because documents are processed in the order in which they arrive. So, for a document to stop moving inside the Presidential Office, somebody has to halt it manually at some stage, according to the principle of who ‘made it through’ and who ‘didn’t’.

In one of the conversations recorded by NABU, Mykytas said that he knew how Andrii Portnov had ‘kept judges in line’: by issuing or withholding appointment decrees. He summed it up as follows: ‘Whoever got to her got released; whoever didn’t is still running.’

Other recorded conversations appear to confirm this as well. One example is a conversation between Mykytas and Mudra on 19 February.

Mudra: Why are you so hung up on Horbasenko? What, do you want to bribe him or something?

Mykytas: Yeah, yeah, there is. I’ll tell you later. Vasya and Vadym really pushed for it. Well, he did them a favour. They really asked. Fine.

Mudra: Could we make it so that he owes me, not Vasya and Vadym?

Mykytas: Sure. That’s basically how it is. He owes you too. Trust me. He owes you… He’s ready to come and bow to you, even get down on his knees. That’s why I asked you to invite him, so he could swear his loyalty to you again.

As the SAPO prosecutor explained, Judge Horbasenko intended to transfer to an appellate court, and Mudra was facilitating the transfer.

Mykytas: Well, Tuesday then. It’s fine, she’ll let him through… But he shouldn’t forget about her, you know.

Astion: Just think of him as her guy — and ours too. One signal and he’ll do exactly what he’s told…

Mykytas: Is he going to the Kyiv appeal court?

Astion: Well, he’s got a job to do there. He’s got people there who are on the same wavelength. He wants to build up the Barsuk–Khripun connection in a big way. That’s in our interests too. So, yeah, he’ll be coordinated. 

In another conversation, Mykytas says: ‘She’s just letting them through as a batch, by Tuesday. She’s doing them as a batch. She says, “I can’t just let one person out of the whole batch.” She’s holding some of them back — around 30 people.’

On Tuesday, 24 February 2026, President Zelenskyy appointed 26 judges. Among them was Pavlo Horbasenko, appointed as a judge of the Northern Commercial Court of Appeal. Judging from the context, Mudra had been holding decrees concerning 30 judges and released 26 of them; four judges had ‘failed to make it through’ to her.

Another recorded conversation worth noting concerns Mudra’s predecessor, Andrii Smirnov, who also communicated with Horbasenko in relation to Mykytas’s cases.

Astion: Andriukha spoke to Horbasenko this morning.

Mykytas: You mean Smirnov?

Astion: Smirnov, yeah. He spoke to Horbasenko. I’ve got the first instance covered, and this judge or whoever… He went to Pasha Horbasenko and said, ‘Pasha, look, this one’s important. You need to put this guy in his place…’ And Horbasenko came down hard on Boiko, even though Boiko was actually trying to help me in that situation… And now, through Pasha, we’ve sorted out all your issues.

In other words, Smirnov, whose criminal case is being heard by the HACC, continues in his spare time between court hearings to ‘fix little problems for businessmen’ with judges.

There is no simple choice between two pills: choose the red one and corruption continues; choose the blue one and it comes to an end. But there are some mechanisms from recent years that have actually proved effective.

First and foremost, despite all the complexity and difficulties involved in engaging international experts in competitions for key public positions, there is currently simply no alternative if Ukraine wants to select competent people of integrity.

The number of MPs notified of suspicion by NABU and SAPO is measured in dozens. The number of judges, advocates and prosecutors is measured in dozens. The number of senior managers in the executive branch is measured in dozens. The number of Presidential Office officials is now measured in dozens too. And some of them have also tried to place their own people in key public positions.

Allowing selection commissions to operate at this stage without international experts — or Ukrainian experts delegated by international partners — would allow corrupt power verticals to reproduce themselves and even extend their influence into newly created institutions.

International experts with a decisive vote should remain involved in key selection commissions at least until Ukraine joins the European Union.

It is also extremely important to regulate how far back candidate vetting should go. Younger candidates now taking part in competitions often find it very difficult to obtain documents confirming their parents’ property acquired or received in the 1990s, when the candidate was, at best, still at school and, at worst, not yet born. Moldova, for example, has limited judicial vetting to the previous 12 years and considers this sufficient. Ukraine could follow that example, or set a period of 15–18 years for candidates under 45 and 20–22 years for older candidates.

The second, equally important change is that the Office of the President should finally abolish the position of Deputy Head responsible for the judiciary and end attempts to influence judges or use them within its own power verticals.

The law provides that the President must appoint judges within 30 days of receiving an HCJ submission. In practice, this should mean that once a month a single decree is submitted to the President for signature, listing all judges whose appointment submissions reached the Presidential Office during the previous 30 days. Two competent lawyers are sufficient to prepare such a document.

The development and implementation of the Strategy for the Reform and Development of the Judiciary should be left to the HCJ and the SC. After all, under the Constitution they are the institutions with the relevant powers concerning both judicial independence and the unity of case law.

When the President addresses the development of a new network of local general courts, he can establish an ordinary working group to prepare proposals and turn them into a draft law. This is not something that has to be done every month, but perhaps once every 20 or 30 years. The need to liquidate or establish an individual additional court can readily be identified by the HCJ, which can then submit the relevant proposal to the President.

The President and the Head of his Office could then say calmly on international platforms: we do not put pressure on the courts; we simply appoint judges on time and swear them in once a quarter. That would be preferable to having to make excuses for deputy heads responsible for the judiciary who, for more than six years, have tried to use this position for their own unlawful interests. And, as Smirnov’s example shows, even dismissal from office did not end his corrupt links with judges.

This could start immediately by signing all the decrees that have been awaiting the President’s signature for anything from several weeks to several years. No sorting judges into ‘baskets’ of the loyal and disloyal, no calls to presidents of appellate courts asking which judges should be held back without a decree and no requests to resolve particular court cases.

Third, once the competitions for appellate courts and the most heavily burdened first-instance courts are completed, the HQCJ should focus on finishing the qualification assessment that has been dragging on since 2017. This is necessary so that first-instance judges who have successfully dodged assessment for almost ten years finally either pass it — or fail it — or leave the judicial system of their own accord. Most judges of the ‘Pechera’ may well resign of their own accord if they know that assessment really awaits them tomorrow, rather than another favour from their ‘friends’ in the form of, say, yet another ‘urgent’ search of the HQCJ.

It is perfectly natural for any political authority to want controllable courts and pliant judges. Every decision it makes may, at some stage, need the support of a court. That is where stories come from in which some judges are approached with requests and allowed to pocket ‘ten’, while others receive a scarf as a birthday present so that a loyal judge is available for the next steps.

The only possible ‘windows of opportunity’ for separating the political and judicial power verticals are situations such as the one we have today.

The first choice now lies with the courts: will presidents of appellate and cassation courts and members of the HQCJ and HCJ begin running to the new deputy heads and department heads appointed by Zelenskyy or the Head of the Presidential Office? The second choice lies with Zelenskyy himself: he has to decide whether the prospect of future elections is a more attractive carrot than another attempt to build corrupt links with the courts by appointing a new deputy, or through Tatarov, who still works in the Presidential Office. A story about corporate raiding by a criminal organisation that includes officials of the Office of the President is a story about losing an election, whenever that election eventually takes place. That is true regardless of whether the President knew what Mudra and Dubovyk were doing right under his nose. For a President, competence and integrity are equally important values.

Ukraine’s information space resembles the interlocking time loops of Christopher Nolan’s film ‘Tenet’, with one storyline giving way to another before the previous one has time to end. A change of Government with nol public explanation of the reasons for it, new appointments, protests, a lack of dialogue at every level, interviews, political statements, discussions about elections and corruption scandals pile up so quickly that individual events almost lose their contours or pass unnoticed. Each new story seems decisive for the country’s future for a few days, only to be displaced almost immediately by the next one.

In this torrent, it is very easy to lose one’s sense of stability: the human brain simply cannot process the sheer volume of information, so it seeks simplification and looks for magic pills. This is where mythmaking begins. Not necessarily as outright fabrication, but rather as a way of reducing complex realities to a comprehensible image, or a set of images, that creates a sense of order and stability. A multitude of causes is replaced by a single one. Specific names and personalisation take the place of institutions and sound bureaucratic processes. A series of complex, multi-layered processes is reduced to one decision. Uncertainty is replaced by the promise of a universal remedy or a hero-saviour. This creates the belief that this particular person will finally transform or fix ‘the system’, that one institution is enough to defeat corruption, for example, or that one particular reform or the adoption of a draft law will solve a problem that others have been unable to resolve for years. In the short term, such a construct can indeed be reassuring, because it restores the feeling that chaos can be ordered and explained. As though there were a loose end somewhere that only needs to be pulled to unravel the entire knot.

