Journalist Lyubov Velychko received nearly 500 letters from Ukrainian courts this week

Investigative journalist Lyubov Velychko received nearly 500 letters from Ukrainian courts over the course of this week in response to the questions in her query to the State Judicial Administration (SJA).

The journalist spoke about this in a comment to the Institute of Mass Information representative Valentyna Troyan.

Lyubov explained that she wanted two figures and one spreadsheet sorting the information by date and region.

Lyubov Velychko. Photo by Lyubov Velychko on Facebook

First, she wanted to know how many proceedings under Article 436-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (justification, recognition as lawful, denial of Russia's armed aggression against Ukraine, glorification of its participants) are pending in Ukrainian courts as of April 1, 2025.

She also asked to provide the statistics with a breakdown by:

• region (oblast);
• instance (local courts, courts of appeal, cassation courts);
• year the case was received in court.

The journalist also asked how many cases in total are pending in Ukrainian courts of all instances as of April 1, 2025.

“Instead, the SJA forwarded my query to all courts in Ukraine and they began to reply independently. Later, chief judges and their assistants, press officers from all over Ukraine started calling me by phone. Throughout the week, I received more than 50 calls asking for clarifications regarding my query. Within a week, I received about 500 letters with responses – starting from district courts and ending with the Supreme Court of Ukraine,” said Lyubov Velychko.

The journalist says the courts mostly provided substantial answers, but there were also those that refused to share the information.

“For example, Dmytro Hontar, the head of the Kherson City Court of Kherson oblast, wrote that 'the requested information within the criteria you specified is not separately recorded by the Kherson City Court of of Kherson oblast, that is, this information has not been created. A report in form No. 1K 'Report by first instance courts on reivews of material in criminal law proceedings' for 2025 will be prepared in early 2026 as per Decree No. 325 by the State Judicial Service of Ukraine dated June 23, 2018, and will contain the information you requested; you may contact the Kherson City Court of Kherson oblast with a query then,'” the journalist explained.

She added that since not all courts answered, she cannot give the reader the total number of court cases under the Criminal Code article she was asking about. Therefore, she will have to calculate the total number herself.