Ukraine

TJET Focus Country

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This page presents a country report and describes data that TJET has compiled on regime transitions, intrastate conflict episodes, and transitional justice mechanisms. For details on the data included on this page, view the FAQ.

For Ukraine, TJET has collected information on: three amnesties between 2013 and 2014; 88 domestic trials starting between 1998 and 2020; one foreign trial starting in 2014; and two vetting policies starting in 2014.

Select any transitional justice mechanism in the table below to view a timeline in the figure.

Conflict Year

Democratic Transition Year

Author of country report: Helen Clapp

Introduction

While the modern state of Ukraine did not gain independence from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics until 1991, the Ukrainian nationality existed long before the modern state. A predecessor state, called the Hetmanate, was formed in 1648 before being integrated into Muscovy (later, the Russian Empire). Today, nearly 78% of Ukrainians are of Ukrainian ethnicity and about 17% are of Russian ethnicity. The remaining approximately 5% of the population are Belarusian, Moldovan, Crimean Tatar, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Romanian, Polish, and Jewish.

The modern Ukrainian national movement began in the 1840s. To quash the rising nationalism, the Russian Empire framed Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarussians as part of one unified nation, with each “tribe” speaking a different “dialect” of the Russian language. The Empire also created the historical myth of the origin of one Russian nation in medieval Kyiv and banned the use of the Ukrainian language in publication. However, the fall of the Romanovs in March 1917 and the Bolshevik coup in October of that year created an opening for the Ukrainian national project. Officials in Kyiv created the Ukrainian People’s Republic and declared independence from Russia in January 1918. The Bolsheviks forcefully invaded and reclaimed Ukraine, killing hundreds in Kyiv. However, due to the strength of Ukrainian nationalism, including the popularity of Ukrainian political parties in Ukraine, the leader of the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Lenin, recognized Ukrainian as a distinct nationality and language and gave Ukraine the status of a Soviet republic. On December 30, 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was established, and Ukraine joined as a republic nominally equal to the Russian Federation, though in actuality the Communist Party in Moscow controlled all other republics.

In 1924 Joseph Stalin succeeded Lenin as the leader of the USSR. Stalin pursued a policy of russifying Ukraine and the other republics. He starved four million Ukrainian peasants to death in the Holodomor, the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33, in an attempt to crush peasant resistance to his collectivization of agriculture. Sixteen nations today recognize the Holodomor as a genocide. In 1941, Hitler attacked the USSR and occupied Ukraine, deporting over one million people to concentration camps and killing 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews.

After Stalin’s death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev took power with help from the Ukrainian communist elite. Khrushchev’s ascension elevated the status of Ukraine within the USSR to the second most important Soviet Republic after Russia, economically and politically. However, Khruschev’s successor, Leonid Brezhnev, took steps to stamp out Ukrainian nationalism, including arresting Ukrainian cultural leaders. When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the USSR in 1985, he thought the Ukrainian nationality had been successfully absorbed into Soviet nationality, turning Ukrainians into Russians. However, his policies of perestroika (“restructuring”) and glasnost (“opening”) created an opportunity for nationalist movements across the USSR. Between 1986 and 1989, the nationalist movement in Ukraine gained strength, reviving Ukrainian language, culture, and history. Ukraine declared its independence in 1991.

Since 1991, Ukraine and Russia have held different understandings of their relationship. Ukrainians have resisted increasingly aggressive Russian attempts to undermine their identity and statehood, which escalated under Vladimir Putin. In 2014, Russia invaded Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, setting the stage for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Europe and the United States have played a large role in Ukrainian-Russian relations, especially since President Yushchenko’s attempts to integrate with Europe in the late 2000s positioned Ukraine as a battleground between Russia and the West. While it has oscillated between democratic leaders and leaders with antidemocratic tendencies, Ukraine has managed to retain its democracy since independence.

Ukraine did not experience war from its independence in 1991 until 2014. In 2014, however, an intrastate conflict began when protests against President Yanukovych’s failure to sign an Association Agreement with the European Union grew into protests against police violence and Yanukovych’s increasingly authoritarian governing tendencies. The protests led to Yanukovych’s ouster in February 2014. That same year, Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and took advantage of separatist sentiments in the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts of Ukraine to stoke unrest. These protests led to declarations of independence in the two oblasts and an internationalized conflict in those regions that lasted until 2021. On February 24, 2022, Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine that continues to this day. At the war’s two-year mark, President Zelensky of Ukraine reported that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the war. The number of Russian military casualties is uncertain, but a U.S. intelligence report declassified in December 2023 estimated about 315,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded in Ukraine.

