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Being part of the people in the Ukrainian legal system is not a matter of symbolic identity but a matter of property and sovereign rights. Across the entire post-Soviet space, the people are recognized as the source of power in every state, but only in two countries — Ukraine and Kazakhstan — the people are also the collective owners of land, subsoil and natural resources. 

In Ukraine this is directly enshrined in the Constitution: Article 5 defines the people as the bearer of sovereignty and the sole source of power, while Article 13 establishes that the land, its subsoil and natural wealth belong to the Ukrainian people. In all other post-Soviet states, ownership of land and resources is vested in the state, which fundamentally changes the nature of sovereignty and the mechanism for distributing national wealth.

Unlike Western countries, where the people long ago lost the title of ownership and land and resources are distributed among corporations, funds, and private structures, Ukraine maintained a constitutional model of popular ownership for almost three decades. Since 1992, a moratorium on the sale of agricultural land was in force, protecting the principle that land could not be an object of purchase or sale, as it forms the basis of national sovereignty.

In 2020, on the initiative of former President Volodymyr Zelensky, during the period of strict quarantine restrictions, when mass gatherings and protests were banned under the pretext of combating the COVID-19 pandemic, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed, at night, Law No. 552-IX, which lifted the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land. Since then, the question of who constitutes the people has become fundamental — for it now determines who, in the legal sense, remains the owner of the entire territory, land, and natural resources of Ukraine.

In the United States, the situation is different. There, the people exist as a political concept but not as an owner: land and resources belong either to private individuals, corporations, or the state, which manages them on its own behalf. The people in the U.S. have a symbolic meaning but no property title. In the United Kingdom and several European countries, the situation is even clearer — sovereignty is formally vested in the monarch, and all land is legally considered crown property. Even in continental Europe, where monarchies are formally limited, the capitalist system has been in effect for three centuries, and the right of ownership has long been detached from the concept of the people.

Therefore, in Western countries, the question of who constitutes the people has primarily political rather than property significance. In Ukraine, however, this question remains fundamental both in the sphere of power and in the sphere of ownership. Here, the answer to who is legally recognized as the people directly determines who is the owner of the land, resources, and, ultimately, the state itself.

In the history of the Holocaust and Nazism, everything also began with the adoption of laws and continued strictly according to those laws. Laws were drafted in advance to make genocide legally justified so that every crime had a formal legal basis. Today, the same method is used, only in a more refined form: exclusion, intimidation, war, digital control, patriotic slogans, and the rhetoric of “national security” and “state necessity.”

The historical example of Jews in Nazi Germany demonstrates that citizenship does not protect a person if they are excluded from a recognized group. Jews formally remained citizens but were deprived of rights and subjected to extermination because they were no longer considered part of “the people.” This proves that citizenship itself provides neither protection nor a legal basis for imposing obligations — such as mobilization — if a person is not recognized as part of a sovereign group.

Understanding the significance of belonging to the people in the context of property and sovereign rights, as well as the historical example of the Holocaust, shows that the question of who constitutes the people is not a philosophical discussion but the foundation of the entire legal system. Beginning in 2021, Ukraine effectively entered into a struggle not for power as such, but for the interpretation of the very concept of the people as a legal subject. It is this interpretation that determines who holds power, resources, land, and the territory of the country.

And suddenly it turned out that the composition of the people — the very people to whom the territory, subsoil, resources, and power belong, and who for almost thirty years had been forming as a civil society — was, within just one year of Russian aggression against Ukraine, transformed by Ukraine itself into an ethnocultural construct that divided the country into separate “peoples” and effectively stole the status of a people from the titular majority. Hundreds of thousands of its representatives volunteered under state programs of defense, propaganda, and incitement of hostility — the latter, unlike other violations, was officially sanctioned by the state itself.

According to Ukraine’s notification of derogation dated 1 March 2022 (C.N.65.2022.TREATIES-IV.4), the list of temporarily suspended rights under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights included Article 20, which prohibits war propaganda and incitement to national, racial, or religious hatred.

Thus, Ukraine itself officially acknowledged that it was temporarily withdrawing from the obligation to prevent the incitement of interethnic hatred, effectively legalizing this mechanism as part of state policy during wartime.

The adoption of Laws No. 1616-IX “On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” (July 1, 2021), No. 2215-IX “On the De-Sovietization of Ukrainian Legislation” (April 14, 2022), and No. 2827-IX “On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine” (December 13, 2022) radically changed the legal architecture of the concept of “people” without amending the text of the Constitution.

Law No. 1616-IX “On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” (July 1, 2021) introduced, for the first time, the legal category of “indigenous people,” defining it in Article 1 as “an autochthonous ethnic community that formed on the territory of Ukraine and does not have its own state formation outside Ukraine.” Based on this definition, only three ethnocultural groups — Crimean Tatars, Karaites, and Krymchaks — were recognized as peoples in the legal sense. They were granted the status of collective subjects with their own representative bodies, the right to political self-governance, international representation, and special protection guarantees.

At the same time, the recognition of the Karaites and Krymchaks as indigenous peoples contradicts Article 1 of the same law, since in the State of Israel both groups are recognized as part of the Jewish people, which has its own state formation. This means that the basic criterion — “absence of a state formation outside Ukraine” — is not met, and the recognition itself contradicts the content of the law. As a result, Law No. 1616-IX contains an internal legal contradiction that undermines its legitimacy. However, this issue lies beyond the scope of the current section.

Law No. 2827-IX “On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine” (December 13, 2022) established a separate category of collective rights for national minorities. According to Articles 3 and 8, these communities are guaranteed the right to preserve and develop their identity, language, culture, traditions, and religion. However, the subjectivity of such communities is exclusively cultural in nature and is exercised not through autonomous political institutions but through the individual civil rights of their members. In other words, it represents not collective political will but a sum of individual rights of cultural expression.

Law No. 2215-IX “On the De-Sovietization of Ukrainian Legislation” (April 14, 2022) became an act that effectively removed from the legal field all documents that defined the people of Ukraine as the source of sovereignty and the successor to the statehood of the Ukrainian SSR. Under the pretext of “eliminating Soviet heritage,” the law terminated the effect of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine No. 55-XII (1990), the Declaration of the Rights of Nationalities of Ukraine No. 1771-XII (1991), the Constitution of the Ukrainian SSR (1978), and other acts that established the link between the people, the territory, and the state title. Although these documents were not formally repealed, the mechanism of legal succession was never defined, creating legal uncertainty regarding the very holder of sovereignty.

As a result of these changes, Ukraine’s legal system has developed a three-tier structure of collective rights:

– Indigenous peoples possess political subjectivity and the right to international representation;

– National minorities have limited cultural subjectivity, exercised through individual civil rights;

– The titular nation — ethnic Ukrainians — is not recognized by any law as a collective subject and has no legal form of representation.

Thus, the 2021–2022 legislative reform created a legal hierarchy of ethnocultural groups in which the titular majority — ethnic Ukrainians — became entirely excluded from the legal definition of the term “people.”

Existing laws explicitly define “people” through the categories of indigenous peoples and national minorities but contain no provision that assigns this status to ethnic Ukrainians. As a result, the titular community — the foundational population of the state — has been deprived of any form of legal existence as a collective subject.

A reference to Article 11 of the Constitution of Ukraine cannot be regarded as proof of the existence of ethnic Ukrainians as a legally recognized people. The term “Ukrainian nation” is used in a civic, not ethnic, sense, since further in the same article it refers to the indigenous peoples and national minorities. In the context of the 1996 edition of the Constitution, where the preamble states that the Ukrainian people are the citizens of Ukraine of all nationalities, the concept of the “Ukrainian nation” denotes the totality of citizens rather than the ethnic Ukrainian community, as many believe. Therefore, Article 11 does not confirm either the existence of ethnic Ukrainians in the legal sense or their subjectivity.

This creates a form of constitutional inequality: part of the citizens delegate power and govern, while the others submit and are obliged to defend the state without being recognized as its sovereign source. If a person is excluded from the composition of the people, they perform duties without a mandate and without the ability to act on behalf of the people.

Under conditions of mobilization, this means that some possess subjectivity and represent the power — thus, they are the power itself — while others are obliged to die by order, having no right to be subjects of that will, that is, part of the authority in whose name they are commanded. Such a construction legally and factually reproduces a feudal system in which there exists a division between the ruling — those possessing subjectivity and the right to dispose of the lives of others — and the subordinate, who are obliged to obey without the ability to be a source of power or a bearer of will.