Unfortunately, political reality almost never lives up to such expectations. For years, names, parties, slogans and structures have changed in Ukrainian politics, while the roles we ask them to play change far less often. Or, rather, what changes far less often is the mythical image of a father or saviour whom we, as a society, keep searching for and whom each of us imagines differently. It may be the role of a strong steward, a powerful commander-in-chief, a reformer, a convincing activist, an effective manager, a reliable volunteer or someone who will restore order and punish those responsible. Preferably all at once — anything to keep the state machinery functioning properly and steadily. Season after season, political figures try on these ready-made images, while society tests whether this time the person will finally live up to the expected archetype of ‘perfection’.

Finding that kind of combination is almost impossible. So, when reality falls short of the expected image, we often begin, unconsciously, to build a myth around it. We attribute qualities to a person that they have not yet had the chance to demonstrate, capacity to an institution that it does not possess and consequences to decisions that they may not be able to guarantee or deliver. Gradually, reality gives way to the myth we have created. We assess not what is actually in front of us, but what it would have to become to satisfy our need for order, predictability and a sense that the situation is under control. And the greater the distance between this construct and reality, the sharper and even more painful the collision between expectations and reality becomes — especially when the trust invested in it ultimately proves misplaced.

One decision or position that contradicts commonly accepted rules, beliefs or preferences — and society reverses its attitude by 180 degrees, calling into question almost everything that a particular person or institution had done before. This is not because a particular decision cannot or should not be criticised. On the contrary, political maturity requires criticism. But if one decision brings down the entire previous construct, that is a sign that we had invested in a myth rather than assessed the reality before us.

Modern political myths are powerful and, at the same time, extraordinarily fragile. Today, a few decisions approved by the majority, effective public communication and the reputation of a person or institution that is ‘finally doing things differently’ may be enough for a myth to take shape. Nor is this always solely a product of public imagination. The myth of an effective manager, a wise administrator or a progressive institution may itself be a consciously constructed mask. It is a quick way to gain support, trust or political capital in pursuit of personal ambitions and objectives that are often at odds with the public interest.

At the same time, the very speed at which myths emerge is what makes them vulnerable. They often fail when confronted with contradictions, mistakes, conflicts of interest and the real limits of influence. The more we have idealised an image, the stronger the temptation to explain away discrepancies with reality in order to protect it. This is why it can sometimes be difficult to identify exactly where the myth begins to diverge from reality and why. Sometimes it really is an honest mistake, or the expected results fail to materialise because of unforeseen external factors. At other times, however, it is because something entirely different was hidden behind the mythical mask from the outset.

The same applies to political decisions. In a state of constant instability, the temptation to find a simple answer that will explain and solve most problems is particularly strong. A change of Government, for example, might be expected to reboot the state. Or a new minister is assumed certain to reform an entire sector. Perhaps dismissing one particular person is enough to make an institution independent. Or elections are presented as a way to renew the authorities and ease social tensions. Each of these instruments may be necessary in particular circumstances, but the risk arises when one possible instrument is turned into a panacea and becomes part of political mythmaking.

Simple, universal solutions look especially attractive in such circumstances. At first glance, they create a sense of clarity and control: if a particular approach or procedure has worked somewhere, surely it is enough simply to replicate it everywhere. This gives rise to the mythical idea of a solution that can be applied to almost anything, with little regard for differences in environments, functions, resources, institutional culture or the socio-political context. But in politics, one size fits all almost never works. Copying an approach does not guarantee a result and usually ignores the very factor on which success depends: context.

Real solutions are usually less attractive. They may be complex, multi-layered, slow and politically unpopular. Nor do they promise rapid results, and they almost never fit into a single elegant formula. This is particularly true in Ukraine, where institutional problems are compounded by war, resource constraints and legislative and security restrictions, meaning that solutions are rarely linear.

Political myth gravitates towards grand images, while democracy rests on smaller and sometimes even boring details: rules for appointments and dismissals, parliamentary oversight, a professional civil service, independent bodies capable of scrutinising those in power while themselves acting within established rules and the law, courts that are not dependent on the interests of those in authority and adherence to procedure. Institutions themselves rarely look bright or spectacular, because their function is to provide a foundation that allows the state to keep working despite human imperfection. The strength of that foundation depends, among other things, on mutual respect, the ability to cooperate, to share responsibility and to recognise the limits of one’s own role.

We should value talent and integrity, as well as every person whom the current system has squeezed out of public administration. Such people are rare, and many of them were indeed among the best. Their lack of loyalty to the system was often precisely why they were pushed out. At the same time, this is also a consequence of our own short-sightedness: as a society, we do not always assess the qualities and results that really matter but instead follow media trends or the support of particular activist groups which, let us be honest, are hardly beyond reproach themselves. We will all have to acknowledge many mistakes that we have made together.

At its core, the point is simple: we need to be able to recognise the competence and strength of others and let them move ahead, giving them room to act and, at times, even stepping aside ourselves. That requires a great deal of self-assurance, maturity and ethical balance.

True resilience is not one face or one surname. It is not a single point holding up the entire state, but a framework made up of many supports. Those supports are unquestionably people: the military and the home front, public officials and MPs, communities, representatives of law enforcement, civil society, journalists, judges and many others. At the same time, for these supports to endure, the people behind them must be backed by strong institutions, rules and procedures. That is what enables a system not to collapse every time someone makes a mistake, proves unworthy of their role or simply drops out of it.

The more reliable this framework becomes, the less need there is to compensate for instability with political myths. Myths take root particularly easily where real institutional foundations are lacking: then we want to believe in at least something as the one point capable of holding everything together. Myths survive for as long as we keep feeding them with our expectations. That is why it is useful, from time to time, to ask questions first of ourselves. To what extent is my view actually my own, rather than the product of other people’s moods and interpretations or the influence of the information environment? Do I change my position when new facts emerge? Or do I instead force those facts into a picture I have already constructed? Can I separate my personal sympathy or dislike for someone from my assessment of their actions?

This ability to reflect critically on our own views is itself part of political maturity. It begins when we stop needing myths to believe in the viability of our own state, despite all the complexity and trauma of reality.

In May 2026, former President of the Supreme Court (SC) Vsevolod Kniaziev admitted his guilt in accepting a bribe of almost three million US dollars three years earlier. He entered into a plea agreement with a prosecutor of the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) and provided purportedly incriminating testimony concerning other Supreme Court judges, which is expected to form the basis for their conviction for corruption offences. The High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) sentenced Kniaziev to five years’ imprisonment, barred him from holding positions in judicial bodies for a further three years after serving the principal sentence and confiscated his property. In addition, the convicted person donated one million US dollars to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine through a non-governmental charitable foundation.

But was the agreement concluded in the public interest and does such an outcome amount to ‘buying one’s way out of justice’? How can someone donate an undeclared one million US dollars without raising questions from law enforcement authorities? In this article, we examine the systemic problems in the practical application of plea agreements in criminal proceedings that the Kniaziev case has brought to light.

Vsevolod Kniaziev joined the Supreme Court from a first-instance court through the 2016–2017 competition. At the time of the competition, there were no negative opinions concerning him from civil society, and at the interview he presented himself as a young and promising judge. This subsequently helped him first become Secretary of the Grand Chamber of the SC and later, in contrast to candidates from the ‘old system’, become President of the Supreme Court at the age of 42 with the support of a majority of SC judges. A position that a judge with less than ten years of experience could normally only dream of.

In public, Kniaziev spoke about the need to combat corruption in the judiciary and, at international meetings, expressed zero tolerance for ‘telephone justice’, cronyism and corruption. As later became known, at the same time the President of the SC was building his own ‘vertical of power’ and, according to the authors of this article, meeting informally with the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak. While in spring 2022 loyalty to the Presidential Office affected only the transfer of some judges from the regions to Kyiv courts (for example, Judge Svitlana Hrechana), a year later the same dynamic led Kniaziev to cross all boundaries. He then decided to accept the largest bribe in the history of the judiciary for a decision of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court that was lawful on its merits.

On the evening of 15 May 2023, the media erupted with reports that the President of the SC had been exposed while taking a USD 2.7 million bribe. It was reported that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) was conducting searches at the Supreme Court itself, at the premises of all judges of the Grand Chamber, at the premises of some SC staff members and directly at Kniaziev’s home.

At the time he was served with a notice of suspicion, Kniaziev was the biggest ‘fish’ in the justice system ever caught by the NABU and SAPO. At a press conference concerning his detention, the heads of the anti-corruption bodies also stated that corruption in the SC was extensive. According to them, other judges of the Grand Chamber were allegedly involved, as the ‘Kniaziev tapes’ recorded him instructing that envelopes be prepared for judges of the Grand Chamber of the SC. At the time, it seemed that this concerned virtually everyone in the Grand Chamber (21 judges), and the public therefore expected further notices of suspicion and convictions. This did not happen.

The following day, the Plenum of the SC removed Vsevolod Kniaziev as President, the High Council of Justice (HCJ) gave its consent to his detention in custody and Kniaziev himself spent 8.5 months in a pre-trial detention centre, until his ‘fairy-tale friends’ posted more than UAH 18 million in bail for him.

