A quiet victory for the rule of law in Ukraine

By Matthew Parish

Saturday 24 October 2026

There are occasions upon which one is pleasantly surprised by the efficacy of the law, particularly in countries enduring the extraordinary stresses of war. Ukraine is not always associated in the international imagination with the impeccable administration of justice. Her judicial institutions have historically been criticised for corruption, political interference and inefficiency. Yet there are moments when the law appears to perform precisely the function for which it was created: protecting ordinary people against intimidation, violence and the arbitrary exercise of power. I have recently had reason to reflect upon one such occasion.

Over recent weeks I have experienced a series of unpleasant incidents in Lviv, including conduct that I regarded as threatening and intimidating in connection with my journalistic activities. I do not propose to rehearse the personalities or circumstances in detail, because the appropriate authorities have been informed and a criminal complaint has been made. What is encouraging is that the difficulties now appear to have subsided. Whether this improvement is directly attributable to the operation of the criminal law is something I cannot definitively establish, but the coincidence has prompted me to investigate the protections Ukraine affords to journalists. What I discovered was both reassuring and rather impressive.

Article 345-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine provides specific criminal sanctions for threats of murder, violence or destruction or damage to property directed against journalists, their close relatives or family members in connection with the lawful exercise of their professional activities. The maximum punishment for such threats is three years’ imprisonment, although the legislation also provides for alternative sanctions, including corrective labour for up to two years, probationary supervision or restriction of liberty. Where actual violence occurs, the penalties become substantially more severe. Intentional beatings or minor or moderately serious bodily injuries may attract imprisonment for up to five years, while grievous bodily harm can result in imprisonment for between five and twelve years. These are not trivial provisions of administrative law. They are serious criminal prohibitions intended to deter the intimidation of those whose professional responsibility is to investigate and publish matters of public interest.

The historical origins of these provisions are especially significant. On 16 September 2000, the Ukrainian investigative journalist Georgiy Gongadze, a founder of the independent newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, disappeared in Kyiv. His murdered body was subsequently discovered, and the circumstances surrounding his disappearance gave rise to one of the greatest political scandals in modern Ukrainian history. The affair implicated elements of the Ukrainian state and became emblematic of the dangers faced by journalists who challenged entrenched political power. Gongadze’s murder helped provoke a profound national debate about corruption, state violence, freedom of expression and the relationship between government and the independent press.

The specific legislation protecting journalists was enacted considerably later, in May 2015, amid Ukraine’s efforts to reform its institutions following the Revolution of Dignity and the beginning of Russian military aggression in 2014. Although it would be historically inaccurate to describe Article 345-1 as the immediate legislative consequence of Gongadze’s murder, there is a clear intellectual and political connection between the two. The scandal surrounding his death contributed to a national consciousness that journalists require protection not merely against censorship but against physical intimidation and violence. The legislation represents an attempt to transform the bitter lessons of Ukraine’s political past into practical legal safeguards for the future.

What is particularly encouraging is that the legislation does not exist merely as an ornamental declaration of constitutional principle. The Ukrainian National Police regularly publishes reports concerning investigations and prosecutions involving threats or violence against journalists. In April 2026, for example, Kyiv police announced criminal proceedings under Article 345-1 following threats reportedly made against a journalist after publication of an investigation. In another case, a court in Khmelnytskyi region convicted a businessman of violence against a journalist who had been investigating the sale of medical protective equipment. He received a two-year custodial sentence suspended on probation and was ordered to compensate the victim. These examples demonstrate that the statutory protection is capable of passing from the pages of the Criminal Code into the ordinary work of police investigators, prosecutors and judges.

Naturally, one must not confuse the existence of legislation with its universal or consistently successful enforcement. Ukraine continues to experience difficulties with criminal investigations, judicial delays and the prosecution of offences against journalists. Some complaints are dismissed, others remain unresolved and there are circumstances in which the boundary between an unpleasant personal disagreement and a criminal threat requires careful legal examination. It is essential that the criminal law should not become an instrument for settling private scores or suppressing legitimate criticism of journalists themselves. The distinction between criticism and intimidation must be maintained, because freedom of expression protects the right to disagree with a journalist just as surely as it protects the journalist’s right to publish.

Nevertheless, the existence of such legal protections matters enormously. The rule of law is not principally about the severity of punishment. It is about the replacement of arbitrary personal power with publicly promulgated rules administered by institutions that are supposed to act impartially. When someone threatens a journalist, the issue should not be whether the journalist has sufficiently influential friends, whether he is physically capable of defending himself or whether the person making the threat enjoys protection from some informal network of associates. The proper question is whether conduct prohibited by the criminal law has occurred and, if so, what evidence establishes the offence and what judicial consequences should follow. This is the essential civilising function of the law.