Transitional justice in Ukraine has focused on the communist past, the Yanukovych era, and Russian aggression against Ukraine. Ukraine has pursued decommunization since before its independence, though this has occurred in phases. These efforts include allowing citizens access to secret records, declassification of files about Stalinist policies, the removal of symbols and monuments from the communist era, and lustration of communist officials, among other efforts detailed below. Following the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, Ukraine prosecuted several members of the Yanukovych administration, including Yanukovych himself, and passed two lustration laws barring officials from public service. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, there has been a huge domestic and international push for accountability for war crimes of the Russian armed forces and Russian state officials. Ukraine is actively prosecuting crimes committed during Russia’s full-scale invasion by documenting evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The international community is playing a large role in pursuing justice through the International Criminal Court and an initiative to create a tribunal to prosecute the crime of aggression against Ukraine. Other non-prosecutorial efforts are taking shape, including a reparations body through the Council of Europe and security commitments for Ukraine.

Regime Context

Based on well-known democracy data, TJET records one democratic transition starting in 1991.

Data up to 2020. Hover over column labels for definitions.

Ukraine has been an electoral democracy since its independence in 1991, overcoming a weak economy and lack of state institutions to create a system in which the president and the prime minister share power. However, Sławomir Matuszak described Ukraine in the post-1991 era as a “oligarchic democracy” due to the close, and often corrupt, relationships between political elites and business interests. Essentially, political parties obtained funding in exchange for eliminating the competition of favored businesses.

President Yushchenko’s attempts to integrate the Ukrainian economy and political system with Europe caused hostile reactions from Vladimir Putin and positioned Ukraine as a battleground between Russia and the West well before Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. Two pro-democracy revolutions, the Orange Revolution of 2004-2005 and the Revolution of Dignity of 2013-2014, managed to quash the antidemocratic tendencies of the political leadership at that time. Since its independence, Ukraine has contended with Russian interference in its internal politics with the goal of bringing Ukraine back into the Russian sphere of influence.

Independence and building a democratic state

In 1990 the Rukh Party, which grew out of the dissident People’s Movement for Ukraine, won a quarter of the seats in Ukraine’s parliament (the Rada). Non-communist parties like Rukh were allowed to run in the 1990 elections in the Soviet republics for the first time ever due to Gorbachev’s political liberalization policies (“glasnost”). As the Soviet Union disintegrated, Ukraine took steps to prepare for independence. In July 1991, the Rada created the position of a popularly elected president in Ukraine and scheduled an election for December. On August 24, 1991, following a failed coup against Gorbachev, the Rada declared Ukraine independent, appointed Leonid Kravchuk acting president, and scheduled a referendum on independence from the USSR on December 1, the same day as the presidential elections. In the fall of 1991, Ukraine embarked on the difficult task of building an independent state. Several aspects of the Ukrainian economy and society had been run by Moscow, not Kyiv. Ukraine had to negotiate its new relationships with the Soviet and Russian governments, build government institutions, hold a presidential election, and gain international recognition for the new state all at the same time.

On December 1, 1991, Ukrainians voted for independence from the USSR in a referendum. Eighty-four percent of eligible voters turned out, and ninety-two percent of them voted for independence. Of the fifteen Soviet socialist republics, Ukraine was the only one to hold an independence referendum. Historian Serhii Plokhy argues that most of the other republics, including Russia, “simply accepted the results of the Ukrainian referendum as a verdict not only on the independence of the Ukrainian republic but also on the future of the USSR”. On the same day, Ukraine held its presidential election. Leonid Kravchuk, the acting president, won with sixty-two percent of the vote. Following the referendum and presidential election, the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus dissolved the 1922 Union Treaty, which legally disintegrated the Soviet Union. They also created the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which Russia saw as a way to preserve some semblance of a union, and Ukraine saw as a way to manage the breakup. These competing understandings of the CIS demonstrated that there were fundamental differences between the Russian and Ukrainian views of the two countries’ relationship from the earliest days of Ukraine’s independence.

Despite an economic downturn which entailed widespread poverty and massive inflation, resulting in part from Ukraine’s unwillingness to adopt market reforms, Ukraine retained its democratic character following independence. Plokhy contends that democracy survived in Ukraine due to its relatively weak nationalism and high regional diversity, which meant that politicians had to seek compromise.