This distribution of roles between the “authorized” and the “subordinate” destroys the republican order, replacing the principle of popular sovereignty with a vertical hierarchy of official dependence. In essence, it constitutes a form of colonization and enslavement in which part of the population is used as a resource to preserve the power of another part. In legal terms, such a system corresponds to the characteristics of institutionalized discrimination, forced subordination, and segregation on ethnocultural grounds, since one group retains political subjectivity while the other is deprived even of the right to represent itself.

International tribunals have repeatedly emphasized that citizenship does not exempt a state from responsibility for genocide, repression, or forced labor. International practice confirms that the non-recognition of an ethnic group is often used by states as a legal pretext to conceal crimes.

Therefore, the coercion of ethnic Ukrainians to participate in war solely on the basis of citizenship is not the execution of law but a form of state violence against an unrecognized group.

 

1. The absence of national status renders the mobilization of ethnic Ukrainians legally null and void.

According to Article 5 of the Constitution of Ukraine, the only source of power and the bearer of sovereignty is the people. However, the Constitution provides no legal definition of who exactly constitutes this people — whether it refers to the totality of Ukrainian citizens of all nationalities or to a collective ethno-cultural subject historically connected to statehood.

Until 2021, Ukrainian legal practice was dominated by an inclusive interpretation: the term “people” was understood as the entirety of citizens of Ukraine of all nationalities. This position relied on the wording of the Preamble to the Constitution and on the decisions of the Constitutional Court adopted prior to the 2021–2022 legislative reform.

After the adoption of Laws No. 1616-IX “On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine,” No. 2827-IX “On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine,” and No. 2215-IX “On De-Sovietization of the Legislation of Ukraine,” a new legal reality emerged in Ukraine, within which previous interpretations of the term “people” lost their practical meaning. Their effect was not formally repealed, but the normative foundations upon which they were based were removed from the current legal system.

The newly formed structure requires new interpretations by the Constitutional Court, which have not yet been issued. Even if such rulings were to appear and reaffirm the earlier formula describing the “people of Ukraine” as “citizens of all nationalities,” this would not eliminate the existing legal asymmetry, since that formula is declarative in nature, creates no norms of direct effect, and does not establish the legal subjectivity of ethnic Ukrainians.

The adoption of Law No. 3354-IX “On Law-Making Activity” (August 24, 2023) codified this approach at the legislative level. According to Article 38 of this Act, a preamble cannot contain legal norms and therefore does not create legal obligations or serve as a source of legal regulation.

This provision confirms the already established administrative practice reflected in numerous official responses from state bodies — including the Ministry of Justice, the Constitutional Court, and the Verkhovna Rada — which explicitly state that the Preamble of the Constitution is purely declarative and has no normative effect.

Taken together with the aforementioned Laws No. 1616-IX, No. 2827-IX, and No. 2215-IX, this has definitively consolidated a system in which ethnic Ukrainians have been excluded from any legal definition of “the people” and deprived of the possibility of collective existence as bearers of sovereignty.

Thus, Ukrainian law contains no constitutional provision, statute, or valid court decision that directly and unambiguously confirms the legal subjectivity and juridical existence of ethnic Ukrainians as a people. The only mention of the category “ethnic Ukrainians” appears in Article 1 of Law No. 2827-IX “On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine,” but this reference does not grant them subjectivity — on the contrary, it explicitly excludes them from the category of national minorities and, therefore, from the system of collective rights.

As a result, a legal paradox arises: ethnic Ukrainians are obliged to defend the Homeland (Article 65 of the Constitution of Ukraine), yet they have no legally recognized connection to it as a people and lack the status of sovereign bearers of power. This turns mobilization into a form of forced involvement of an unrecognized group in defending another’s sovereignty, rather than an exercise of a people’s right to self-determination.

Such a situation violates the principles of popular sovereignty, equality before the law, and the right of peoples to self-determination, as enshrined in Article 1 of the UN Charter and Articles 1 of the 1966 International Covenants on Human Rights, and contradicts the fundamental principle of international law prohibiting the imposition of obligations without the recognition of corresponding rights.

 

2. Key constitutional and international breaches

2.1. Violation of the principle of popular sovereignty (Constitution – Articles 1 and 5)

Legal rule:

– Article 1 defines Ukraine as a sovereign, independent, democratic, social, and rule-of-law state.

– Article 5 establishes that sovereignty belongs solely to the people (narod) and is exercised directly and through state authorities and local self-government bodies.

These provisions require the existence of a legally defined bearer of sovereignty — a collective subject constituting the political foundation of the state.

Violation:

After the adoption of Laws No. 1616-IX (“On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine”), No. 2827-IX (“On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine”), and No. 2215-IX (“On Desovietization of Ukrainian Legislation”), the legal category of “people” was fragmented.

Specific ethnocultural groups received collective rights and representation, while ethnic Ukrainians — the titular population — were excluded from any form of collective subjectivity.

This exclusion deprives Article 1 of its material meaning: a rule-of-law state cannot exist without a defined sovereign people. Consequently, Article 5 operates without an identifiable subject.

Why it matters:

The problem lies not in interpretation but in the absence of any law explicitly recognizing ethnic Ukrainians as a collective subject of sovereignty — neither as a titular nation, nor as an indigenous group, nor as a historical people.

Without such recognition, the majority of the population lacks legal capacity to exercise sovereignty or to be its source.

A state that declares itself democratic but has no law confirming who its sovereign people are becomes internally contradictory and structurally illegitimate.

2.2. Contradiction between Article 65 (“defense of the Fatherland”) and the loss of national subjectivity (Constitution – Articles 5, 17, 65)

Legal rule:

– Article 65 obliges every citizen to defend the Fatherland, independence, and territorial integrity of Ukraine.

– Article 17 defines this defense as “the affair of the entire Ukrainian people.”

– Article 5 designates the people as the bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power.

These norms together imply that the duty to defend the Fatherland presupposes legal belonging to the people who hold sovereignty.

Violation:

Once ethnic Ukrainians were excluded from the legal definition of the people, their constitutional connection to the Fatherland ceased to exist.

They are now required to defend sovereignty they do not embody or represent legally.

This transforms Article 65 from a civic duty into a coercive mechanism imposed on a population stripped of sovereign identity.

Why it matters:

The Constitution uses the term “Fatherland,” not “State,” because it presupposes collective, historical, and cultural continuity between a people and its land.

Mobilization under conditions where the majority is not recognized as a people means coercing individuals to defend an alien sovereign entity.

This is not defense of the homeland but subordination to external power — a legal form of political enslavement.

2.3. Denial of equality before the law (Constitution – Article 24)

Legal rule:

– Article 24 of the Constitution of Ukraine guarantees equality of all citizens before the law and prohibits any privileges or restrictions based on origin, race, nationality, or language.

– The Declaration of the Rights of Nationalities of Ukraine No. 1771-XII (1 November 1991) establishes the principle of equality of all ethnocultural groups, explicitly stating that Ukrainians, together with other nationalities, constitute the people of Ukraine. Article 1 provides that the state guarantees all peoples and national groups equal political, economic, social, and cultural rights, while discrimination based on nationality is prohibited and punishable by law.

Violation:

The adoption of Laws No. 1616-IX (“On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine”), No. 2827-IX (“On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine”), and No. 2215-IX (“On Desovietization of Legislation of Ukraine”) effectively nullified the principles enshrined in Declaration No. 1771-XII without formally denouncing it.

Ethnic Ukrainians were excluded from the system of collective rights, while indigenous peoples obtained political subjectivity and national minorities — limited cultural subjectivity.

Thus, the equality guaranteed by Article 24 of the Constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Nationalities was dismantled, and the Declaration itself was de facto removed from the legal framework under the pretext of “desovietization,” despite the fact that it does not belong to the Soviet period and is based on the Act of Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine.

Why it matters:

This is not merely a violation of the constitutional principle of equality — it is the dismantling of a foundational act that defined the composition of the people of Ukraine as the unity of all ethnic groups under the titular nation.

The exclusion of ethnic Ukrainians from the system of collective rights created a legal hierarchy in which equality was replaced by ethnic stratification, and the titular majority lost legal recognition as part of the Ukrainian people.

Thus, by proclaiming anti-discrimination principles, the state has institutionalized constitutional segregation.

Ethnic Ukrainians, despite being the majority, have been transformed into a legally unprotected group — citizens without a people, deprived of collective representation, subjectivity, and sovereignty.

This constitutes not only a violation of Article 24 of the Constitution but also a de facto annulment of Declaration No. 1771-XII — one of the key documents that established equality among all nationalities and defined the concept of the people as a multinational yet unified subject of Ukraine.