That principle acquires particular importance in wartime Ukraine. War inevitably produces extraordinary social pressures, widespread anxiety and the circulation of weapons among people whose experiences of violence may have transformed their attitudes towards everyday disagreements. It also attracts foreigners from an assortment of backgrounds, including humanitarian volunteers, journalists, former military personnel, adventurers and people whose motivations are not always immediately apparent. Most contribute positively to Ukrainian society and many perform acts of exceptional courage and generosity. Yet the mixture of personalities and circumstances can occasionally generate conflicts that would be difficult to imagine in more settled societies. The answer to such conflicts cannot be the emergence of rival informal systems of intimidation, retaliation or private enforcement. It must be the application of Ukrainian law, without regard to nationality, reputation or personal connections.

There is also something philosophically important about the fact that Ukraine maintains and seeks to enforce protections for journalists while fighting an existential war against Russian aggression. In authoritarian societies, the journalist is frequently regarded as an irritant, a potential subversive or an individual whose independence threatens the established political order. In a constitutional democracy, the journalist fulfils a different role. He is part of the institutional architecture through which government, private power and public wrongdoing are subjected to scrutiny. His work will sometimes be inconvenient, inaccurate or irritating, because journalism is a human activity and journalists are no less fallible than everyone else. Nevertheless, the freedom to investigate and publish without fear of violence is one of the essential distinctions between a society governed by law and one governed by fear.

Russia’s conduct towards independent journalism provides the most obvious contrast. Independent reporting has been systematically suppressed, critical journalists have faced prosecution or exile and the Russian state’s machinery of censorship has increasingly subordinated public information to the requirements of war propaganda. Ukraine, by contrast, continues to sustain a vigorous and often quarrelsome independent press that regularly criticises its own government, military authorities and public institutions. That distinction is not incidental to the war. It is part of what Ukraine is fighting to preserve: a political community in which the state does not claim a monopoly upon truth and citizens retain the right to challenge those who exercise authority over them.

For a British journalist living and working in Lviv, these questions are not merely academic. I have spent much of my professional life studying legal institutions and their relationship with political power, often in societies undergoing profound institutional transformation. One learns that the effectiveness of the law is rarely revealed by grand constitutional pronouncements or elaborate judicial ceremonies. It is demonstrated in smaller encounters between individuals and the state, when someone who believes himself threatened discovers that he can invoke a legal rule and expect his complaint to be considered according to established procedures. The measure of institutional civilisation lies partly in whether individuals can appeal to the law rather than resort to self-help, intimidation or the cultivation of powerful protectors.

I have made such an appeal in Ukraine, and I am encouraged that the circumstances giving rise to my concerns appear to have calmed down. I make no allegation here that any particular individual has been found guilty of a criminal offence, nor do I presume to anticipate the outcome of any investigation. Those matters are properly for the Ukrainian authorities to determine, subject to the rights of everyone concerned. My purpose is instead to acknowledge that the law provides a clear and potentially effective framework for addressing threats against journalists. If the knowledge that such protections exist encourages people to resolve their differences without intimidation, then the law has already performed one of its most valuable functions.

There is a tendency amongst foreigners living in Ukraine to concentrate upon the country’s institutional deficiencies. Some of those criticisms are justified, and the immense challenges of legal reform should never be understated. Yet it is equally important to recognise the progress that has been made. Ukraine has developed a sophisticated legislative framework for protecting freedom of expression, one that recognises that the deliberate intimidation of journalists is not merely a private wrong but an attack upon the public’s ability to receive information. The National Police’s willingness to publicise cases involving such offences is itself an indication that the protection of journalists has become an identifiable responsibility of the Ukrainian state, even if practical enforcement remains imperfect.

Georgiy Gongadze paid with his life for the exercise of a profession that democratic societies ought to regard as indispensable. More than a quarter of a century after his disappearance, Ukraine remains a country in which journalists face dangers, particularly when reporting from the front lines of a brutal war. But it is also a country in which the memory of such tragedies has contributed to the development of legal institutions designed to prevent their repetition. There is a certain moral satisfaction in discovering that provisions enacted to protect journalists against violence may now be contributing to the security of those continuing to practise the profession. History does not always progress in a straight line, but occasionally its lessons are translated into legislation that makes an appreciable difference to everyday life.

For my own part, I hope that the recent difficulties are now behind me. I bear no desire to see anyone punished for the sake of punishment, and I would much prefer that disagreements be resolved through conversation, mutual restraint and respect for the rights of others. The criminal law should always be a last resort, but its availability is an indispensable guarantee of peaceful coexistence. A society becomes more civilised not when everyone agrees with one another but when disagreement ceases to provide an excuse for coercion.

So today I should like to offer a modest celebration of something that can too easily be taken for granted: the rule of law in Ukraine. Amidst the air raid sirens, the political controversies, the institutional imperfections and the immense sacrifices demanded by the war, it is worth remembering that Ukrainian society continues to develop and defend the legal principles upon which a free country depends. Sometimes those principles are vindicated not through grand judgments or historic constitutional decisions but through the simple reassurance that a journalist may continue his work without being obliged to fear those who dislike what he writes.

That may seem a small victory against the background of the tremendous events unfolding across Ukraine. But the preservation of civilisation consists of innumerable small victories of precisely this kind, and they deserve to be recognised when they occur.