Peaceful transfers of power

Ukraine had its first peaceful transfer of presidential power in 1994 when Leonid Kuchma, the former prime minister of Ukraine, beat the incumbent Leonid Kravchuk in the second round in free and fair elections. In 1996, Ukraine adopted a new constitution, which created a mixed presidential-parliamentary system of government that split powers between the president and parliament. The president could veto laws adopted by parliament and dissolve parliament in certain circumstances. But only parliament could appoint the prime minister, amend the constitution, or call a referendum. No one political party gained enough power to control parliament during the 1990s.

Kuchma was reelected in another free and fair election in 2000. As he consolidated power, Kuchma used selective prosecution against his political opponents and cracked down on the independent media. Kuchma faced a scandal where secret tapes of him ordering the kidnapping of an opposition journalist leaked. The same journalist, Georgiy Gongadze, was later murdered near Kyiv by a group of officers from the Interior Ministry. Although it is still unknown who ordered Gongadze’s murder, the scandal kicked off a protest movement against Kuchma. Importantly, Kuchma decided to abide by Ukraine’s 1996 constitution and step down after two terms in office, demonstrating the tenacity of democratic norms.

Testing Ukrainian democracy and oscillation between Russia and the West

The 2004 election tested Ukraine’s democracy. Viktor Yushchenko, the former prime minister, and Viktor Yanukovych, Kuchma’s chosen candidate, fought a dirty campaign in which Yushchenko survived a poisoning and went on to win the election. However, Kuchma’s Central Electoral Commission claimed that Yanukovych had won. In response, Yushchenko’s supporters took to the streets to protest the false election results in the Orange Revolution. Rather than using the army to quell the protests, as Yanukovych demanded, Kuchma brokered a compromise. Yanukovych agreed to another round of elections, and Yushchenko promised to amend the constitution to limit presidential power. Yushchenko won the new elections and took office in 2005. He followed through on his promise and transferred some of the president’s powers to the office of the prime minister. While this outcome created a government divided between the president and the prime minister, neither had enough power to subvert the other and Ukraine retained its democracy.

Yushchenko’s term in office was marred by increased corruption and infighting with his prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko. Rather than reappoint Tymoshenko in 2006, Yushchenko appointed Yanukovych as prime minister, paving the way for the latter’s political resurgence. Yushchenko’s popularity plummeted due to the 2008 financial crisis – which caused Ukraine’s GDP to drop by 15 percent –-and his failure to deliver on his promises to integrate Ukraine with the European Union and NATO. However, Yushchenko’s attempts at integrating with the West brought Ukraine into a more confrontational stance with Russia and positioned the country as a battleground between Russia and the West.

Yanukovych made a political comeback and won the 2010 presidential election fairly. He immediately dropped NATO membership aspirations and signed a deal that allowed Russia’s Black Sea Fleet to remain in Sevastopol until 2042. In addition to shifting closer to Russia, Ukraine under Yanukovych swung again towards autocracy. Yanukovych consolidated power by bribing his deputies and changing the constitution to remove the limitations on presidential power Yushchenko had imposed. He skimmed billions of dollars from the state into his personal bank accounts and jailed political rivals including Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister. Despite this, the EU offered Ukraine an association agreement (AA) in exchange for economic reforms and the release of political prisoners. The Yanukovych administration completed negotiations with the EU and had a draft AA by March 2012. However, Ukraine found itself caught once again between the West and Russia, which offered Ukraine $15 billion if it did not sign the AA, and threatened a trade war if it did. Just as Ukraine and the EU were finally on the verge of signing the AA at a summit in Vilnius in November 2013, Yanukovych backed out at the last minute, telling his advisors that Putin had privately threatened to occupy Crimea and much of southeastern Ukraine if Yanukovych signed the AA. Yanukovych reversed course and accepted the money from Putin. This failure to sign the AA sparked the 2014 Euromaidan protests and the Revolution of Dignity, which led to Yanukovych’s ouster.

Post-Euromaidan governments

In May 2014, Petro Poroshenko won presidential elections against the backdrop of Putin’s annexation of Crimea and takeover of the Donbas region of Ukraine. The Russian invasion united the country under one homogenous, democratic, and Ukrainian identity. Ukrainian language and culture gained increased popularity, and many of the country’s Russian speakers switched to Ukrainian. Under Poroshenko, Ukraine oscillated back toward the EU and NATO. In 2014, Ukraine signed the EU AA that Yanukovych had failed to sign.

