Download the PDF file: Human Rights in Ukraine 2025 and the First Half of 2026. Key trends.pdf
This article by Yevhen Zakharov (Kharkiv Human Rights Group) analyses the main trends in Ukraine’s state policy on human rights from 2015 to the first half of 2026. The author argues that the human rights situation has deteriorated year on year, whilst the Russian Federation’s full-scale aggression and human rights defenders’ focus on documenting war crimes have weakened public scrutiny of the Ukrainian authorities’ actions.
The following issues are examined separately:
- the imposition of National Security and Defence Council (NSDC) sanctions on Ukrainian citizens and legal entities in circumvention of the law enforcement and judicial systems;
- the deprivation of citizenship in contravention of Article 25 of the Constitution;
- abuses by anti-corruption bodies, primarily the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU);
- politically motivated criminal prosecutions of the opposition, the business sector and local government bodies (the cases of P. Poroshenko, Y. Tymoshenko, K. Zhevago, M. Derevianko and the Kyiv City State Administration);
- the ‘law on oligarchs’ and the Venice Commission’s opinion on it.
In the author’s view, these practices replicate Soviet-era approaches, lead to the curtailment of political freedom, the subordination of the courts and the rollback of decentralisation, and thus weaken the state’s ability to resist an aggressor. He calls for a return to the ‘paradigm of freedom’, for legal certainty to be ensured in relations with the military and those liable for military service, and for human rights organisations to resume the defence of human rights against the state itself.