The investigation lasted slightly less than ten months, which is entirely normal for a case of this category. One month after Kniaziev was released from the pre-trial detention centre, the indictment against him was submitted to the High Anti-Corruption Court. The HACC then heard the case almost every week until the plea agreement was concluded in June 2026. Shortly before that, in May 2026, four former judges of the Grand Chamber of the SC were served with notices of suspicion on the basis of Kniaziev’s testimony. The investigation concerning them is ongoing.

Three of them challenged the HACC decision approving Kniaziev’s agreement with the prosecutor before the Appeal Chamber of the HACC, but the Chamber refused to consider their appeals. The Criminal Cassation Court of the Supreme Court alone can now return the Kniaziev case to the Appeal Chamber of the HACC if it finds grounds to do so — provided, of course, that the decision of the Appeal Chamber of the HACC is appealed to the Criminal Cassation Court of the Supreme Court.

Under the HACC judgment, Kniaziev was found guilty of the criminal offence under Part 4 Article 368 of the CC of Ukraine for accepting an unlawful benefit in exchange for a court decision. Under the terms of the agreement, his sentence is more lenient than under the general rule (up to 12 years’ imprisonment), because Kniaziev purportedly provided testimony that is expected to lead to the conviction of other judges for corruption offences.

The sentence is five years’ imprisonment, of which Kniaziev will in practice serve around four years, taking into account the time he has already spent in the pre-trial detention centre. He is also barred for three years from holding positions in courts and law enforcement bodies (an additional penalty, the term of which will begin after he has served the principal sentence). The court also confiscated Kniaziev’s property: an apartment, a house and funds amounting to UAH 32,000, USD 201,000 and EUR 1,700. The funds seized during the search were subject to special confiscation because they constituted the unlawful benefit, that is, the funds used to pay the bribe.

Charitable giving is an additional condition of Kniaziev’s agreement. He transferred USD 1,104,600 to the Come Back Alive Foundation. These funds had been seized during searches of Kniaziev and held as material evidence in the case.

A plea agreement is an alternative means of resolving a criminal-law conflict and a mechanism for accelerating criminal proceedings. It helps optimise procedural time, simplify the consideration of cases, reduce the workload on pre-trial investigation bodies and the court and lower procedural costs. The resources freed up can then be used to uncover other crimes.

The logic is straightforward: a prosecutor may enter into an agreement with a suspect or accused person at any stage of criminal proceedings. The prosecution saves resources, while the defence receives a predictable, agreed sentence — in exceptional cases, even below the minimum threshold provided for by the sanction of the relevant article.

The HACC has actively used plea agreements since it began operating: over six years, half of its judgments have been based on them. The trend became particularly striking after November 2024, when Law No. 4033-IX entered into force. Before then, the share of plea agreements at the HACC ranged between 25% and 40%. Since then, two thirds of convictions have been based on agreements. ALI experts have written about this instrument in greater detail before.

This does indeed save resources in investigations where suspects do not admit guilt, convincing evidence sufficient for conviction is difficult to obtain and the 10- to 15-year limitation periods for criminal liability are, in some cases, approaching expiry.

The key condition for entering into a plea agreement is the existence of a public interest in doing so. In other words, the prosecutor and the judge must be satisfied that society has an interest in expediting proceedings and uncovering a greater number of criminal offences. Entering into an agreement is a right of the suspect or accused person: the prosecutor is not obliged to conclude it and the judge is not obliged to approve it if there is no public interest. It is therefore not a universal instrument for every situation and cannot replace effective work by the prosecution. When the practice becomes ubiquitous, the value of the public-interest rationale is lost and the very logic of plea agreements is undermined.

At the same time, when assessing whether a public interest exists, the HACC relies only on the materials provided to it by the parties to the criminal proceedings in connection with the agreement. The court’s discretion is therefore extremely constrained by the information provided, and it is not surprising that judges accept these arguments. In addition, the procedural consequence of refusing to approve an agreement is unclear: the trial then proceeds under the ordinary procedure. This is extremely difficult where the person has admitted guilt, disclosed evidence and provided information concerning other persons, among other things.

So how does the HACC substantiate the existence of a public interest specifically in the Kniaziev case?

The HACC states that ‘a real sentence is the important component of this agreement that underscores the public interest, the inevitability of punishment and the restoration of trust in justice’. Most plea agreements involve a suspended prison sentence and therefore often look, in the eyes of the public, like ‘buying one’s way out of justice’. It is worth noting that lawyer Oleh Horetskyi, who described himself as ‘Kniaziev’s back office’, received precisely such an agreement from SAPO and the HACC (a five-year suspended sentence and a UAH 21 million donation).

The judges also considered that concluding the agreement with the former judge substantially saved prosecution resources that would otherwise have been spent on further examination of evidence. In this way, Kniaziev helped free up resources for investigating other corruption offences. The HACC states that his admission of guilt resulted in ‘a reduction in the workload of the prosecution service, the Bar and the courts, which gain more time to uncover other crimes and consider them in court…’.

At the same time, SAPO entered into the agreement with Kniaziev only at the trial stage. By then, around fifty court hearings had already taken place and considerable resources had been spent on gathering and examining evidence. One might expect that two years of trial proceedings would indicate a convincing prosecution case ready to be taken through to a conviction rather than abandoned in favour of an agreement. It therefore remains unclear why the agreement was not concluded at the early stages of the pre-trial investigation, as is usually the case. Here, the volume of resources saved is substantially smaller than in other proceedings.

Another component of the public interest is exposing other persons. This part of the judgment is not publicly available, as it is not subject to disclosure by law. Most likely, in 2026 Kniaziev was used as a ‘torpedo’ — to communicate with SC judges about the circumstances of the case. Recordings of these conversations may be used to prove their guilt. On the basis of this testimony, the NABU subsequently served notices of suspicion on other persons involved in the case. According to the investigation, Supreme Court judges Iryna Hryhorieva, Zhanna Yelenina and Ihor Zhelieznyi, as well as retired SC judge Oleksandr Prokopenko, received an unlawful benefit for delivering a decision in Zhevaho’s interests. There is currently little official information on the progress of these criminal proceedings. The question naturally remains: what could the judges have said in a conversation with Kniaziev three years later, while his case was already being heard in court? It is therefore impossible to assess how significant the information provided by Kniaziev will be for the subsequent evidentiary process leading to convictions.

SAPO has publicly stated that ‘thanks to the agreement, the State obtained a substantial economic benefit: the country’s budget received USD 2,554,300. That is more than UAH 113 million! Today, as the country fights for its survival, these funds are converted into real weapons, drones or financing for social payments’. On the one hand, this is a strong message, as the funds had remained for years in frozen accounts and in storage as material evidence. They have now been channelled into the economy and are being spent directly on national defence.

On the other hand, the charitable contribution to the Armed Forces — more than USD 1.1 million — raises a legitimate question: where did this money come from? It was not declared in Kniaziev’s asset declaration. Taking joint ownership into account, he could legally have transferred an amount ten times smaller. Yet under the agreement these funds have already been confiscated in favour of the State. The origin of the USD 1.1 million should therefore have attracted the attention of both the financial monitoring authorities when the funds were transferred to the charitable foundation’s account and the anti-corruption bodies.

Against the background of this judgment, the asset declaration issue may of course appear minor, but the absence of communication on this point looks like the ‘legalisation’ of proceeds of crime.

Personal funds are also transferred in support of the Armed Forces under other plea agreements, but what is their origin? Does this agreement not call into question the origin of the funds transferred by most persons convicted on the basis of plea agreements?

Support for the Armed Forces, including through charitable foundations, is nevertheless a private matter for each person. It is not a mandatory condition of a plea agreement but rather a circumstance that reflects positively on the person. At the same time, the CPC of Ukraine does not require optional elements of an agreement to be stated in the court judgment, so the donation to the Armed Forces should not have appeared there at all.

The idea of plea agreements as a way to maximise the punishment of corrupt offenders — tackling not an isolated phenomenon but the system — is sound.

The Kniaziev case may appear typical of this practice, especially as regards the ‘donation to the Armed Forces’. At the same time, it is not. The HACC very rarely imposes a sentence of actual imprisonment under a plea agreement. This is related both to the high-profile nature of the case and to the fact that the proceedings were already moving towards a judgment, having been before the court for more than two years.

At the same time, the case exposed systemic problems in the practice of concluding plea agreements. However much Ukrainian society may trust the anti-corruption bodies, there are widespread, well-founded doubts about the policy of routinely concluding plea agreements.

The criteria used by SAPO to conclude agreements. They are currently non-transparent. In the public communications of SAPO and the HACC, no theoretical rationale is offered for plea agreements. The rationale concerns either a person’s rational choice or the maximisation of criminal prosecution by exposing a greater number of corrupt offenders. This needs to be systematised and developed into a separate publicly articulated SAPO policy.