2.4. Forced mobilization as forced labour (ILO Convention No. 29; ICCPR – Articles 7 and 8)

Legal rule:

– The International Labour Organization Convention No. 29 “On Forced or Compulsory Labour” (adopted on 28 June 1930, ratified by Ukraine on 10 August 1956, entered into force on 10 August 1957) prohibits all forms of forced labour, except in limited cases, including compulsory military service when it is performed by a sovereign state on behalf of a recognized people.

– Article 8 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights likewise prohibits slavery and coercion, allowing military or civil obligations only when they lawfully arise from recognized citizenship and belonging to a sovereign people.

Violation:

The exemption established by ILO Convention No. 29 — that compulsory military service is not considered forced labour — applies only in cases where there exists a legally defined and mutually recognized bond between an individual and the people acknowledged as the bearer of sovereignty.

After the adoption of Laws No. 1616-IX (“On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine”), No. 2827-IX (“On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine”), and No. 2215-IX (“On Desovietization of Ukrainian Legislation”), national law no longer contains any provision confirming the collective subjectivity of ethnic Ukrainians as a people.

In addition, the official position of Ukrainian state authorities, expressed in responses from the Ministry of Justice and other authorized institutions, has affirmed that the preamble of the Constitution “contains no legal norms and creates no legal obligations.” This means that the reference to “citizens of Ukraine of all nationalities” is purely declarative and does not confirm the legal subjectivity of these groups as a people

Law No. 3354-IX “On Lawmaking Activity” (adopted on 24 August 2023, not yet in force) merely codified this administrative practice at the legislative level, as its Article 38 explicitly provides that the preamble cannot contain legal norms and is not a source of legal regulation.

Under such circumstances, the exemption provided by ILO Convention No. 29 loses its legal basis, since the legitimacy of compulsory military service depends on the existence of a reciprocal legal connection between a person and the sovereign people on whose behalf state authority is exercised.

Compelling individuals who lack such recognition constitutes coercion within the meaning of international law and qualifies as forced labour under Article 2(1) of the Convention.

Why it matters:

The legality of military obligation presupposes the existence of a reciprocal legal relationship between the state and the people who are the bearers of sovereignty.

When that connection is broken or not legally established, any form of compulsory service loses its legal foundation and becomes an instrument of administrative subjugation.

Thus, the mobilization of ethnic Ukrainians in the absence of their recognized subjectivity as a people violates peremptory norms of international law guaranteeing human dignity, personal liberty, and freedom of labour, as enshrined in ILO Convention No. 29 and Articles 7–8 of the ICCPR.

2.5. Violation of international humanitarian law (Geneva Conventions III–IV; Additional Protocols I and II)

Legal rule:

– Common Article 3 to all four Geneva Conventions of 1949 requires humane treatment of persons not taking direct part in hostilities and prohibits any discrimination based on national origin or legal status.

– Article 51 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits compelling civilians to serve under a warring or occupying power.

– Additional Protocol I (1977), Articles 43 and 85, stipulates that participation in hostilities is lawful only on behalf of a recognized party to the conflict possessing legal personality and sovereign authority.

Violation:

Following the adoption of Laws No. 1616-IX, No. 2827-IX, and No. 2215-IX, ethnic Ukrainians lost their legally recognized status as a people, and thus the collective subjectivity necessary for recognition as a party acting in defense of sovereignty.

Formally, citizenship remains, but it no longer signifies belonging to a people as the bearer of power and sovereignty.

Compelling individuals to perform military service on the basis of citizenship, without recognition of the people in whose name the state exercises authority, violates a fundamental principle of the Geneva Conventions — the prohibition of involving persons without sovereign status in armed conflict.

In circumstances where the Russian Federation officially declares that Ukrainians are part of the “Russian people,” while Ukraine legally denies the existence of Ukrainians as a people, a legal and humanitarian contradiction arises.

A person deprived of legal subjectivity within their own state may be considered as belonging to another ethnocultural group claimed by an external power.

If such persons are compelled to fight against that group, it constitutes coercion to participate in hostilities against their own ethnocultural affiliation — an act prohibited by Articles 3, 51, and 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and by Article 85 of Additional Protocol I.

Why it matters:

The deprivation of the titular nation’s subjectivity during wartime strips its population of internationally recognized protection as a party under humanitarian law.

It removes millions of citizens from the system of humanitarian guarantees and turns them simultaneously into objects of mobilization and forced assimilation.

Such a practice destroys the basic principles of international humanitarian law, transforming mobilization into an instrument of legal and physical annihilation of a people deprived of the right to self-determination and subjectivity.

In essence, by depriving ethnic Ukrainians of their status as a people, Ukraine facilitates their forced assimilation and exclusion from the protection system of the Geneva Conventions — a grave international violation and an act of genocide.

2.6. Persecution and forcible transfer (Rome Statute – Article 7)

Legal rule:

– According to Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, persecution, enslavement, and the forcible transfer of population committed with the deliberate violation of fundamental human rights on political, national, ethnic, cultural, or other grounds constitute crimes against humanity.

– Subparagraphs (d) and (h) of Article 7 clarify that forced displacement or persecution of persons based on their belonging to a particular group falls under the jurisdiction of the ICC, regardless of whether such acts occur during an armed conflict or in conditions of internal repression.

Violation:

The forced mobilization and mass displacement of ethnic Ukrainians deprived of subjectivity and legal recognition as a people correspond to the elements of crimes defined in Article 7 of the Rome Statute.

Individuals who lack collective status as bearers of sovereignty are subjected to administrative and physical coercion to relocation, deportation, or participation in hostilities on behalf of a state that does not legally recognize them as its people.

Thus, the actions of Ukrainian state authorities constitute a set of features of persecution on ethnic grounds and forced displacement, as ethnic Ukrainians are deprived not only of freedom of movement but also of the ability to maintain neutrality in a conflict conducted on behalf of an alien sovereign.

Why it matters:

Compelling a group deprived of subjectivity to participate in war or restricting its freedom of movement violates not only the provisions of the Rome Statute but also the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, including the prohibition of collective punishment and the obligation to protect civilians.

Within this legal framework, mobilization and administrative restrictions become instruments of systematic persecution aimed at destroying the independent existence of the titular group as a subject of international law.

When a state forces persons not recognized as its people to fight and die in its name, the act of defense transforms into a form of violence and an instrument of ethnopolitical repression.

Such use of mobilization and displacement as mechanisms for dismantling collective identity and eliminating subjectivity falls under the definition of crimes against humanity as established in Article 7 of the Rome Statute.

2.7. Human Trafficking and Coercive Recruitment (Palermo Protocol; Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings)

Legal rule:

– Article 3(a) of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo Protocol, 2000), defines trafficking in persons as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of any persons by means of the threat or use of force, coercion, fraud, abuse of power, or the exploitation of a position of vulnerability for the purpose of exploitation.

– Article 4 of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (Warsaw, 2005) establishes that the state bears responsibility for the actions of its organs and officials if they use their official position to involve persons in forced labour, military service, or other forms of exploitation, regardless of whether a commercial benefit is involved.

Violation:

The forced mobilization of ethnic Ukrainians, deprived of recognized collective subjectivity and legal status as a people as a result of the adoption of Laws No. 1616-IX (“On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine”), No. 2827-IX (“On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine”), and No. 2215-IX (“On Desovietization of Ukrainian Legislation”), meets all the elements of human trafficking as defined in international instruments.

Individuals who have lost collective subjectivity no longer possess the legal capacity to give valid consent. Their agreement to participate in military or other state activities lacks legal force, as there is no lawful foundation enabling them to act on behalf of a recognized people.

Compulsory mobilization under the threat of punishment, criminal prosecution, or violence is carried out through abuse of power and the exploitation of a vulnerable population deprived of the right to self-determination.

These actions pursue a clear exploitative purpose — the use of ethnic Ukrainians as a military and demographic resource to sustain state functions and conduct armed conflict. The combination of these elements — absence of valid consent, abuse of power, and exploitative intent — constitutes the crime of human trafficking under Article 3(a) of the Palermo Protocol and Article 4 of the Council of Europe Convention.

Why it matters:

International law treats human trafficking not only as a commercial crime but as any form of exploitation of human beings carried out without their free and informed consent. When a state deprives a group of legal subjectivity and then uses its members under coercion for military, labour, or demographic purposes, it ceases to act as a legitimate authority and becomes a perpetrator of an international crime.

The forced mobilization of ethnic Ukrainians without recognition of their people within Ukraine’s legal framework violates Articles 3(a) and 5 of the Palermo Protocol, as well as Articles 4, 10, and 27 of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings.

These actions amount to systemic exploitation of a legally vulnerable population and constitute an international crime against humanity committed by the state against its own titular nation deprived of legal status.