Volodymyr Zelensky won the 2019 Ukrainian presidential elections on an anti-corruption platform. Poroshenko’s failure to define Zelensky as a pro-Russian candidate demonstrated Ukraine’s relative unity ever since the 2014 Russian invasion: pro-Western vs. pro-Russian was no longer the dividing line on which presidential campaigns were fought and won. In the end, Poroshenko’s attempts to present himself as the true Ukrainian nationalist failed. Zelensky’s promise to root out corruption combined with Ukrainians’ perceptions of Poroshenko as a wealthy oligarch allowed Zelensky to win with seventy-three percent of the vote in the second round in a free, fair, and peaceful election. Zelensky’s party, Servant of the People, won a mono majority in the parliament and did not need to form a coalition.

Once in office, Zelensky refused to give Russia control of elections in the Donbas amidst the ongoing illegal Russian occupation of Crimea, which would have effectively turned the region over to Russian control. The Zelensky administration also removed three Russian-funded TV channels from the air and arrested two oligarchs aligned with Russia to limit the Kremlin’s influence in Ukrainian media. However, Zelensky failed to push through some key reforms that would have weakened oligarchs’ power in government. As Russia moved troops to the Ukrainian border beginning in late 2021, Zelensky denied US warnings that Putin planned to invade Ukraine. However, he also prepared for war by seeking military assistance from the West and moving Ukrainian troops to the border.

Ukraine’s justice system

Ukraine has a functioning system of courts providing people with access to justice. The judiciary continues operating even following the 2022 full-scale invasion but still experiences a lack of judges to deal with a significant backlog of cases. The Ukrainian judiciary has been suffering from corruption, political influence, and a low level of trust from the people since its independence. Following the 2014 Maidan Revolution, Ukraine has implemented many reforms to increase the independence of the judiciary, among other things, to satisfy membership criteria in the EU and NATO. There has been significant progress in this respect, but concerns still remain. Ukraine is further improving its judicial system and combating corruption, including in cooperation with its Western partners.

Conflict Context

Based on the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, TJET records six violent intrastate conflict episodes between 2014 and 2020, involving six distinct armed opposition groups fighting against the government. Five conflict episodes were internationalized by involvement of external state actors.

Data up to 2020. Hover over column labels for definitions. Source: UCDP Dyadic Dataset version 23.1, https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/index.html#dyadic.

Ukraine experienced no violence from its independence in 1991 until early 2014. Beginning in 2014, Russia unlawfully annexed Crimea and invaded Donetsk and Luhansk, among other things, via armed groups under its control. In 2022, Putin escalated to a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a conflict that continues today.

The Revolution of Dignity, 2013-2014

In November 2013, President Yanukovych backed out of an association agreement (AA) that he was on the cusp of signing with the European Union. Following the announcement that Ukraine would not sign, a few thousand protesters gathered at the Maidan, Kyiv’s Independence Square. The protesters were young professionals and students who saw the AA as a chance to improve Ukraine’s economy and bring it closer to Europe and the West. The Euromaidan protests, as they were called, morphed into the Revolution of Dignity when riot police physically attacked protesters on November 30. Over 500,000 Ukrainians came out to protest on December 1. On December 11, the police stormed Maidan Square, but the protesters stood their ground. The conflict calmed over the following month, and the number of protesters in the Maidan decreased. However, in mid-January 2014, the Ukrainian parliament adopted “dictatorial laws” that banned western-funded NGOs and restricted protests. These laws had the opposite of their intended effect: the protests increased in number and intensity and spread to the western oblasts of Ukraine, where protesters took over government buildings.

In early February, negotiations between Yanukovych and the protest leaders seemed to make progress. Yanukovych repealed some of the “dictatorial laws” and released arrested protesters. However, violence erupted again on February 18 when protesters attacked Yanukovych’s party headquarters and the police responded in kind. Thirteen police officers and 108 protesters were killed. On February 20, Yanukovych finally agreed to return to the 2004 constitution, which limited presidential powers, and to hold presidential elections. Feeling unsafe, Yanukovych left Kyiv for Russia. Parliament removed him from office by majority vote on February 22 and appointed Oleksandr Turchynov as interim president.