The concept of ‘public interest’. It remains evaluative and ambiguous. It can be elaborated both through HACC practice and through the Supreme Court’s quasi-precedential positions (legal positions). In addition, the legislator could define the public-interest criterion more clearly in the CPC of Ukraine.

Uncovering other criminal offences and persons involved must yield real results, meaning that it must lead to convictions rather than merely create a prospect of them. It is understandable that this sensitive information cannot be disclosed immediately in the judgment, since it will subsequently be used to prove other criminal offences. But this is precisely what most undermines trust in plea agreements: the public does not see tangible results. How many people have been convicted on the basis of incriminating testimony, who were they, how and when were they convicted? Such information can be provided later and in aggregated form.

More radical steps would be to require SAPO and the HACC to publish the full text of a judgment of conviction based on a plea agreement once the incriminating information has been used in court. Alternatively, publication could become mandatory three years after the agreement is concluded, so that the use of the incriminating information can be monitored.

A donation to the Armed Forces of Ukraine cannot form part of a plea agreement. Support for the Armed Forces, including through charitable foundations, is a private matter for each person. Charitable giving should under no circumstances be mentioned in a court judgment, so as not to create a sense of impunity — as if the convicted person had ‘bought their way out of punishment’.

A substantive analysis of plea agreements should form part of the audit of the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. Pursuant to Part 10 Article 8-1 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Public Prosecutor’s Office’, SAPO undergoes an audit of its activities every two years. In practice, no such audit has yet taken place, although this provision was introduced in 2023. The audit is conducted by the Commission for External Independent Assessment, which includes international experts. The criteria mentioned above, their practical implementation at the level of criminal prosecution policy and the prospects of convicting persons exposed as a result of plea agreements — all of this should be examined through periodic audits as an instrument of external oversight of SAPO’s activities. SAPO itself also has an interest in the results of regular audits: they provide a credible response to critics or create space for development and for addressing mistakes.

If SAPO strengthens trust in plea agreements, this instrument can be preserved and used to reduce corruption in the country. If it continues its current practice, trust in the NABU, SAPO and the HACC will decline, and under slogans such as ‘they let corrupt offenders buy their way out’, MPs, supported by an outraged public, may restrict these powers.

At present, everything rests on public trust in SAPO and the HACC. In other words, on the assumption that prosecutors act in good faith in the interests of justice and enter into an agreement, or initiate one themselves, only where society genuinely benefits. Accordingly, they have to choose between the risk of ‘losing the case’ and investigating it for so long that the same resources would be better directed to other cases. After all, fair justice is utilitarian: it lies not in imposing a harsh punishment on one person at any cost, but in ensuring the inevitability of punishment for everyone — perhaps a more lenient punishment, but punishment nonetheless. This trust will, however, erode if agreements remain non-transparent and closed, sentences are mostly suspended and the criteria for concluding agreements remain unclear.

Ukraine’s decentralisation reform began in 2014. Newly established communities received new powers and new sources of local budget revenue. Yet stronger financial capacity was not accompanied by a clear system of institutional change defining the distribution of functions and responsibilities. The law never established a clear boundary between the powers of the central authorities and those of communities, districts or regions. The new chain of authority built around temporary military administrations during the full-scale war has made the problem even more acute.

A law delimiting powers among levels of public governance was supposed to resolve the problem and clarify who is responsible for what. It has still not been adopted, although Ukraine was required to do so by the end of March 2026 under the Ukraine Facility.

Moreover, how clearly the state defines the responsibilities of different levels of government will determine not only the further development of decentralisation, but also whether Ukraine meets some of its EU integration commitments. The debate around draft law No. 14412 ‘On the Principles of Delimitation and Distribution of Powers among Levels of Public Governance’ is therefore no longer solely a domestic discussion about the architecture of government. With the opening of the first negotiating cluster, ‘Fundamentals’, the issue has become part of a broader task: aligning Ukrainian legislation with European standards and fulfilling the commitments that will accompany the accession negotiations.

The European system of local self-government is based on a simple principle: decisions should be taken as close to the individual as possible. In EU law, this is known as subsidiarity. The European Charter of Local Self-Government, for example, gives communities the discretion, within the law, to determine how they exercise their powers. Ukraine’s system of local self-government, despite its declared commitment to European principles, remains heavily shaped by centralised administrative practices and a blurred division of powers, which constrain communities’ capacity.

Draft law No. 14412 is intended to change this in part. It creates a framework for further reform by classifying powers and introducing rules for their distribution among the state, regions, districts and communities. A separate law, together with amendments to more than 150 existing laws and other legal acts, is expected to define the powers conclusively.

Draft law No. 14412 should bring the system closer to a model in which communities perform their functions without state interference while receiving funding both from the State Budget and from revenues generated through the exercise of their own powers. This includes, for example, building schools, hospitals and sports facilities. The change should improve the quality of public services and reduce conflicts between local self-government bodies and local executive authorities.

At first sight, draft law No. 14412 should resolve a problem left unaddressed for years by determining who is responsible for what within the system of public governance. In its current form, however, the draft law creates risks. Some provisions may expand the central authorities’ ability to influence how local self-government bodies exercise their powers and may jeopardise communities’ autonomy. This contradicts the logic of decentralisation, which involves transferring not only resources and responsibilities, but also the freedom and capacity to make decisions locally.

For example, draft law No. 14412 contains a proposal that is inconsistent with the Constitution: some powers of local self-government bodies would be defined by secondary legislation rather than by laws. This would allow the Government or other executive authorities to change the rules without going through the full parliamentary procedure. A community might, for example, introduce an innovation that falls within its formal powers. The Cabinet could then change the implementation procedure through secondary legislation, forcing the community to revise or postpone the decision. For residents, the result is straightforward: what was promised was not delivered or did not become operational on time.

The draft law also proposes allowing legislation to prescribe exactly how local self-government bodies must perform the powers and functions assigned to them. This would not only conflict with the European Charter of Local Self-Government, which grants communities autonomy in such matters, but would undermine the very essence of self-government. If a community is responsible for maintaining local roads, for example, it rather than the law should decide whether to establish a municipal enterprise, hire contractors or combine different approaches.

In addition, the draft law introduces ‘optional powers’ that executive authorities may ‘pass down’ to the executive bodies of local councils ‘on a contractual basis’. It is unclear who would be responsible for these tasks or how they would be financed. This is inconsistent with both the Constitution and Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 1748 and is generally alien to European law.

The draft law also provides for limited judicial review, meaning that communities would have little practical ability to protect themselves against interference by other public authorities. Some matters they currently decide — including permits, certificates and approvals, setting rates for local taxes and fees such as property tax, tourist tax and parking fees and granting exemptions — could therefore remain within their competence only formally, without any effective means of exercising those powers or defending them in court.

Adopting draft law No. 14412 in its current form could disrupt the balance among branches of government, create conflict between Parliament and the Government over the model of public governance, slow EU integration and eventually lead to the law being declared unconstitutional.

As Ukraine seeks to answer the question of who is responsible for what, the draft law intended to provide that answer risks leaving communities dependent on the centre once again. The new rules for distributing powers should not reproduce a post-communist centralised model but should reflect European practices. They should support a transition to a system in which communities are not passive implementers of central government decisions, but full participants in public governance within the limits established by law.

In Ukraine, the office of Prosecutor General is regarded as one of the offices most subject to political considerations. Questions about appointments, powers and insufficient independence have surrounded almost everyone who has held the post.

Prosecutors General have consistently faced accusations of lacking professional experience, political bias, persecuting activists and even participating in the July 2025 attempt to eliminate the independence of the anti-corruption institutions. There is no avoiding the truth: Ukraine has often appointed politicians, unqualified individuals or people of questionable reputation as Prosecutor General. Sometimes all three at once.

The possibility of early termination does not guarantee the Prosecutor General sufficient independence. A resolution of no confidence supported by a majority of MPs, or 226 votes, is enough to remove the office holder. This makes the Prosecutor General a hostage to political forces and creates scope for pressure while the office holder remains in post.

The European Commission has noted the politicised procedure for appointing and dismissing the Prosecutor General. It requires a transparent and objective process that takes account of the views of prosecutors themselves.

There is now active discussion of introducing competitive selection for the position: the relevant draft law No. 15343 was registered on 22 June 2026. Ukraine’s scope for far-reaching legislative change is limited, however, because the Constitution cannot be amended during martial law.

If elements of the chosen model are found unconstitutional, its further implementation will be called into question. The Agency for Legislative Initiatives (ALI) has assessed how these processes could unfold in Ukraine’s circumstances.

Can the office of Prosecutor General be made less politicised during the war and, if so, how? How can Ukraine meet the European Commission’s requirement now and improve the procedure further once martial law ends? This article examines the options.

Under the Constitution, the President appoints and dismisses the Prosecutor General with the consent of the Verkhovna Rada. Yet the appointment procedure does not provide for transparent selection, prior assessment of a candidate’s professional competence or the participation of prosecutorial self-governance bodies through a merit-based selection process. The President’s unrestricted discretion over whom to nominate increases the risk that candidates will be politically dependent.