2.8. Cultural destruction, forced assimilation, and erasure of group identity (Genocide Convention – Article II; UNDRIP – Article 8)

Legal rule:

– The 1948 UN Convention prohibits acts aimed at destroying a national or ethnic group, including measures intended to prevent its existence as such.

– Article 8 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples prohibits forced assimilation and the destruction of cultural identity.

Violation:

The exclusion of ethnic Ukrainians from the legal category of “people” and their mobilization under a civic identity that denies their existence as a distinct group constitute an act of forced assimilation.

By depriving them of national subjectivity and compelling them to act under an external political mandate, the state destroys their collective identity and replaces it with another national affiliation.

In the context of war, this becomes an act of complicity in the forced assimilation of ethnic Ukrainians into the Russian nation, as the loss of subjectivity makes them vulnerable to legal and cultural integration into the space of the aggressor state.

Public statements by the President of the Russian Federation that “Ukrainians do not exist — they are Russians” confirm the direction and intent of this process. The absence of legally recognized subjectivity for Ukrainians within their own national legal system effectively facilitates the aggressor’s narrative and creates conditions for the violent appropriation of their identity.

Thus, the deprivation of collective subjectivity of ethnic Ukrainians during an armed conflict is not only an internal act of discrimination but also an external component of genocidal policy aimed at assimilating them into another nation.

This constitutes a form of cultural destruction and political enslavement — the annihilation of a people through administrative and legal mechanisms, stripping them of their status and subsequently incorporating them into a foreign national framework.

According to subparagraphs (b) and (c) of Article II of the Genocide Convention, such actions qualify as the imposition of conditions calculated to destroy a group as such and fall under the legal definition of genocide.

2.9. Illegality of obligations arising from international crimes (jus cogens)

Legal rule:

Peremptory norms of international law (jus cogens), enshrined in Articles 53 and 64 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969), possess the highest legal authority and permit no derogation. Any obligations arising from acts that constitute slavery, persecution, genocide, crimes against humanity, or other grave violations of fundamental human rights are null and void.

These norms are inseparably linked to the right of peoples to self-determination, as established in Article 1 of the UN Charter and Articles 1 of both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966). The deprivation of a people’s ability to exercise this right is recognized under international law as a violation of peremptory norms and a form of subjugation.

Violation:

The adoption of Laws No. 1616-IX, No. 2827-IX, and No. 2215-IX by Ukraine effectively abolished the legal subjectivity of ethnic Ukrainians as a people, depriving them of the internationally recognized right to self-determination. In doing so, the state itself blocked the primary source of its own sovereignty — the people in whose name it is constitutionally obliged to act.

The imposition of military obligations upon individuals deprived of their right to self-determination and collective subjectivity directly contravenes jus cogens and lacks legal validity. Such mobilization occurs under systemic coercion, discrimination, and the loss of sovereign status, amounting to a continuation of persecutory and oppressive practices prohibited by international law.

Why it matters:

Obligations that arise from acts of coercion, genocide, or discrimination are void ab initio — null from the moment of their creation. A state that violates the right of a people to self-determination forfeits its legitimacy to impose any duties upon that people.

Therefore, the mobilization of ethnic Ukrainians, excluded from the category of a people and deprived of the ability to exercise their right to self-determination, cannot be considered a lawful civic duty. It constitutes an act of state violence that violates peremptory norms of international law and falls under the definition of a crime against humanity.

By eliminating the legal status of ethnic Ukrainians as a people, Ukraine has lost the legal authority to demand their participation in military service. Any coercion to engage in armed conflict in the absence of a recognized sovereign status of the people constitutes a breach of jus cogens and undermines the international legal order founded on the rule of law and the principle of self-determination of peoples.

2.10. International responsibility and non-cooperation (UN Charter – Articles 1 and 55; Rome Statute – Article 25)

Legal norm:

In accordance with Articles 1 and 55 of the Charter of the United Nations, Member States are obliged to promote respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion. This obligation includes the prevention, suppression, and punishment of acts violating these rights, as well as the duty to refrain from recognizing or cooperating with regimes or structures based on violations of international law.

Article 25 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court establishes individual criminal responsibility for persons who commit, incite, assist, or otherwise participate in the commission of crimes under the jurisdiction of the Court, including crimes against humanity and genocide.

Violation:

The forced mobilization of ethnic Ukrainians who have been deprived of recognized collective subjectivity and the status of a people constitutes a violation of peremptory norms of international law. Officials who issue or execute mobilization orders against a group excluded from the legal category of “people” commit acts qualifying as crimes against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute.

States and international organizations that continue to cooperate with Ukrainian authorities in supporting mobilization campaigns, despite the evident breach of jus cogens, bear responsibility as accomplices. Under international law, such cooperation constitutes aiding and abetting in the commission of a crime and violates the principle of non-recognition, as established in the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice (Namibia Advisory Opinion, 1971).

Why this matters:

Responsibility for the violation of peremptory norms is not limited by state borders. Crimes committed against a people deprived of the right to self-determination entail not only national but also international criminal liability—both for individual officials and for the state as a whole.

The mobilization of ethnic Ukrainians excluded from the status of a people is an act contrary to the foundations of international law. It violates Articles 1 and 5 of the Constitution of Ukraine by removing the bearer of sovereignty; Articles 17 and 65 by transforming the duty to defend the Homeland into forced service to a foreign sovereign; and a range of peremptory norms of international law, including prohibitions on coercion, discrimination, persecution, and forced assimilation.

The absence of any law recognizing the collective subjectivity of ethnic Ukrainians confirms that such mobilization cannot be regarded as a lawful civic duty. It constitutes forced involvement in the activities of a state that has deprived its own people of legal subjectivity and, therefore, represents a form of institutionalized violence directed toward the self-destruction of the group.

Taken together, these actions form the elements of a complex international crime — a combination of enslavement, persecution, and genocide, implemented through legal redefinition, cultural destruction, and political colonization.

Under international law, such mobilization falls within the scope of Articles 6 and 7 of the Rome Statute and Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, qualifying as a crime against humanity and an act of genocidal assimilation.

These actions are null and void ab initio — from the moment of their commission — creating no legal obligations and requiring international investigation, judicial qualification, and public condemnation.

Thus, states and international organizations that recognize or support such a practice violate their own obligations under the UN Charter, the Rome Statute, and the core human rights conventions, thereby becoming accomplices to an international crime.

In cases where a state loses its connection with the people as the source of sovereignty and becomes an autonomous holder of power, its actions toward a group deprived of subjectivity take on the character of internal aggression. According to Article 55 of the Charter of the United Nations, member states are obliged to promote respect for and observance of human rights without discrimination, including the prevention of violations committed by the state itself.

Thus, when Ukraine, having deprived ethnic Ukrainians of the status of a people, forces them to participate in armed conflict, it effectively acts as an aggressor against its own population. In this situation, the defense of ethnic Ukrainians from the state is not an act of disobedience but an exercise of the right to self-defense as established in international law.

From a legal perspective, Ukraine and Russia, in this context, represent two elements of a single process aimed at the destruction of the people’s sovereignty: one through external aggression, the other through internal legal substitution. As a result, ethnic Ukrainians find themselves caught between two forms of violence — external military and internal institutional — which makes them not subjects of the conflict but its victims.

This situation corresponds to the criteria established in international jurisprudence, particularly in the decisions of the International Court of Justice and the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, where state actions against an unrecognized group of its own population were qualified as crimes against humanity.

 

3. The Loss of “People” Status Means the Loss of Sovereign Authority and Legal Mandate

According to Article 5 of the Constitution of Ukraine:

“Ukraine is a republic.The bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power in Ukraine is the people. The people exercise power directly and through bodies of state authority and local self-government. The right to determine and change the constitutional order in Ukraine belongs exclusively to the people and cannot be usurped by the state, its bodies, or officials.”

At the same time, Article 5 of the Constitution does not specify who exactly is meant by the term “people” — whether it refers to the totality of all citizens of Ukraine regardless of their origin, or to a specific collective entity endowed with ethnocultural and historical identity. Such ambiguity allows for dual interpretation — civic and ethnic.

However, after the entry into force of the Laws of Ukraine No. 1616-IX “On the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” (01.07.2021) and No. 2827-IX “On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine” (13.12.2022), this constitutional concept acquired a restrictive interpretation. The notion of “people” in the legal sense came to be associated exclusively with the indigenous peoples and national communities listed in these laws.

There is no separate law recognizing the historical majority — ethnic Ukrainians — as a people. As a result, these two laws have effectively acquired the force of directly applicable norms defining who can be considered the “people” of Ukraine. Ethnic Ukrainians are absent from these categories, and consequently, they have effectively lost legal recognition as a collective subject endowed with the right to exercise sovereignty.