While the Euromaidan protests began as a movement against the suspension of the AA, they quickly morphed into protests against police violence and Yanukovych’s antidemocratic tendencies, an issue that drew many more protesters. The government’s violent response and passage of the “dictatorial laws” only stoked the protests, and caused the protesters to call for Yanukovych’s ouster, which was not their initial goal. Russia and the West each played a large role in shaping the outcome of the protests. Yanukovych’s failure to sign the AA sparked the protests in the first place. The US and Europe supported the protesters, with Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland traveling to Ukraine and meeting with protesters on the Maidan. The EU and US positions were largely aligned, with both playing a role in talks between Yanukovych and the protest leaders. Meanwhile, Putin backed Yanukovych and urged him to use military force against the protesters. When Yanukovych could not subdue the protests, Putin arranged for his evacuation to Russia.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, 2014

While Russian leaders had long hoped to integrate the Crimean Peninsula into Russia, Putin saw an opportunity in the period after Yanukovych’s ouster. The instability and distrust between the protesters and the government following the removal of Yanukovych combined with Ukraine’s oscillation towards Europe and its impending signing of the EU AA created the perfect storm for Putin to take Crimea. To justify the invasion, Putin claimed without evidence that the majority ethnic Russian population of Crimea was in danger from Ukrainian nationalists. On February 27, 2014, armed men took over the Crimean parliament and forced the removal of the prime minister of Crimea, Anatolii Mogilev, replacing him with a Russian loyalist and criminal Sergei Aksenov. The next day, Russian special forces took over the Simferopol and Sevastopol airports on the peninsula. Putin completed his annexation of Crimea with a sham referendum, in which Crimeans voted on “reunification” of the peninsula with Russia. According to official results, 96.77% of voters chose “reunification.” According to independent estimates, “reunification” received between 50-80% of the vote.

Putin followed up the successful annexation of Crimea with a slow takeover of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in Ukraine, collectively known as the Donbas region. Putin took advantage of an unknown degree of local support for separation to stoke protests that led to full-out war. In April 2014, separatists declared the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” and “Luhansk People’s Republic.” In response, the Ukrainian government declared an Anti-Terrorist Operation. Because government forces were unprepared to combat Russian-backed separatists, volunteer battalions sprang up in Eastern Ukraine to fill the gap. Fighting intensified, and Russia stepped up its involvement, supplying the separatists with arms and tanks.

As the summer of 2014 wore on, Ukraine sustained major losses, most notably in the Battle of Ilovaisk on August 29, 2014. Russian-backed forces surrounded Ilovaisk and killed hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers as they retreated. These losses brought Ukraine to the negotiation table with the goal of avoiding further loss of life and territory. September 2014 negotiations resulted in the Minsk Protocol. Also called Minsk-1, the protocol established a ceasefire, called for local elections on the status of Luhansk and Donetsk, and provided for some decentralization of power in Ukraine. Representatives of Russia and Ukraine signed the deal. Leaders of Russian-backed armed groups put their signatures on the document, but the agreement did not mention their status. Minsk-1 fell apart, and fighting resumed, but a new protocol was negotiated in February 2015. Ukraine was forced to sign considering the credible Russian threats of further attacks and, accordingly, additional losses of Ukrainian soldiers and territories. Minsk-2, as it was known, contained provisions for decentralization, withdrawal of foreign forces from Ukraine, local elections, and Ukrainian control over its own borders. While Minsk-2 kept the violence at a relatively low level, it did nothing to end the conflict. The two sides ended up in a stalemate and the fighting simmered, with no territory captured by either side for the next seven years.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, 2022

In late 2021, Russia began amassing troops on its border with Ukraine. On December 3, 2021, the Washington Post reported that the US intelligence community expected Russia to invade Ukraine in early 2022. Over the next two and half months leading up to the invasion, the Biden administration made public intelligence about Russia’s intentions and troop movements, with the goal of preparing the Ukrainian, European, and American publics. To end the crisis, Putin proposed a security treaty in which NATO would promise to end enlargement and commit not to deploy forces to any members that joined after May 1997. It is unclear if Putin was serious about this proposal, but these demands were non-starters for NATO.

On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Despite Western predictions that Ukrainian resistance would crumble within weeks, and Putin’s plans for a military parade in the streets of Kyiv within days, Ukraine put up a much stronger defense than either expected. From the very start, Zelensky established regular communication with the Ukrainian public and assured them that he was not going anywhere. Zelensky replied to an early U.S. offer to evacuate him with the famous line, “I need ammunition, not a ride.” These early moves set the tone for Ukrainians’ steadfast resistance to the invasion.

Russia initially aimed its invasion at four main areas: Kyiv, Kharkiv, the Donbas, and the northern Black Sea coast. Ukrainian attacks repelled Russian troops north of Kyiv, causing the Russians to withdraw in late March 2022. The heaviest fighting at the beginning of the war took place in Kharkiv, where Russian bombing destroyed much of the infrastructure. However, as Russia refocused its efforts on the Donbas, it withdrew troops from Kharkiv. In early May, Ukrainian forces began taking back towns outside Kharkiv. Russia’s most successful offensive in the early days of the war was in southern Ukraine. By early March, Russia had captured the entire Black Sea coast between Crimea and Russia, with the exception of Azovstal. Despite these victories, the failures to capture Kyiv and Kharkiv and to gain more territory in the Donbas demonstrated that the Russian army was much weaker than the west had previously assumed.