The Prosecutor General may be dismissed either for a breach of the law, under the professional criterion, or on political grounds through a vote of no confidence. The first mechanism does not work in practice, as all attempts to hold a Prosecutor General to disciplinary account have come to nothing. This leaves a vote of no confidence by political forces, which may be a direct response to the Prosecutor General’s efforts to combat political corruption and economic offences involving MPs themselves. It can therefore become a tool of political pressure and has repeatedly led Prosecutors General to submit a resignation pre-emptively. As early as 2014, the Venice Commission recommended ‘abolishing the vote of no confidence in the Prosecutor General’.

At first glance, a competitive procedure for selecting the Prosecutor General appears to be one possible mechanism for strengthening prosecutorial independence, reducing political influence over the office and increasing public trust in the prosecution service.

The Government does not support competitive selection. The prosecution service is not an executive authority and the Prosecutor General is not a member of the Government appointed on political grounds. The office is nevertheless part of the political system. Since competitive selection would restrict the President’s and Parliament’s discretion over whom to appoint, they are also likely to oppose such a solution.

The main constraint, however, is the constitutionality of such a step. Introducing it would require amendments to the Constitution, which cannot be made during martial law.

The Constitution clearly provides that appointing the Prosecutor General is currently the exclusive competence of the President and Parliament. This means that no competition, consultation or other appointment procedure is presently possible.

There are as many arguments that competitive selection would be constitutional as there are arguments to the contrary. Few people, however, are prepared to ask Parliament to support a risky legislative initiative that the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (CCU) may soon declare unconstitutional.

In my view, the CCU would ultimately adopt a purposive interpretation. It would reason that, because the procedure for appointing and dismissing the Prosecutor General did not change even when the prosecution service became part of the justice system in 2016, the legislature did not intend to introduce such a change. A competition was introduced for judges, but not for the Prosecutor General. The Court would therefore conclude that any restriction of the powers of the joint appointing authority, the President and the Verkhovna Rada, would be unconstitutional. The President’s powers to appoint judges and the Prosecutor General are thus part of the system of checks and balances that, among other things, safeguards the rule of law.

Ukraine could reduce the politicisation of the appointment and dismissal of the Prosecutor General, and thereby meet the European Commission’s requirement, as early as 2026. The first step would be to await the Venice Commission opinion referred to in Ukraine’s EU integration commitments.

Any legislative initiative adopted must avoid risks that could subsequently lead to the procedure being declared unconstitutional. A transitional model is therefore unavoidable: it will be a compromise rather than an ideal arrangement. Once martial law ends or is lifted, MPs will have a much wider range of options, although no one knows when that will happen.

One temporary solution could require the President, before submitting a nominee for Prosecutor General, to obtain an opinion on the candidate from the Council of Prosecutors of Ukraine. This would require a genuinely independent Council. The Rule of Law Roadmap provides for the Council’s transformation and for its institutional independence to be strengthened through legislation by the end of 2026. This should include its complete separation from the Office of the Prosecutor General, a review of its functions and members’ working arrangements, its establishment as a separate legal entity and provision of its own secretariat.

Would the opinion be binding? Not as a matter of law, because the President’s and Parliament’s discretion cannot be restricted without constitutional amendments. Under the transitional model, respect for the opinion would therefore depend on political convention. Even so, the procedure would clearly increase transparency and trust, demonstrate the criteria on which the President nominates a candidate and allow the self-governance body to provide a considered assessment. Making the process public would reduce the politicisation of the appointment.

After the war, when the Constitution can be amended, such an opinion could become binding and the Council of Prosecutors could conduct a competition or apply another procedure at its discretion. It could, for example, select the strongest candidate from among prosecutors on the basis of predetermined criteria, including integrity.

Without amending the Constitution, the dismissal procedure could involve a Temporary Investigation Commission (TIC) of the Verkhovna Rada. A TIC exercises parliamentary oversight by investigating matters of public interest. It would therefore be logical for MPs serving on the commission to examine failures by the Prosecutor General to perform functions and tasks that do not amount to a criminal offence or disciplinary misconduct and do not otherwise create grounds incompatible with holding office.

Once martial law ends, Ukraine could consider fully abolishing the political procedure for dismissing the Prosecutor General, namely a vote of no confidence. The law should retain only professional grounds for dismissal, such as the commission of a criminal offence or disciplinary misconduct.

Ukraine’s European partners are not demanding competitive selection, the involvement of international experts or the complete removal of the office of Prosecutor General from politics. They require the appointment and dismissal procedures to be open and transparent and the prosecutorial community to be involved. European standards for prosecution services do not prescribe a single mandatory model for appointing a prosecutor general. They focus on the quality of the procedure, candidates’ professionalism and minimising political influence.

Ukraine should therefore not risk introducing potentially unconstitutional selection and dismissal mechanisms in the name of openness. There are viable ways to update the procedures, including a model involving an institutionally strengthened Council of Prosecutors. The focus should be on realistic mechanisms capable of producing a constitutionally acceptable result and delivering change now, during martial law. Otherwise, the goal of depoliticising the office of Prosecutor General will remain at the level of ambitious declarations rather than be translated into functioning procedures, drawing Ukraine into a politically unproductive dispute with no practical outcome.

On 15 June, the European Union opened the first and most difficult negotiating cluster in its accession talks with Ukraine. This not only recognises the progress Ukraine has made during the full-scale invasion, but also reminds us of the scale of the ‘homework’ that remains on the path towards EU membership.

Ukraine’s further progress on EU integration depends largely on the Verkhovna Rada’s ability to adopt legislation. Some laws are directly linked to tranches of macro-financial assistance. Others concern the approximation of Ukrainian legislation to EU law. In particular areas, Ukrainian rules must therefore correspond to those of the EU, including through common terminology, mechanisms and instruments for exercising the rights conferred.

The authorities’ plan is ambitious: to complete legislative alignment in 2027. This will require the preparation and adoption of almost 300 new EU integration laws. The National Programme for the Adaptation of Ukrainian Legislation to EU Law sets out this task and is intended to guide the Government on what must be adopted and when. The Verkhovna Rada generally supports the document, but problems arise when it comes to voting.

At the same time, Ukraine has no modern framework law on European integration. The Law of Ukraine ‘On the National Programme for the Adaptation of Ukrainian Legislation to the Legislation of the European Union’, adopted as far back as 2004, is not adequate for this task. Although it defines general approaches and institutional mechanisms, it has not been amended to reflect Ukraine’s accession process. In other words, Parliament has not developed new rules since Ukraine was granted EU candidate status and accession negotiations began.

A gap has therefore emerged between the scale of the new tasks and the tools available to perform them. A modern law defining responsibilities for state policy on European integration would end MPs’ endless search for their place in the process and could strengthen their oversight of the Government. Since the European integration course was enshrined in the Constitution in 2019, there has been ample time to regulate an area in which the scale of legislative approximation is unprecedented.

It is therefore unsurprising that both society and MPs are sceptical about the prospect of adopting all EU integration legislation by the end of 2027. In 2026, Parliament adopted only eight EU integration laws, counting only those with the relevant designation in their draft law records. If the pace of the past year continues, Ukraine may join the EU in 75 years.

The slow pace reflects both institutional fatigue and flawed Government initiatives that MPs have to revise in Parliament. They appear trapped. They can either become scapegoats by voting for poor-quality laws and unpopular decisions, or refuse to vote, jeopardising Ukraine’s access to loan financing and disrupting the legislative alignment timetable. Yet the issue is not only the speed or number of legislative initiatives adopted. The quality of Parliament’s legislative work and the organisation and planning of the process are equally important.

The Verkhovna Rada appears to lack a common vision for a procedure to adopt EU integration legislation that reflects the positions of all political forces represented in Parliament. MPs themselves have different views of Parliament’s role. This was also demonstrated by the registration of a draft resolution to dismiss the chair of the relevant European integration committee. It was, however, withdrawn almost immediately after registration.

The Verkhovna Rada has failed even partially to address the problem by amending its Rules of Procedure to introduce a separate procedure for adopting EU integration draft laws. Draft law No. 8242 did not seek to accelerate the legislative procedure but proposed stricter requirements for the supporting documents for EU integration draft laws and a more thorough assessment of compliance with Ukraine’s EU integration commitments. Although registered in November 2022 and recommended by the committee, it was never brought forward for consideration. Draft law No. 13653 and its alternative, which propose an expedited procedure by shortening the time allowed to prepare EU integration draft laws for consideration, have not even received a committee opinion. They would effectively give EU integration laws priority and allow them to be adopted in a single reading if neither the parliamentary committee on European integration nor the Government has objections. Parliament evidently lacks the political will to consider these draft laws, despite the declared need and the initiatives already registered. As a result, around one hundred EU integration draft laws are waiting for their turn on the agenda.

Instead of introducing a comprehensive separate procedure for EU integration legislation, the Verkhovna Rada has relied on half-measures in the form of resolutions. Such resolutions generally address individual organisational issues, whereas a law establishes a coherent regulatory framework for an entire field.