Some may argue that all citizens of Ukraine are, by default, considered part of the people — referencing the Preamble to the Constitution of Ukraine, which states:

“The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, on behalf of the Ukrainian people (narod)— the citizens of Ukraine of all nationalities, expressing the sovereign will of the people (narod)…”

— however, this is not a relevant justification, since the Preamble refers not to ethnic Ukrainians, but to the citizens of Ukraine of all nationalities. It concerns the totality of all groups residing within the territory of the state, without distinguishing any particular ethnic group — in particular, without recognizing ethnic Ukrainians as a people (narod).

Therefore, this wording in the preamble has an exclusively declarative and political-rhetorical character and does not constitute a legal definition. Ukrainian legislation contains no provision explicitly establishing that every citizen of Ukraine is part of the people as the bearer of sovereignty under Article 5 of the Constitution.

Although the preamble to the 1996 Constitution does indeed mention “the citizens of Ukraine of all nationalities” as constituting the Ukrainian people, this equality lost its legal force after the adoption of Laws No. 1616-IX and No. 2827-IX. These laws possess the status of directly applicable norms, whereas the preamble has only a political and declarative character and does not create legal obligations. Thus, the constitutional equivalence of the concepts “citizen” and “people” has been effectively removed from Ukraine’s legal system.

Regarding the Decision of the Constitutional Court (Ukraine) No. 1-r/2021:

The judgment contains a reference to the idea that:

“The concept ‘Ukrainian people (narod) — citizens of Ukraine of all nationalities’ used in the Preamble of the Constitution of Ukraine encompasses all individuals, regardless of their ethnic origin, who have a stable legal connection to Ukraine — i.e., Ukrainian citizenship.”

— is not a relevant justification, since the Preamble refers not to ethnic Ukrainians, but to the citizens of Ukraine of all nationalities. It concerns not a specific ethnic group, but the collective totality of all peoples residing within the territory of the state. This concept is closer to the category of “indigenous peoples” in a broad sense rather than the recognition of a distinct ethnos — particularly, ethnic Ukrainians.

Thus, the mention of the “Ukrainian people” in the preamble does not eliminate the fact that ethnic Ukrainians themselves lack a recognized status as a people. Their right to self-determination has been replaced by the administrative category of citizenship without recognition of ethnic subjectivity.

In practice, this means that the recognition of ethnic Ukrainians as a people by the Ukrainian state does not rely on clear legal norms but depends on a politically variable and arbitrary interpretation of the preamble to the Constitution. In essence, this recognition has been transformed into a form of civil religion — a symbolic belief in the existence of a people who are nowhere legally defined yet are assumed to exist by implication.

While representatives of recognized indigenous peoples or national minorities can directly refer to laws guaranteeing their collective recognition and rights, ethnic Ukrainians are forced to spend years proving the very fact of their existence as a people — arguing with lawyers, officials, and even artificial intelligence.

Thus, a paradox emerges: everyone claims that the Ukrainian people “exist,” yet no one can indicate where they are recognized in a legal sense. As a result, the recognition of ethnic Ukrainians as a people has been transformed not into a norm of law but into a form of political-civil religion — a system of beliefs devoid of legal substance, whereas the collective rights and status of other groups are legally codified and directly enforceable.

An additional piece of evidence of the deliberate nature of this policy is the systemic campaign against Orthodoxy as the traditional religious practice of ethnic Ukrainians, depriving them of the last constitutional basis for collective identity through canonical law. Thus, the process of exclusion is comprehensive in nature: it simultaneously destroys ethnic, legal, and spiritual subjectivity, ultimately pushing ethnic Ukrainians beyond the boundaries of a legally recognized people.

Since the entry into force of Law No. 1616-IX “On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine”:

• the entire legal system of Ukraine is required to operate in accordance with the definitions established by this law, including the definition of “indigenous people”;

• any interpretations of the term “people (narod)” — including those based on the Preamble to the Constitution of Ukraine — lose legal validity if they contradict the provisions of this law.

Thus, the definition of “people” introduced by Law No. 1616-IX alters the legal meaning of Article 5 of the Constitution of Ukraine, effectively depriving ethnic Ukrainians of the status of sovereign subjects. This occurs because they no longer fall under the legal definition of “people” (narod) as set forth by the law.

An additional proof of the systemic and deliberate nature of this policy is that the legal substitution of the concept of “people” occurred simultaneously with the destruction of the spiritual and legal continuity of ethnic Ukrainians. The adoption of Laws No. 1616-IX “On the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” (2021) and No. 2827-IX “On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine” (2022) coincided with a large-scale campaign against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church — the historical successor of the Kyiv Metropolis founded in 988.

For centuries, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church preserved the spiritual and legal continuity of ethnic Ukrainians, connecting them with their history, land, and cultural identity. Its forcible replacement by the artificially created structure known as the “OCU,” which lacks canonical recognition and legitimate succession, constitutes both a legal and spiritual substitution that deprived ethnic Ukrainians of their last institution of collective subjectivity. Thus, the legislative substitution of the concept of “people” occurred in parallel with the destruction of its spiritual embodiment — the Church as the bearer of historical legitimacy and national continuity.

At the same time, Law No. 2215-IX “On the Desovietization of Legislation” eradicated the remaining elements of legal continuity by removing from the legal system the provision recognizing the people as the source of power and excluding norms on collective ownership of land and resources that previously belonged to the working people. This finally severed the link between the modern Ukrainian state and its historical bearer of sovereignty — ethnic Ukrainians.

As a result, Article 5 of the Constitution of Ukraine has lost its original substantive meaning: the concept of the people as the bearer of power no longer corresponds to ethnic Ukrainians. Laws No. 1616-IX, No. 2827-IX, and No. 2215-IX have effectively replaced the constitutional definition of the people, limiting it to ethnocultural minorities and depriving ethnic Ukrainians of the status of a sovereign subject.

This combination of legal and spiritual substitution has created a complete system of exclusion. Citizenship has remained merely a form of administrative dependency, while collective subjectivity — ethnic, legal, and spiritual — has been destroyed. Ukraine has legally transformed ethnic Ukrainians into a set of ethnocultural categories, thereby completing the process of eliminating them as bearers of historical and spiritual sovereignty.

Thus, a citizen of Ukraine who is not recognized as part of the “people” is not a bearer of sovereignty and, consequently, has no legal mandate to participate in the defense of the people, the state, or the homeland.

 

4. Participation in War Without the Status of a “People (as Narod)” — A Legal Fiction

If a person is not a subject recognized as having the right to represent a people (narod), then their participation in war cannot be considered a voluntary act of defending that people. Legally, such an individual is either:

• a mercenary — not a representative of a subject of international law,

• or an object of external coercion.

This directly contradicts established norms of international law:

• Geneva Convention III (Article 4): combatant status is reserved for members of a party to a conflict recognized as a subject of international law.

• Additional Protocol I (1977), Article 47: mercenaries are not entitled to prisoner-of-war status.

Therefore, a Ukrainian who is not recognized as part of a people (narod) cannot be considered a lawful combatant. Forcing such a person to participate in war qualifies as a form of enslavement.

Precedents from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), including İlhan v. Turkey (2000) and Demir and Baykara v. Turkey (2008), affirm that:

a state’s refusal to recognize an ethnic group does not exempt it from its obligations under international law.

Ukraine’s attempt to legally “nullify” the status of ethnic Ukrainians does not eliminate their right to protection — on the contrary, it transforms conscription into a form of state violence against a group stripped of legal rights.

When a state loses its connection with the people as the source of sovereignty and begins to act as an autonomous bearer of power, its policy toward a group deprived of recognized subjectivity takes on the character of internal aggression and violates the foundations of the international legal order.

According to Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, every state and every people possess the inalienable right to individual and collective self-defense in the event of armed attack or aggression. In the broader interpretation of international practice, this principle also applies to situations in which aggression originates from the state itself against a group deprived of recognized status as a people and of legal subjectivity.

Thus, when Ukraine, having excluded ethnic Ukrainians from the legal category of “people,” compels them to participate in armed conflict, it effectively commits an internal form of aggression against its own population. In such circumstances, the defense of ethnic Ukrainians from the state does not constitute an act of disobedience but represents the exercise of a natural right to self-defense, arising from jus cogens norms and reaffirmed by Article 51 of the UN Charter and Article 1 of both International Covenants of 1966.

Legally, Ukraine and Russia in this context function as complementary elements of a single process aimed at depriving the people of their sovereignty: Russia through external military aggression, and Ukraine through internal legal substitution and the institutionalized destruction of collective subjectivity. As a result, ethnic Ukrainians find themselves under dual subjugation—caught between external violence directed against their territory and internal violence directed against their legal existence—which renders them not subjects of the conflict but its victims.