During this first phase of the war, from February-March 2022, Ukraine and Russia engaged in several rounds of peace talks that ultimately failed. According to recent reporting, Ukraine demanded that Russia be held accountable for its war crimes, withdraw from all captured territory including Crimea, and pay reparations. Russia demanded that Ukraine give up Crimea, remain permanently neutral, and recognize autonomy for Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukraine offered not to join NATO in return for security commitments. However, these talks ultimately failed because the two sides were too far apart on the issues of Crimea and the Donbas. In addition, Ukraine’s early success in driving Russian forces out of the Kyiv region ensured western support and reduced Ukraine’s incentive to negotiate.

As Russian troops withdrew from the areas surrounding Kyiv in late March 2022, researchers from groups like Human Rights Watch uncovered evidence of war crimes including summary executions and torture. In Bucha, a small city northwest of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials counted 458 bodies, of which 419 bore marks of being shot, bludgeoned, or tortured. This and other evidence of war crimes in Russian-occupied areas in the Kyiv, Cherniv, and Kharkiv regions shocked the world and disincentivized any further negotiations with Putin.

Ukraine launched a successful counteroffensive in the fall of 2022, taking back 3,000 square kilometers of territory, including Lyman and Kherson, and forcing Russian troops into a chaotic retreat. After a winter stalemate, in May 2023 Russian forces captured the eastern city of Bakhmut after months of fighting that destroyed the city. Some U.S. estimates say that up to 20,000 Russian soldiers died in the battle.

Ukraine launched another counteroffensive in June 2023 with the aim of winning back territory in Donetsk oblast, but it was unsuccessful. Since the fall of 2023, the war has been at a stalemate. The U.S. has provided about $75 billion in assistance to Ukraine since the war began. However, far-right Republican members of Congress are (as of Spring 2024) blocking further assistance to Ukraine, impairing Ukraine’s ability to continue fighting. Although the European Union has provided more total aid than the U.S. – about $93 billion over the course of the war – it does not provide nearly as much military aid as the U.S. The lack of aid from the U.S. has created major uncertainty for Ukraine and impeded its ability to fend off Russian aggression and plan for the future.

Transitional Justice

While transitional justice in Ukraine has not been comprehensive (for example, there has not been a domestic reparations policy or truth commission), the country has made sincere efforts to provide accountability and redress for periods of major violations including the communist era, the Yanukovych era, and Russian aggression since 2014. Ukraine has addressed communist-era repression through symbolic transitional justice, reforming and vetting the security agencies, declassifying documents about Stalinist policies, and allowing access to some secret KGB files. After the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, Ukraine passed an unconditional amnesty, pursued prosecutions, and passed two lustration laws. Both Ukraine and the international community have mounted robust efforts to provide accountability for Russia’s full-scale invasion, with other nascent transitional justice initiatives taking shape at the time of writing.

Decommunization efforts

The first phase of decommunization occurred before Ukrainian independence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In western Ukraine, communist monuments were removed and street names were changed. Also around this time, Gorbachev’s glasnost policies allowed Soviet citizens to learn more about the communist past. The policies also led to Ukrainian political prisoners being pardoned and released to run for office. Another major focus during this period was the rehabilitation of victims of communist repression through commissions that processed the claims of 15,610 victims in 1988-89.

Decommunization efforts continued after independence. In 1991, the Ukrainian Parliament abolished the KGB and established the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). It also set up a commission to screen all the former KGB officers who wanted to work for the SBU to ensure their loyalty to independent Ukraine. Another round of decommunization efforts occurred after the Orange Revolution of 2004. President Yushchenko issued two decrees ordering local authorities to remove communist monuments and rename streets that had been named after people responsible for the Holodomor. Yushchenko also issued Edict 37/2009 on Declassifying and Publishing Materials Related to the Ukrainian Liberation Movement, Political Repressions, and Holodomors, which declassified about 800,000 files about Stalin’s purges and made the information accessible to the Ukrainian public.