After Ukraine was granted candidate status, Parliament adopted Resolution No. 2483-IX in July 2022 to improve the legislative process. It identifies the approximation of Ukrainian legislation to EU law as one of the Verkhovna Rada’s priorities and the Government as the principal initiator of EU integration draft laws. The Resolution introduced an expert assessment of draft laws’ compliance with EU law before the second reading and required parliamentary committees to establish European integration subcommittees. The effectiveness of these subcommittees is, however, open to question. The Verkhovna Rada also instructed the Cabinet of Ministers to ensure official translations of EU legislation and create a single information database on legislative approximation. Although the Resolution introduced an EU compliance review mechanism for draft laws, it is no substitute for a full legislative procedure established by the Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada.

In early June 2026, MPs supported Resolution No. 4912-IX, which is intended to strengthen cooperation between the executive and legislative branches. MPs had often complained that the Government did not inform them of forthcoming EU integration plans. The Resolution therefore appears to be a compromise between the Cabinet and Parliament aimed at increasing MPs’ involvement in the process. It provides for ‘parliamentary support’ for the Government’s work on EU integration draft laws and partly addresses Government officials’ accountability to Parliament.

Under the Resolution, the Government must agree amendments to the National Programme for the Adaptation of Legislation to EU Law with the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada or a Deputy Chairman, taking into account the positions of the relevant sectoral committee, the European integration committee and the relevant negotiating group for the chapters concerned. The Cabinet of Ministers must also cooperate more closely with them, including by informing them of the results of consultations with the European Union. In addition, the Resolution requires the Government to submit quarterly reports to the Verkhovna Rada on implementation of the National Programme and the current state of EU accession negotiations. Such reports are unlikely to be considered at a plenary sitting, however, as Resolution No. 4912-IX does not impose this obligation on the Government.

The adoption of laws is unquestionably the exclusive power of the Verkhovna Rada, which may choose whether and how to regulate its own activities under the principle of parliamentary autonomy. Yet all these decisions remain fragmented. Parliament is effectively trying to adapt to new tasks through a series of isolated, targeted measures. The workload on the EU integration track will only increase, creating a need for a comprehensive legislative procedure that reflects the specific features of preparing, considering and adopting EU integration draft laws. This would allow Parliament to address a much broader set of tasks systematically instead of wasting time patching up outdated tools.

Parliament’s success on the EU integration track does not depend solely on its ability to press a few buttons. MPs do not have the Government’s bureaucratic resources to prepare article-by-article concordance tables and assess draft laws’ compliance with EU law. The Verkhovna Rada’s progress also depends on the Cabinet’s ability to prepare substantively sound draft laws and make the case for their adoption, a task at which the Government has so far performed poorly. For example, the Kos-Kachka plan, agreed in December 2025, does not yet have a single item completed in full.

Only the Verkhovna Rada can adopt laws, however, so it should have the strongest interest in creating conditions for the smooth and swift adoption of EU integration legislation. A dedicated EU integration legislative procedure would help. It should define what constitutes an EU integration draft law and establish requirements for its supporting documents, including assessments and tables of compliance with EU law. At the same time, an expedited parliamentary procedure must include safeguards against abuse: a minimum period should be set to give MPs and committees sufficient time to examine the text.

Experience also shows that rules and procedures may not be enough. Breaching the Rules of Procedure is commonplace in the Verkhovna Rada. Even today, a significant share of EU integration initiatives remain ‘stuck’ in committees despite their priority status. The effectiveness of the EU integration track will therefore depend not only on the existence of a special legislative procedure, but also on MPs’ genuine willingness to follow it. Otherwise, the ambitious goal of joining the EU in 2027 will remain yet another piece of empty rhetoric.

On 10 June, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted Draft Law No. 6506-1, which provides for changes to police remuneration. It is currently awaiting the President of Ukraine’s signature. A wave of public discontent followed, with claims that ‘police officers received a pay rise, but military personnel did not’. The headlines are striking, but only partly reflect the substance of the adopted changes. The draft law establishes a guaranteed minimum remuneration threshold rather than increasing the base salaries of all police officers. This distinction has largely been overlooked.

What, then, is the full picture of police remuneration under the adopted draft law?

The draft law on increasing payments to police officers had been ‘stuck’ in Parliament since January 2022. It was adopted at first reading only in March 2025 and then underwent almost a year of revision. The first version of the draft law did indeed concern the base salary, from which all additional payments, including allowances and bonuses, are calculated. However, the approach had changed by the second reading.

The adopted version concerns total remuneration rather than only the base salary, or the ‘bare’ rate. In other words, it establishes a minimum threshold below which a police officer’s total remuneration may not fall. Police remuneration comprises the base salary, a special-rank supplement, a length-of-service allowance, an allowance for access to state secrets, an academic degree supplement and bonuses.

In other words, the media conflated the initial version of the draft law with the final version that Parliament adopted. The former would indeed have almost doubled the remuneration that police officers take home. The adopted version, however, only establishes a minimum threshold that will not affect most police officers.

Under the adopted changes, total remuneration must amount to at least ten subsistence minimums, currently UAH 33,280. The changes provided for in draft law No. 6506-1 will enter into force on 1 January 2027, when the projected subsistence minimum is UAH 3,482. The guaranteed minimum salary for a police officer will therefore be UAH 34,820.

Different categories of police officers already receive payments close to or above this level. According to Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko, the average remuneration of a police officer at the beginning of 2026 was UAH 34,000–36,000.

Patrol officers, investigators, inquiry officers and psychologists working in the National Police receive UAH 25,000–30,000 or more once additional payments are included. In the Patrol Police, for example, the average salary is approximately UAH 20,000, with a further UAH 10,000 paid under an order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MoIA) for the duration of martial law. These funds are not paid during sick leave or annual leave, however, and therefore do not constitute a regular allowance. This is why the MoIA presented the draft law primarily as a means of regularising payments so that they would no longer depend on martial law, rather than as an increase in remuneration as such.

The current level of actual payments does not therefore mean that it is guaranteed to remain in place after martial law ends. The adopted draft law permanently establishes a minimum level of remuneration that does not depend on martial law.

Ukraine currently has approximately 98,000 sworn police officers. The changes will not affect all of them. For example, some senior officers in the central administration with long service will be unaffected because they already receive more than the established minimum.

Assume that 50,000 police officers are paid less, including patrol officers, district police officers, juvenile prevention officers and others. Once the law enters into force, the additional burden on the budget would then be approximately UAH 5,000 per officer. This would cost the State Budget around UAH 250 million per year, or UAH 20.8 million per month.

If the same funds were distributed not to police officers but among serving military personnel, of whom there are approximately one million in the Armed Forces alone, each service member would receive only about UAH 208 more per month. Would that be fair? The question is rhetorical. The military must undoubtedly remain the priority, but an increase of around 5% would simply look insulting to society.

For Ukraine, now in the fifth year of a defensive war, military personnel’s remuneration, clear terms of service, appropriate accountability for military offences and mobilisation remain critically important, even if politically sensitive. Ukrainian military personnel do need higher remuneration and must be properly compensated for their service.

These measures should not, however, be set against establishing a minimum level of remuneration for the police, which maintain public security, combat ordinary crime and perform a range of other functions.

Shortly after draft law No. 6506-1 was adopted, the President announced an increase in military salaries, with personnel serving in rear areas to receive at least UAH 30,000. This confirms once again that increasing remuneration in the internal security sector, including the police and the State Emergency Service, and increasing military service pay are two separate and equally important tracks.

The discussion should remain focused on the relevant policy issues and take place in the context of higher taxes and levies, spending optimisation and the reallocation of expenditure. News headlines should also have been different: not ‘The Verkhovna Rada raised police salaries’, but ‘The Verkhovna Rada established a minimum salary threshold for the police’. This is the main substance of the adopted changes. Did someone deliberately manipulate Ukrainians, or did they simply read the initial version of the draft law rather than the adopted one? The question is rhetorical. This is reminiscent of the story of ‘mass labour migration’.

In 2024, Ukraine was shaken by news of a wave of prosecutors with disability status among prosecutors in Khmelnytskyi region. It emerged that almost 500 prosecutors in the country were receiving disability pensions, and nearly half of them worked in Khmelnytskyi and Cherkasy regions. Because of this scandal, Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin resigned. Later, the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine (NSDC) abolished Medical and Social Expert Commissions (MSECs), and attention to this story subsided.

Already in the summer of 2025, the new Prosecutor General, Ruslan Kravchenko, promised to deal with the problem. Yet prosecutors have still not faced criminal liability and have barely faced disciplinary liability; some lost managerial positions and moved to rank-and-file positions.

The Agency for Legislative Initiatives has already written about why the hasty decisions of the new Prosecutor General, who is filing disciplinary complaints against prosecutors en masse, will do more harm than resolve the problem comprehensively. This is confirmed, among other things, by an article by NGL.media on how prosecutors are restoring their disability status through court after the notorious scandal. I suggest looking at this story in a broader context.