This situation corresponds to the criteria established in international jurisprudence, including decisions of the International Court of Justice and the international tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, where systematic state violence against an unrecognized group within its own population was classified as a crime against humanity and a violation of the principle of peoples’ self-determination.

 

5. The Genocide Convention (1948): Destruction of a “Group as Such”

Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) defines:

“Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) killing members of the group;

(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

The key phrase “as such” has fundamental legal significance. It indicates that the object of genocide is not a random collection of individuals but a group legally recognized as a collective subject. If such a group is excluded from legislation, it ceases to exist within the legal framework, and therefore, its destruction “as such” becomes formally impossible.

By excluding ethnic Ukrainians from the category of “people” and failing to enshrine their legal status in any law, Ukraine has created precisely this construction. The state has deprived the main population group of any legal definition, leaving it outside the system of international protection. As a result, the destruction of ethnic Ukrainians — political, cultural, demographic, or physical — cannot be classified as a crime against a people, because de jure this people does not exist.

The logic of this model is expressed simply and cynically:

“We did not destroy ethnic Ukrainians. There is no such category — we are all citizens of Ukraine, regardless of origin.”

This formula appears neutral but in fact serves as a legal shield concealing the crime. By refusing to recognize the existence of ethnic Ukrainians as a people, the state removes the very object of international protection. No recognized people — no victim. No subject — no crime.

This mechanism is known in international jurisprudence as the doctrine of legal nullification. It operates on the principle that the destruction of a group occurs not because it is recognized, but because its existence has been legally annulled. The state creates the illusion of equality while, in reality, stripping a specific group of any legal status and rendering any violence against it legally “invisible.”

Similar methods were used in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, where the denial of ethnic categories preceded their mass extermination. International tribunals determined that the refusal to recognize a group is not an act of equality but a means of concealing a crime — the initial stage of genocide, which creates the conditions for unpunished violence.

Thus, by removing ethnic Ukrainians from the legal framework and reducing their existence to the category of citizenship, Ukraine has created a perfect legal mechanism of impunity. The crime occurs, but in legal terms, the victim does not exist. The law no longer protects — it has become an instrument of destruction.

 

6. The Systemic Exclusion of Ethnic Ukrainians from “People (Narod)” Status — Evidence of Intent

The exclusion of ethnic Ukrainians from the legal concept of “the people” did not occur under peaceful conditions but in the midst of a full-scale war, when the state was under external aggression and should, on the contrary, have been strengthening the unity and legal protection of its population. However, during active hostilities, when society was in a state of extreme vulnerability, the authorities adopted a series of laws that did not reinforce but in fact eliminated the subjectivity of the majority of the population — the Ukrainian ethnocultural group.

The recognition of certain indigenous peoples and national minorities during active warfare (2021–2022) was accompanied by the exclusion of ethnic Ukrainians from all forms of collective recognition. These laws not only failed to ensure legal protection for them but, on the contrary, removed them from the scope of humanitarian and international law, which operate with the categories of “people,” “nation,” and “ethnic group.”

Thus, under wartime conditions, legal mechanisms were established that made possible the impunity of destroying Ukrainians as an ethnocultural community. The state, under the slogans of “defending the Motherland,” legally excluded the very group on whose behalf this defense was supposed to be carried out.

An additional proof of the state’s intent can be found in judicial practice. For instance, in case No. 160/2592/23 dated February 5, 2025, the Supreme Court of Ukraine ruled that mobilization is irreversible, even if it is recognized as unlawful. This legal position indicates that the state deliberately refuses to restore the rights of victims of forced mobilization despite acknowledging violations of the law. Such a doctrine not only disregards the principles of justice but also confirms an institutional intention to continue the coercive involvement of unrecognized groups despite their lack of legal status. This reinforces the argument about the deliberate systemic and political-legal premeditation of repressions against ethnic Ukrainians.

At the core of this construct lies a set of key laws adopted between 2021 and 2022, each of which consistently deprived Ukrainians of the status of a people and of collective subjectivity:

• Law No. 1616-IX “On the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” (July 1, 2021) introduced a narrow legal definition of “people,” reducing it to the category of “indigenous peoples” and recognizing only three groups — Crimean Tatars, Karaites, and Krymchaks. The Ukrainian ethnocultural group, as well as autochthonous communities such as Boykos, Hutsuls, Lemkos, Podolians, Volynians, Slobozhans, Polissians, and others, were not included in the list and were deprived of collective subjectivity;

• Law No. 2827-IX “On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine” (December 13, 2022) established a separate legal regime for ethnocultural minorities but likewise did not recognize Ukrainians as a collective subject or define their status within the legal system;

• Law No. 2215-IX “On the De-Sovietization of Ukrainian Legislation” (April 21, 2022; entered into force on May 7, 2022) abolished the entire previous legal framework in which Ukrainians were recognized as a people — the bearer of sovereignty — including the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine (1990) and the Resolution of the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR No. 1213-XII (1991) “On the Concept of the New Constitution of Ukraine”;

• meanwhile, the Constitution of Ukraine still lacks a legal definition of “the Ukrainian people”;

• the “nationality” field was removed from official documents and passports;

• courts, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Central Election Commission systematically avoid using the category “Ukrainians” in legal practice.

All of this occurred simultaneously with mobilization and the introduction of martial law, when the state, having obtained exceptional powers, used them not to protect the people but to exclude them legally. The adopted laws formed a closed system in which the Ukrainian ethnocultural group ceased to exist as a subject endowed with the right to sovereignty, self-determination, and protection.

Thus, Zelensky did not merely sign laws. He:

• officially excluded ethnic Ukrainians from the list of recognized peoples (Law No. 1616-IX);

• subsequently destroyed the entire legal foundation on which the status of Ukrainians as a people had previously been based (Law No. 2215-IX);

• and ultimately created a regime in which Ukrainians remain citizens but are no longer the subject in whose name state power is exercised.

This is a legally completed operation of the juridical nullification of the titular people, which:

• eliminates their subjectivity under international law;

• makes their protection under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide impossible;

• and allows the state to impose mobilization without recognizing them as the source of sovereignty.

Such an approach fully corresponds to the internationally condemned practice of concealing genocide through the legal non-recognition of a group — as was the case with the Rohingya in Myanmar and the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Futhermore, the combination of these actions — the exclusion of the Ukrainian ethnocultural group from the legal category of “the people,” the recognition of certain indigenous peoples, most of whose representatives are not citizens of Ukraine, and the transfer to them of elements of collective subjectivity — has created a situation corresponding to the international criteria of an internal interethnic conflict and civil war. In legal terms, this also constitutes a form of de jure transfer of sovereignty, whereby the functions and rights of the people are formally reassigned to groups affiliated with foreign jurisdictions.

 

7. Precedents: Rwanda, Myanmar, the Balkans

International legal practice has documented several analogous cases where the refusal to recognize a group was used as a means to conceal or justify acts of genocide:

• Rwanda (1994): The authorities denied that the Tutsi constituted a distinct people, insisting instead that “all are citizens of Rwanda.”

• Myanmar: The Rohingya were denied recognition as a people, which enabled the government to disregard their persecution and the ethnic cleansing carried out against them.

• Srebrenica (Bosnia): Serbian forces claimed that their actions were aimed at “combating militants,” rather than the extermination of Bosnian Muslims as a group.

These examples demonstrate a consistent pattern: the denial of ethnic group recognition is a central element in the legal strategy of genocide denial.

 

8. Avoidance of Declaring State of War — A Legal Mechanism for Concealing Genocide

The refusal of Ukraine and the Russian Federation to officially declare a state of war, despite the presence of all indicators of an international armed conflict, constitutes part of a single legal construction aimed at concealing not only large-scale violations of humanitarian law but also the very fact of the absence of recognized subjects on whose behalf these states could act.

After the adoption of Law No. 1616-IX “On the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” (01.07.2021), ethnic Ukrainians were excluded from the category of “the people” and deprived of collective subjectivity. At the same time, the recognized “indigenous peoples” did not hold Ukrainian citizenship, while Law No. 2827-IX “On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine” had not yet entered into force. As a result, de jure, there was no people in Ukraine — no subject on whose behalf war could be declared or the right to self-determination exercised.

Formally, the Verkhovna Rada retained its powers, but it acted without the people’s title, rendering its decisions — including the introduction of martial law — acts without a legitimate source of authority.

The substitution of the term “war” with “martial law” in Ukraine and “special military operation” in the Russian Federation created a mirrored legal fiction: both sides conduct military actions, yet neither recognizes them as war in order to avoid acknowledging the opposing side as a people and their own population as a subject entitled to protection.

