Supreme Court disrupts Ukraine’s accession to EU by repressions for faith and pacifism

(27.10.2025) The Joint Chamber of the Cassation Criminal Court of the Supreme Court denied a cassation complaint against the sentence to a prisoner of conscience Vitaliy Kryushenko, but suspended the sentence and released him from prison with one-year probationary term. Not all judges agreed with this, there are separate opinions on the case, according to the briefing “Voice of Conscience”, prepared by the director of the Institute of Peace and Law Yurii Sheliazhenko.

The website of the Supreme Court rushed to report that, in the opinion of the court, the legislation of Ukraine does not exempt conscientious objectors from the obligation to perform military service, and they can be punished for evading conscription during mobilization.

So, the Supreme Court gives the green light to further persecution of people who, due to religious or other beliefs, can’t participate in such a shameful mass murder as war, and seek to overcome the evil of war by peaceful means. This will not change peaceful religions and beliefs and will not turn pacifists into soldiers, but it will undermine trust in justice system and increase risks of decline of Ukrainian democracy and rapid slide into a military dictatorship.

The scholarly assessment of the Supreme Court’s judgment gives grounds to conclude that the principle of the rule of law and Ukraine’s positive obligations to protect human right to conscientious objection under the Constitution and international treaties that are part of the legislation of Ukraine have not been observed. In addition, in order to join the European Union, Ukraine must ensure proper protection of fundamental human rights, which include conscientious objection, and this is provided for in the “Rule of Law Roadmap”. The Supreme Court drives Ukraine away from the European path, endangering Ukraine’s future membership in the EU. Its unjust judgment once again repeats a legal fiction not supported by facts and law about the imaginary possibility of performing military service without weapons in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the fiction that contradicts Article 11 of the Statute of the Internal Service of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and also ignores the constitutional obligation of the state to make arrangements for conscientious objectors allowing them to defend Ukraine nonviolently.

The court granted a request of the Institute of Peace and Law for permission to make a video record of the court hearings. The recording was made within a framework of the scientific research work in jurisprudence “Study of the problems, prospects and technologies of advancing national interests in protection of human right to conscientious objection to military service and involvement of conscientious objectors into alternative nonmilitary service, including the management of this service, for peaceful (nonviolent) defense of Ukraine, ensuring human security, national harmony and security, international peace and security”.

The briefing “Voice of Conscience” and the video recording of the court session in Ukrainian are published above.

FREE CIVILIAN: Supreme Court disrupts Ukraine’s accession to EU by repressions for faith and pacifism, published on October 27, 2025. URL: https://www.civilni.media/472/.

Keywords:    ⇒ CO and Asylum   ⇒ Conscientious Objection   ⇒ Conscription   ⇒ Europe   ⇒ Human Rights   ⇒ Movement of Conscientious Objectors   ⇒ Peace Movement   ⇒ Project Reports   ⇒ Ukraine