Prosecutors whose disability status was cancelled or changed underwent re-examination at the Research Institute of Medical and Social Problems of Disability (RI) in Dnipro. Some decisions are being cancelled because of inconsistencies in the procedure at the secondary legislation level and the lack of lawyers at the RI. Prosecutors are restoring their previous status through administrative courts and are also recovering monthly payments. At the same time, they continue to work, because they lost only the payments, not their positions. In other words, these prosecutors have not faced any accountability and have even restored the disability status that was cancelled or changed as a result of re-examination. How did this happen?

In July 2025, Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko reported that 484 prosecutors with disability status worked in prosecution authorities, 41 of whom had applied for voluntary dismissal. At the same time, the Prosecutor General referred the issue of holding 348 prosecutors with disability status accountable to the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Prosecutors (QDCP). After all, the head of a prosecution authority cannot simply dismiss a subordinate. Only an independent body — the QDCP — has the right to dismiss a prosecutor.

The status of prosecutors who have had disabilities since childhood, people who have sustained irreversible health losses, acquired disability as a result of the war or have cancer was not in doubt and did not require confirmation. There are 136 such people in prosecution authorities, so they were not subject to re-examination.

All other prosecutors were required to confirm their disability status before the designated Medical and Social Expert Commissions.

Two months after the scandal, in September 2025, Ruslan Kravchenko reported the first results:

• 57 prosecutors with disability status were dismissed from prosecution authorities;
• 56 prosecutors were dismissed from administrative positions;  
• 228 disciplinary complaints were opened and are awaiting consideration by the QDCP.

After that, the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office did not report any progress in this case, and these figures in fact raise doubts.

As of 13 May 2026, the register of QDCP decisions contains only 29 decisions on dismissal from prosecution authorities. The reason was the unjustified acquisition of disability status and an increased pension amount. This is a disciplinary offence — actions that discredit the title of prosecutor, may cast doubt on their objectivity, impartiality and independence and violate the rules of prosecutorial ethics.

This is half the number of dismissed prosecutors announced by the Prosecutor General. Fourteen prosecutors were banned from holding higher positions and being transferred to a higher-level prosecution office for one year. Three more prosecutors received reprimands. There are no other legal grounds to dismiss a prosecutor, unless they choose to leave voluntarily or through dubious reorganisation schemes.

However, 246 of the 292 prosecutors whose cases the QDCP has already decided have not been punished for their actions. In other words, the QDCP did not see elements of a disciplinary offence in their actions and closed the proceedings. This is more than 80% of the total number of disciplinary proceedings concerning prosecutors with disability status.

Why were disciplinary proceedings closed? Most often, the internal investigation found insufficient information to confirm that there was a disciplinary offence in the prosecutor’s actions when they obtained the status of a person with a disability and applied for and received a pension. In addition, it was impossible to confirm that the prosecutor used official powers or official status and the related opportunities to obtain disability status.

In this case, it concerned a change in the disability group or the duration of its validity, as determined by the Research Institute of Medical and Social Problems of Disability (because the QDCP cannot assess the accuracy of a diagnosis — it is responsible only for the legal component). In other words, the prosecutor has confirmation from the healthcare system: ‘Everything is fine, the doctors simply made a mistake with the disability group and/or its duration’.

The limitation period in disciplinary cases is only one year. In other words, the QDCP had to put ordinary complaints about prosecutorial violations (situations where citizens complained about prosecutorial arbitrariness) aside in favour of these cases to meet such a short deadline. Most QDCP decisions since the beginning of 2026 concern prosecutors with disability status, while other cases have been pushed into the background. I am certain that this has negatively affected the quality of decisions adopted in haste, which may become a weak point if they are challenged before the High Council of Justice or in court.

Unjustified disability status and benefiting from it are not only a violation of ethical rules but also the result of a criminal offence. All these cases must be investigated by the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), and the court must hold the guilty prosecutors accountable.

SBI press releases show that five criminal proceedings concerning prosecutors with disability status are being investigated. Indictments in some of them have already been sent to court. There are no separate statistics on this, and judgments, at least publicly, have not yet been published.

Yes, not all prosecutors who have been held disciplinarily liable should be convicted. However, the unjustified acquisition of disability status and pension payments is either corruption, that is, a bribe paid to an MSEC for a decision, forged documents to establish a false diagnosis, or simply buying disability status or receiving it as a gift (we know of such examples too — as a birthday present). Ultimately, it may involve direct participation in a criminal organisation or group scheme. The proceedings investigated by the SBI concern precisely such cases.

Thus, in response to the scandal over unjustified disability status among prosecutors, the prosecution service sent everyone for re-examination to the Research Institute of Medical and Social Problems of Disability. Some prosecutors underwent re-examination, while others avoided it, since it is not required by law. More than 300 disciplinary complaints against all prosecutors were then referred to the QDCP.

Depending on the prosecutor’s conduct, the consequences are as follows:

29 prosecutors were dismissed from prosecution authorities on the grounds of committing a disciplinary offence, that is, violating the rules of ethics. These are those who refused re-examination at the RI or whom the SBI notified of suspicion of committing a crime.

56 prosecutors who, according to Kravchenko, were dismissed from managerial positions. In other words, they moved to ordinary posts. There are no obstacles to their further appointment to a managerial position, and they have not faced legal liability.

Several prosecutors are suspects and accused persons in criminal proceedings. The SBI is investigating the unjustified acquisition of disability status and pension payments.

Most prosecutors who went for re-examination are, in the view of the healthcare system, persons with disabilities because they confirmed their status. This concerns at least 246 prosecutors. Or their diagnosis was reduced — from disability group II to group III, or from indefinite status to time-limited disability status. Legally, therefore, this is only a matter of a medical system error in establishing the diagnosis. There are no elements of an offence in the prosecutor’s actions. Some prosecutors are recovering pension payments through court on the basis of procedural violations. Whether they found a way to ‘resolve’ the issue with the relevant institution of the Ministry of Health or whether the system really made a mistake remains an open question.

The key issue remains the state of the criminal proceedings being investigated by the SBI. Procedural guidance in them is provided by prosecutors of the relevant units supervising SBI investigators. But the entire chain of their work is organised vertically by the Prosecutor General, especially since his supervisory powers were expanded in July 2025. If he is serious about solving the problem of prosecutors with fictitious disability status, there is a reasonable question for him and the SBI. What is the status of criminal investigations? Why, after a year and a half, do we have only a few indictments? These are precisely the matters on which the Prosecutor General should report, because public interest has not disappeared.

Finally, a separate component of the problem is the response of the Ministry of Health and the haste in implementing the NSDC decision without real verification mechanisms. If doctors write that the diagnosis is correct, no evidence against it will stand.

However, this is already a question for the state leadership: what is the status of implementation of this decision? After all, unjustified disability status harms not only the budget, from which money goes into the pockets of prosecutors or other unscrupulous people, but also our country’s defence capability. It is no secret that this is a huge problem in the authorities responsible for mobilisation. The issue of criminal liability should be raised not only for prosecutors but also for all organisers, perpetrators and beneficiaries of these criminal schemes. This should be a priority for the Prosecutor General.

Making appointments to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (CCU) and the High Council of Justice (HCJ) without delay is one of the ten requirements of the Kachka–Kos plan that Ukraine must implement in 2026. It was agreed in December 2025 as a priority plan for Ukraine in the areas of the rule of law and the fight against corruption.

Some progress in appointing members of the HCJ was made in March 2026, when the Congress of Judges of Ukraine voted for two selected candidates. By contrast, five months after the Kachka–Kos plan was agreed, no appointment to the CCU has taken place.

At present, 13 of the 18 judges serve on the Constitutional Court. The term of office of Judge Viktor Horodovenko (Congress of Judges quota) expires in November 2026. Two more terms expire on 2 March and 24 September 2027.

What is happening with the CCU selection competitions? What are the prospects for appointing new judges this year? And most importantly — what other urgent problems need to be resolved to strengthen the CCU and meet the EU integration requirements of the Rule of Law Roadmap? We explain below.

For two and a half years, Ukraine has been selecting and appointing judges of the Constitutional Court under a new procedure. The process is lengthy, imperfect, costly and often ineffective, because competitions are held yet may produce no winner. This has already happened in two previous competitions under the quota of the Congress of Judges and in one competition under the quota of the President of Ukraine. Or someone is selected, but the appointing authority fails to approve them. This happened in 2025, when Parliament did not find enough votes for two candidates under its quota. After the preliminary verification required by law, they had been recommended by the Advisory Group of Experts (AGE).

Since the new procedure was introduced, four new judges have been appointed — two under the President’s quota (in 2025) and one each under the quotas of Parliament and the Congress of Judges (in 2024).

Moreover, in 2025, the CCU was unable to perform its functions for six months because it lacked a quorum. In effect, only one Senate was functioning at that time. Meanwhile, the President and Parliament delayed appointments. Ultimately, the President fulfilled his role, while Parliament failed to vote.