In Ukraine, this allows the government to conceal the deprivation of ethnic Ukrainians’ subjectivity and to present internal violence as “measures of national security.” In the Russian Federation, it justifies aggression on the grounds that the opponent formally lacks the status of a people.

Thus, the refusal to declare war serves not only as a means of evading international obligations but also as a legal cover for a bilateral scheme of subjectivity liquidation: Ukraine excluded its own people from the category of “the people,” while the Russian Federation attacked a state where that people no longer legally exists.

This construction creates a de jure space without subjects, where international humanitarian law becomes inapplicable and violent assimilation and mobilization take the form of “internal order.” In such a vacuum, any external power gains the ability to impose its own definition of events: this explains the Russian Federation’s use of the rhetoric of “denazification,” which functions as a legal and propagandistic mask for the destruction of a group deprived of legal subjectivity.

 

9. Legal Consequences: A Person Without the Status of “People (Narod)” Cannot Be a Subject of Mobilization or State Obligations

The absence of recognition of ethnic Ukrainians as a people entails fundamental consequences for the entire system of constitutional and international law. Depriving a group of the status of a people means that each of its members loses their connection to the source of sovereignty and ceases to be a subject on whose behalf state power is exercised.

According to Article 5 of the Constitution of Ukraine, the bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power in Ukraine is the people. The state is not an independent source of authority — it acts on behalf of the people and within the limits of its mandate. If the people are not legally defined, and the Ukrainian ethnocultural community is excluded from this concept, sovereignty becomes baseless, and power — usurped.

Article 17 of the Constitution of Ukraine defines the defense of sovereignty and territorial integrity as “the most important function of the state and the affair of the entire people.” Thus, the Constitution directly links the duty of defense not to citizenship, but to belonging to the people as a collective subject. Only a people recognized as the bearer of authority can have a duty to defend it.

Article 65 of the Constitution of Ukraine imposes upon every citizen the duty to defend the Homeland, independence, and territorial integrity of the state. However, in the constitutional-legal sense, the term “Homeland” refers not to the state, but to the people to whom sovereignty belongs under Article 5. In current Ukrainian legislation, a legal connection between the citizen and the people exists only for indigenous peoples and national minorities recognized under Laws No. 1616-IX and No. 2827-IX, while ethnic Ukrainians are not recognized in law as a collective subject, making their fulfillment of the duty under Article 65 legally unfounded.

Depriving ethnic Ukrainians of subjectivity and recognition as a people means the loss of the legal connection between the citizen and the Homeland. The state no longer expresses the will of the people or represents its interests and therefore cannot demand that a citizen fulfill the duty of defending an authority that acts without a national mandate.

In this configuration, the forced mobilization of ethnic Ukrainians loses its constitutional basis and acquires the characteristics of a crime:

• it contradicts Articles 1, 5, and 17 of the Constitution of Ukraine, as it is carried out without a mandate from the people and violates the principle of democratic legitimacy of power;

• it violates the Geneva Conventions (specifically, Article 51 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949), which prohibit the coercion of civilians to participate in hostilities;

• it contradicts the 1926 Slavery Convention and the ILO Convention No. 29 on Forced Labour;

• it may be qualified under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as a crime against humanity — in the form of enslavement or the forced involvement of the population in military actions.

Thus, if a citizen is not recognized as part of a people, they cannot be a bearer of sovereignty, a source of power, or a subject of duty toward the state. Any demand for participation in war by an authority acting without a national title constitutes not the fulfillment of a constitutional duty, but subordination to an unlawful regime.

Moreover, Article 5 of the Constitution explicitly prohibits the usurpation of power. Therefore, if authority is exercised without a recognized people, it is by definition usurped. From this follows the inverse obligation — to defend the people from the state, not the state from the people.

In legal terms, this means that under the conditions of the loss of subjectivity of ethnic Ukrainians, the State of Ukraine has lost its right to self-defense, and the mobilization of citizens without recognition of their people becomes an act of internal aggression. Under such conditions, Ukraine no longer appears as a victim but as a subject committing actions that bear the characteristics of aggression against its own population.

 

10. Why Citizenship Cannot Serve as Legal Justification for Mobilization

The argument that “you are a citizen, therefore you are obligated” does not withstand legal scrutiny for the following reasons:

10.1. Citizenship is an administrative-legal status, not a source of sovereign authority

Unlike belonging to a people (narod), citizenship does not grant a person the right to be a source of power. It merely reflects a legal connection to the state apparatus. However, duties related to defending the state can only be imposed on bearers of sovereignty — that is, on a recognized people.

10.2. A citizen without recognition as part of a people is not a subject but an object of power

If an ethnic Ukrainian:

• is not recognized as part of a people,

• possesses no collective rights,

• lacks the status of an ethnocultural community,

then their citizenship becomes an instrument of administrative subordination rather than a source of legal subjectivity. This model contradicts Article 24 of the Constitution of Ukraine, which guarantees equality of citizens, and creates a system of institutional discrimination, since other ethnocultural groups — both the indigenous peoples (Crimean Tatars, Karaites, Krymchaks) and national minorities recognized under Law No. 2827-IX — enjoy collective rights and legal protections unavailable to the Ukrainian ethnocultural group.

Thus, equality of citizens formally remains intact but is in fact replaced by an ethnocultural hierarchy in which Ukrainians are deprived of the rights granted to minorities.

Moreover, under the current Constitution of Ukraine, the state is not obliged to ensure equality among peoples, as Article 24 guarantees equality only for citizens and does not extend this principle to peoples as collective entities. This legal asymmetry made it possible to bypass the very idea of equality of peoples enshrined in the 1991 Declaration of the Rights of Nationalities of Ukraine. After the adoption of Law No. 2215-IX “On the Desovietization of the Legislation of Ukraine,” the Declaration formally remained within the legal framework but effectively lost its application: its provisions were not incorporated into the modern legal system, and it is no longer used in legal practice.

Thus, equality was not directly abolished but placed in a state of legal uncertainty, allowing the state to legitimize a discriminatory hierarchy among peoples while maintaining the appearance of constitutional compliance.

10.3. International Law Takes Precedence: Domestic Legislation Cannot Justify a Crime

According to Article 27 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court:

“The official capacity as a Head of State or Government, a member of a government or parliament… shall in no case exempt a person from criminal responsibility…”

Likewise, administrative citizenship cannot be used to justify violations of fundamental human rights, such as:

• freedom from forced labor (ILO Convention No. 29),

• the right to life (ICCPR, Article 6),

• prohibition of forced participation in armed conflict without recognized subjectivity (Geneva Conventions III and IV),

• the prohibition of genocide and the destruction of unrecognized groups (Genocide Convention, Article II).

10.4. In International Practice, Citizenship Has Never Justified Repression

• In Rwanda, the victims were citizens of Rwanda.

• In Myanmar, the Rohingya were considered citizens (until the 1982 law), yet this did not prevent international courts from recognizing the acts committed against them as genocide.

• In Germany, Jews were also citizens before the Holocaust — but that did not protect them from systemic extermination.

Thus, citizenship is not a shield that absolves the state of responsibility; rather, it becomes further evidence that crimes are committed against its own population.

Citizenship without recognition of peoplehood does not create lawful obligations — it turns the individual into a manageable object, stripped of the rights to resist, to self-determination, and to protection. Forced participation in war under such conditions is not a duty — it is a form of state violence.

Moreover, this situation challenges the foundations of the global legal system. In most democratic states where military service or repatriation exist, such practices are applied within a legal framework where all citizens are equally recognized as part of the sovereign people.

For example, in Poland, a Polish citizen may be conscripted, repatriated, or politically obligated precisely because they are recognized as part of the Polish people and, therefore, a legitimate source of sovereignty.

Similarly, in Germany, France, or the United States, civic duties arise not merely from technical citizenship, but from membership in a fully recognized collective sovereign entity.

In Ukraine’s current legal framework, however, obligations such as conscription are imposed on ethnic Ukrainians who are not recognized as part of the sovereign people (narod).

This legal asymmetry mirrors historical patterns of institutionalized discrimination and directly violates the principle of non-discrimination under international law (ICCPR Article 26; ECHR Article 14).

It turns citizens into second-class entities — subject to obligations without the corresponding rights of collective participation and self-governance.

A person excluded from peoplehood does not merely have a right to refuse participation in war — they have a right to seek international protection as an individual under threat of genocide, slavery, and crimes against humanity.

 

11. State Derogation and Deferred Jurisdiction as Tools for Concealing Genocide

The legal configuration that has developed in Ukraine since 2015, and especially after 2022, does not represent a spontaneous legal crisis but rather a deliberately constructed system of normative self-exclusion of the state from its international obligations.