After the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, and as Russia annexed Ukraine and advanced into the Donbas, decommunization took on new urgency as a way to resist current Russian aggression. Passed in 2015, the Law on Access to the Archives of Repressive Bodies of the Communist Totalitarian Regime from 1917–1991 allows anyone to request access to secret KGB files. The Rada passed laws to remove symbols and monuments to the communist regime. According to Georgiy Kasianov, Between 2015-2016, “51,493 toponymical objects, 32 cities, 955 villages and settlements, and 25 administrative districts (rayons) were renamed, and 2,389 monuments and memorial plaques to ‘totalitarian leaders’ were removed, of which 1,320 were Lenin statues.” These efforts were accompanied by rewriting school textbooks to emphasize the deportations, repression, famine, and other crimes committed during the communist era.

Holodomor

In 1993, President Leonid Kravchuck referred to the Holodomor - the 1932-33 starvation of millions of Ukrainians at the hands of Stalin - as a genocide. Law 376-V/2006 legally recognized the Holodomor as a genocide. In 2009, the SBU began a case against 136 deceased perpetrators of the Holodomor, including Stalin. The Kyiv Appellate Court ruled that Stalin and six other communist officials had planned and committed genocide against 3,941,000 Ukrainians.

Post-Euromaidan transitional justice

After Yanukovych fled Ukraine, the activists remained on the Maidan until summer 2014, transforming themselves into what Igor Lyubashenko describes as “a kind of grassroots watchdog initiative.” The former protesters pressured politicians to hold members of the Yanukovych administration legally accountable for the violence they committed during the Euromaidan protests and the Revolution of Dignity. The public in general also largely agreed that members of the Yanukovych administration should be held accountable.

On February 21, 2014, the Verkhovna Rada passed an unconditional amnesty (Law 743-VII) for the Euromaidan protesters for crimes committed as part of the protests between November 21, 2013, and February 28, 2014. The law also repealed amnesties passed during the protests, which had conditioned the release of protesters on some form of concession from them.

The new government also pursued prosecutions against members of the Yanukovych regime involved in the violent suppression of the Euromaidan protests. About seven trials were held for members of the security services and special police for alleged crimes related to the Euromaidan protests, including the killing, violence, kidnapping, assault, detention, and torture of protesters. This included the conviction of Oleksandr Shcheholev, the former head of the Kyiv branch of Ukraine’s security services, for his role in organizing and carrying out the violent suppression of protests. In January 2019, Yanukovych was convicted in absentia of treason and sentenced to 13 years in prison.

The Ukrainian government also accepted the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court over alleged crimes occurring on its territory between November 21, 2013 and February 22, 2014 under article 12(3) of the Rome Statute. However, in November 2015, the ICC declined to take up the situation in Ukraine with regards to the Euromaidan protests on the grounds that the crimes committed did not rise to the level of crimes against humanity. The Office of the Prosecutor stated in its 2015 Report on Preliminary Examination Activities that repression of the Euromaidan protests “aimed to limit the protests rather than being part of a deliberate, coordinated, plan of violence methodically carried out against the protest movement.”

The Rada adopted two lustration laws in 2014 following the Euromaidan protests: “On Government Cleansing” and “On Restoration of Trust in the Judiciary.” These laws banned from public service several categories of employees, including members of the police, executive, judiciary, and armed forces. The European Court of Human Rights found that these policies cast too wide a net, banning all those who worked for the Yanukovych administration for more than one year, even those individuals who could not be shown to have significant connections to undemocratic activities. The lustration laws applied to both Yanukovych administration officials and officials from the communist era, including members of the KGB and the Communist Party. The lustrated officials were banned from government for a period of ten years. In addition to the lustration law, the 2015 Law on Access to the Archives of Repressive Bodies of the Communist Totalitarian Regime from 1917–1991 allowed victims access to KGB files.

Transitional justice regarding crimes in Donetsk and Luhansk

A few domestic trials have been held related to the fighting in Eastern Ukraine, including at least two trials for members of Ukrainian battalions operating there. For example, twelve members of the Tornado Battalion, which was operating in Luhansk oblast, were tried and convicted of crimes against locals including torture and sexual assault in 2017.

In September 2015, Ukraine issued another declaration under article 12(3) of the Rome Statute, extending the ICC’s temporal jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed from February 20, 2014 onwards. This extension was intended to address “crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by senior officials of the Russian Federation and leaders of terrorist organizations [Donetsk People’s Republic] and [Luhansk People’s Republic].” The ICC has used this open-ended timeframe to investigate alleged crimes committed during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine which began on February 24, 2022.

Accountability and reparations for Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war

As the war in Ukraine is ongoing, the final shape of transitional justice is yet to be determined. However, actors in Ukraine and internationally are working to advance transitional justice while the war rages.