It was probably after this that the EU requirement for Ukraine to make ‘appointments without delay’ emerged.

A new selection process under the parliamentary quota for two vacant positions is underway. Its outcome will become known on 6 May, when the AGE assesses the level of competence of candidates for the positions of CCU judges. This time, 10 people successfully passed the assessment of moral qualities and reached this stage.

Since April, the Advisory Group of Experts has also been reviewing the documents of candidates under the quota of the Congress of Judges. Here, 18 people are competing for two vacant positions. According to ALI, interviews with them will take place in July. By September, the AGE should form a list of candidates for appointment.

By contrast, the competition for one vacant position of CCU judge under the President’s quota has still not started. The start date is unknown.

If both competitions are successful, the appointment of a judge or judges under Parliament’s quota can be expected in the summer, and under the quota of the Congress of Judges in the autumn.

As regards the President’s quota, unless the competition starts within the next two to three weeks, appointments this year are unlikely, given the complexity and duration of the procedures. At the same time, it would be appropriate to announce a competition for the relevant vacancy in the coming months, taking into account the need to appoint a new judge under the same quota as early as March 2027.

We have previously written about how the competition procedures should be redesigned to accelerate the process. Yet things remain unchanged.

Some CCU candidates currently participating in competitions have previously received the green light from the AGE. This brings back the discussion on the need to create a list of reserve candidates who were not appointed for technical reasons.

This concerns situations where the appointing authority, for example, did not have a sufficient number of candidates to make a decision. Specifically, if there is only one vacancy, the law requires at least two people to compete for it. Such a candidate should be able to reach the final stage of the next competition without having to go through the whole procedure again.

Another example is where one of the appointing authorities has fewer vacant positions than the number of qualified candidates in its view (for instance, one vacancy and three qualified candidates). In that case, such persons could be placed in a candidate pool for one or two years and then, without additional competitions, submitted for consideration by other appointing authorities.

This would save the time, money and effort of Ukrainian and international experts serving on the AGE. More importantly, it would not discourage qualified candidates from taking part in competitions. The figures show that fewer people are willing to apply. Instead, many people who have repeatedly received a red light from the AGE keep entering competitions again and again. As a result, there seem to be candidates, but it is difficult, and often simply impossible, to select at least two people for one vacancy.

At the same time, Draft Law No. 14149 has been pending in Parliament since last year and partly addresses these problems, although in a somewhat different way. However, some of its provisions have been criticised by the Venice Commission, so they need to be amended not only to pass the vote in the session hall but also to avoid conflict with our international partners.

For those who closely follow all CCU judge selection processes or actively take part in them, every new competition feels like Groundhog Day. There are two reasons for this. The main one is that CCU judges are unique lawyers — essentially a ‘rare commodity’. A mere desire is not enough to quickly form an independent CCU bench with integrity.

Each selected judge must meet exceptionally high professional standards, be more than a good judge or someone who can draft complex texts well, but also have strategic vision. They must also have extremely high internal standards of integrity and ethics.

Moreover, a judge’s independence matters regardless of who appointed them. They must be equally independent from all branches of government.

And this is where the devil is in the detail. For example, AGE members ask candidates for the position of CCU judge about property acquired by their parents 30 years ago. Or they ask whether the candidate attended music school (what relevance does this have for a CCU judge at all?). Or why a Supreme Court judge decided to enter a competition for the CCU.

Here, the question is already for the Advisory Group of Experts: who exactly would they like to see as a candidate if questions arise about the intentions of certain SC judges to move to the CCU? Especially if some of them have spent half their lives working as judges of higher courts. Where else should such highly qualified lawyers go next?

Instead, one would like to hear the AGE more often ask how a candidate for CCU judge sees the solution to long-standing problems, such as the politicisation of the Constitutional Court. Or the prolonged delay in considering the most high-profile constitutional petitions, which have been pending before the CCU for five to ten years. For example, what should be done about lustration, on which the European Court of Human Rights expressed its position long ago, while the CCU is still unable to do the same?

Or they could ask how the work of the CCU should be reformatted so that cases are not considered for decades in the future. The list could go on.

These are the issues the AGE should examine alongside questions about the property of the candidate, their family, parents, grandparents and sometimes even ‘neighbours’. It should not be calculating how many days a male candidate spent on foreign business trips. Members of the AGE or other competition commissions, for example, may also spend weeks on business trips conducting interviews with candidates or preparing for them. Yet no one questions their integrity.

In 2022–2025, between 43 and 50 constitutional petitions were pending before the CCU. At the end of 2025, 48 such petitions remained pending, 32 of which had been submitted to the CCU before 2022.

From the beginning of the full-scale invasion until 2025, 19 constitutional petitions were submitted to the CCU. In the same period, the consideration of 17 petitions was completed, most of which (14) had been submitted back in 2015–2020. For example, a ruling closing one of the proceedings opened as far back as 2015 was adopted only in 2022.

In other words, over four years of war, two thirds of constitutional petitions have not been resolved. These are the country’s most complex issues, on which entire sectors or even the existence of individual bodies may depend.

For example, the constitutionality of the establishment and functioning of the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) has been under consideration since 2020. Given that two more higher specialised courts have now been established in Ukraine (which will consider administrative cases involving central executive bodies), a decision on the HACC is not merely timely — it is about four years overdue.

The CCU has also been drawn into the debate on the participation of international experts in competition commissions. Attempts are being made to remove them by manipulating the alleged interference with state sovereignty. This issue should be resolved now, even though CCU judges are currently being selected with the participation of international experts.

The situation is much better with the consideration of constitutional complaints. Since the possibility of lodging such complaints with the CCU was introduced in Ukraine (30 September 2016), persons entitled to a constitutional complaint have submitted more than four and a half thousand constitutional complaints to the CCU. The highest number was submitted in 2018 (690) and the lowest, for objective reasons, in 2022 (248). The CCU began adopting its first decisions following the consideration of constitutional complaints in 2019. There have been 67 such decisions in total.

The issues raised in complaints are less politicised than those in constitutional petitions. This is why the statistics for their consideration are several times better. However, it is worth noting how much procedural ‘clutter’ reaches the CCU. More than half of constitutional complaints do not even meet formal requirements. Many complainants do not understand the true role of the Court or the essence of such an instrument as a constitutional complaint and therefore try to turn the CCU into a ‘fourth’ judicial instance.

Even despite attempts to flood the entire Court with complaints, the introduction of the institution of constitutional complaint in 2016 was the right decision. The CCU is coping with this task.

In addition to the issues already mentioned, attention should also be paid to the systemic problems caused by the Court functioning on the verge of a quorum. One such problem is the inability to ‘assemble’ the required number of votes even for important and progressive decisions. If, out of 18 judges, only 12–14 have been in office in recent years, and at least 10 votes in favour are required, this leads to constant postponements of the consideration of constitutional petitions.

Some decisions cannot even be put on the agenda for discussion. One reason is the reluctance of the rapporteur judge to submit a politically difficult issue for consideration (and nothing can currently be done about this). There are no mechanisms for the compulsory inclusion of such issues on the agenda. At the same time, the accumulation of unresolved cases creates a ‘vicious circle’: new cases continue to be distributed among judges, their total number grows, consideration periods become longer, and judges prioritise cases at their own discretion, giving preference to those they consider most relevant. However, even if mechanisms for mandatory inclusion on the agenda existed, how could a decision be adopted if the rapporteur judge, who knows the materials better than others, does not even want to discuss such a case?

The recusals and self-recusals of judges are also a problem. Given that some judges are former MPs who often voted for what now needs to be examined for constitutionality, the quorum is disrupted. It is one thing when one or two judges are recused or have recused themselves while 17–18 judges are in office. It is quite another when only 12–13 are in office.

Therefore, the unwillingness to appoint even selected candidates to the CCU, or delays in doing so, essentially blocks the Constitutional Court from adopting any decision.

It is now obvious that the Court functions under both internal and external political pressure. Thus, without the appointment of new CCU judges, the resolution of any truly important but highly political issues is effectively blocked. Yes, the Court may obtain a decision declaring minor legislative ‘flea’ unconstitutional. But resolving something that will produce 400 media stories within a couple of minutes is impossible.

We did not aim to list all existing problems of the Constitutional Court. This is the purpose of the Shadow Reports written annually by a coalition of civil society organisations coordinated by ALI and by other civil society representatives.

At this stage, however, it is extremely important to draw attention to the political and personnel dimension. Not only because this is a requirement of the Kachka–Kos plan, but because the balance of power in a country at war depends on a politically independent and internally stable CCU that functions properly. Ukraine must not only survive the battle with a rabid bear. It must also stay the internal dragons that have for years been destroying Ukraine’s attractiveness, above all for its own citizens who decide to raise their children abroad, as well as for our allies in the European Union and NATO, who are no longer as confident when speaking about Ukraine’s rapid accession even to the EU.