On March 2, 2022, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan announced that he would open an investigation into the Situation of Ukraine. On March 17, 2023, the ICC announced arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Putin’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights. The two were charged with unlawful deportation and transfer of children from the occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia. On March 5, 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for two more Russian individuals, Sergei Ivanovich Kobylash, a Lieutenant General in the Russian Armed Forces, and Viktor Nikolayevich Sokolov, an Admiral in the Russian Navy, for the war crimes of directing attacks at civilian objects and causing excessive incidental harm to civilians or damage to civilian objects, and the crime against humanity of other inhumane acts.

The Joint Investigation Team is another international initiative to gather evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Members include Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, the ICC, and Europol. Domestically, the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s office has opened a war crimes office and an online portal through which it accepts evidence of war crimes. It has a special unit dedicated to investigating instances of conflict-related sexual violence. Non-governmental organizations like Truth Hounds, formed in 2014, investigate and document international crimes and other serious human rights violations.

Ukraine has called for a Special Tribunal to prosecute the crime of aggression to be established in the Hague. The G7 states (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US) issued a statement in April 2023 supporting “exploring the creation of an internationalized tribunal based in Ukraine’s judicial system to prosecute the crime of aggression against Ukraine.” Thirteen other states, mostly in Europe and Central and South America, called for an international tribunal to prosecute the crime of aggression.

The Council of Europe created the Register of Damage Caused by the Aggression of the Russian Federation Against Ukraine (RD4U) in May 2023. The Register is headquartered in the Hague and collects claims of damages from individuals, businesses, and state and municipal entities in Ukraine. The damages must be linked to the Russian aggression against Ukraine. The Register began accepting claims on April 2, 2024; it expects between 300,000 and 600,000 claims.

Security commitments

Security commitments from NATO countries for Ukraine will be an important measure to deter Russian aggression in the future and strengthen Ukraine’s capacity to defend itself pending its application for NATO membership. At the 2023 NATO Summit, the G7 countries launched negotiations with Ukraine to eventually reach bilateral security agreements. These bilateral agreements would strengthen Ukraine’s military and provide it with equipment, defense, and cyber intelligence support. In return, according to the G7 Joint Declaration of Support for Ukraine, Ukraine would continue to implement “law enforcement, judiciary, anti-corruption, corporate governance, economic, security sector, and state management reforms.” Not only will these bilateral commitments provide confidence to Ukraine, they will also work to deter Russia. Ukraine has already concluded such security agreements, including with the UK, France and Germany. The negotiations with the United States are pending.

Victims’ survey results

In 2023, TJET members at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative led by Patrick Vinck and Phuong Pham conducted a nationwide randomized survey of Ukrainians about transitional justice. They found that while there was strong support amongst the population for justice for the Russian aggressors and Ukrainian collaborators, confidence in Ukraine’s domestic justice system is low. Those surveyed desired severe punishment, with 67% favoring life imprisonment for Russians who committed serious crimes. When it comes to Ukrainians who collaborated with the Russian aggressions, 28% of respondents favor life imprisonment and 22% favor a long prison sentence (11-15 years). When asked about the priority of transitional justice mechanisms, 53% of respondents viewed reparations as the top priority, while 23% prioritized establishing the truth and 19% prioritized trials.

Transitional Justice Data

As of 2020, Ukraine ranks 38th out of 174 on TJET’s legacy of violence index. For a full list of country rankings over time, view the index page, and for an explanation of the index, view the Methods & FAQs page.

Amnesties

Ukraine had three amnesties between 2013 and 2014. Three were passed after internal armed conflict. Three amnesties released political prisoners. One amnesty forgave human rights violations.

Data up to 2020. Hover over column labels for definitions.

Domestic Trials

TJET has compiled data on 88 domestic prosecutions between 1998 and 2020. These include 76 regular human rights prosecutions of state agents, in which 44 persons were convicted; eleven intrastate conflict prosecutions of state agents, in which 16 persons were convicted; and one intrastate conflict prosecution of opposition members, in which no one was convicted.

Click on accused records for data on convictions. Data up to 2020. Hover over column labels for definitions.

Foreign Trials

Nationals of Ukraine were defendants in one foreign prosecution in Russian Federation beginning in 2014.

Click on accused records for data on convictions. Data up to 2020. Hover over column labels for definitions.

Vetting Policies

Ukraine had two vetting policies, starting in 2014; TJET found no information on whether or when the policies ended. These policies provided sanctions based on past individual conduct. Two policies prescribed dismissals from current employment. One policy prescribed bans from holding future office.

Data up to 2020. Hover over column labels for definitions.

Download Country Data

References

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