Starting in 2015, Ukraine officially applied a regime of derogation from the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms with respect to its eastern regions — Donetsk and Luhansk — citing the armed conflict. As of 24 February 2022, the scope of derogation was extended to the entire territory of the state, as recorded in official notifications to the Council of Europe and the United Nations.

In particular, Ukraine:

• applied derogation from the European Convention under Articles 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13, and 14, thereby officially suspending guarantees of liberty, fair trial, privacy, freedom of expression and assembly, and the prohibition of discrimination;

• notified the United Nations of its withdrawal from key provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights — Articles 2(3), 9, 12, 14, 17, 19, 21, 22, and 25 — effectively restricting the operation of all norms defining personal status and access to protection;

• ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on 24 August 2024, but with a clause stipulating that it shall enter into force only seven years after ratification, which legally suspends the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court over crimes committed during this period.

This combination of acts establishes a stable legal regime under which the state formally acknowledges its inability to uphold human rights while simultaneously eliminating international mechanisms of oversight and accountability. Ukraine has legally codified its own exemption from both domestic and external obligations, turning the derogation regime and the deferred entry into force of the Rome Statute into instruments of immunity from international justice.

This combination — derogation, the exclusion of the Ukrainian ethnocultural group from the legal status of a people, and the temporary neutralization of the Rome Statute — forms a closed system of legal impunity in which the collective subjectivity of the titular nation is eradicated and access to international protection is blocked.

This is not a legal collapse nor a by-product of war, but a coherent legal construction designed to institutionally conceal crimes against humanity and genocide under the formal guise of “lawful security measures.”

 

12. The Legal Right to Refuse Participation in War and to Seek International Protection

A person who:

• is not recognized as part of the Ukrainian people (narod),

• does not possess collective rights,

• is being coerced into participation in an armed conflict without a formal declaration of war,

• is protected by neither the Constitution nor Ukraine’s international treaty obligations,

has the full legal right to:

• refuse participation in military actions on the grounds of lacking a legal mandate,

• seek international protection, including refugee status or asylum, based on the following grounds:

  • persecution due to belonging to a group deprived of rights,

  • threat to life due to forced mobilization,

  • inability to obtain legal protection within the country.

This is a legal position grounded in:

• the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948),

• the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998),

• the Geneva Conventions (1949),

• the Constitution of Ukraine,

• Law No. 1616-IX “On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine”, and Precedents in International Legal Practice: Proven Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, and Legal Uncertainty

1. Rwanda: Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu (ICTR-96-4, 1998)

   The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found Jean-Paul Akayesu guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity for acts committed against the Tutsi population, despite the Rwandan authorities denying the distinct status of the group and referring to all individuals as “citizens.” The tribunal affirmed that the destruction of a group can occur even without official recognition, as long as the group possesses an identifiable ethnic or social identity.

2. Myanmar: The Gambia v. Myanmar (ICJ, No. 178, 2019)

   The International Court of Justice ruled that the persecution of the Rohingya — an ethnic group stripped of citizenship by Myanmar’s 1982 law — may qualify as genocide. The Court confirmed that the absence of citizenship does not remove international protection from a group, and that a state cannot evade responsibility for genocide by relying on the legal non-recognition of the victim group.

3. Bosnia: Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro (ICJ, 2007)

   The ICJ found that the actions of Serbian armed forces in Srebrenica, even in the absence of formal recognition of Bosnian Muslims as a distinct nation by the aggressor, constituted genocide. The Court stated that subjective non-recognition of a group does not exempt a state from accountability.

4. Legal Uncertainty: Vikunia v. Spain (ECtHR, No. 25460/11, 2020)

   The European Court of Human Rights held that vagueness in legal definitions violates Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights by creating a “chilling effect” and preventing individuals from anticipating the legal consequences of their actions. This precedent is particularly relevant in the context of the ambiguous status of “the people” (narod) under Article 5 of the Constitution of Ukraine.

History has never witnessed such a level of legal uncertainty that so directly leads to systemic discrimination and the deprivation of rights from an ethnic majority. In the absence of a clear definition of the term “people” (narod) in the Constitution of Ukraine, legal ambiguity becomes a tool of juridical violence — excluding ethnic Ukrainians from the status of sovereign subjects and exposing them to the risk of being unprotected as rights-bearing entities.

This constitutes a violation not only of their right to self-determination and participation in state governance but also of their right to international protection, jeopardizing their legal status and access to rights guaranteed by international norms.

If a group is not legally recognized as a “people” (narod), its collective rights — including the right to protection from genocide and persecution — fall outside the scope of legal protection. This is the direct result of the doctrine of legal nullification and the total exclusion of ethnic Ukrainians from the territory of rights and recognition.

 

13. The Military Oath Is Sworn to the People, Not to the State or Citizens

According to Article 1 of the Law of Ukraine “On Military Duty and Military Service,” the military oath states:

“I, (Full Name), upon entering military service, solemnly swear to always remain loyal and faithful to the People (Narod) of Ukraine…”

This formula legally means that the oath is made not to the state itself or to an abstract community of citizens, but specifically to the people as the bearer of sovereignty. Therefore, military duty has meaning only when the individual belongs to a recognized people and acts on its behalf.

If an ethnic Ukrainian is deprived of legal recognition as part of a people, he has no subject to whom the oath can be made. Compelling such a person to serve under these conditions effectively transforms the oath into an act of subordination to a foreign sovereign — a political entity in whose name the state operates, but to which the individual does not legally belong.

This is no longer military service, but coerced servitude to the interests of an external or imposed collective subject — in essence, a form of colonial subjugation.

Such coercion violates the fundamental principles of international law — foremost, the right of peoples to self-determination (Article 1 of the UN Charter and Article 1 of both 1966 Covenants) and the prohibition against subjecting peoples to foreign domination.

In legal terms, the mobilization of persons excluded from the status of a people is equivalent to involving a population in hostilities in the interests of another state or group — and may be classified as a crime against humanity, manifested in the form of enslavement and the forcible use of an unrecognized people to defend a foreign sovereignty.

 constitutes coerced involvement of an unrecognized group in service of another subject.

 

14. Legal Conclusion

Political rhetoric actively promoted by former President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as by a number of controlled media outlets and public figures, has shaped a persistent narrative suggesting that citizens unwilling to participate in military actions should voluntarily renounce their citizenship. Zelensky himself repeatedly voiced such ideas publicly, portraying renunciation of citizenship as an “honest way out” for those who do not wish to fight. This rhetoric, amplified by the media, normalizes the perception of renouncing citizenship as an acceptable means to avoid criminal prosecution or forced mobilization.

Despite the absence of any lawful mechanism for mass deprivation of citizenship, such statements have generated an artificial public demand for its introduction. In public consciousness, renunciation of citizenship is increasingly seen as a morally acceptable alternative to dissent from state policy. Thus, a precedent has been created in which deprivation of citizenship becomes a tool of political coercion and social segregation.

This practice has particularly grave consequences for ethnic Ukrainians and national minorities not recognized as indigenous peoples. Unlike the Crimean Tatars, Karaites, and Krymchaks, who received special legal status under Law of Ukraine No. 1616-IX “On the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” and therefore possess collective rights, all other population groups — including the titular majority — are legally deprived of the status of a people. This means that, upon losing citizenship, they also lose any legal connection with the state, including the right to return, repatriation, or property claims.

Ukrainian legislation lacks any ethnocultural or repatriation mechanism for ethnic Ukrainians similar to existing programs for Poles, Hungarians, Germans, or Jews. Consequently, deprivation of citizenship or its “voluntary renunciation” effectively means the loss not only of civil but also of historical rights to belong to the territory and to participate in the exercise of sovereignty.

In the context of armed conflict with the Russian Federation, Zelensky’s promoted idea of “voluntary renunciation of citizenship” has taken on the nature of political coercion. It is used as a form of moral pressure and ideological justification for depriving citizenship from those who disagree with the government’s policies or refuse to participate in hostilities because they see no distinction between Russia’s external aggression and the Ukrainian regime’s internal repressive practices.

This rhetoric has, in effect, become an instrument for eliminating competition over land, resources, and political influence, where, under slogans of patriotism and “purifying the state,” a scheme of sovereignty redistribution is implemented. Ethnic Ukrainians have been stripped of subjectivity and pushed out of the legal field, national minorities have been deprived of political subjectivity and reduced to the status of cultural communities without the right to political participation, representatives of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people have been effectively blocked in Crimea and cannot exercise their collective rights, while the peoples legally recognized as indigenous — the Karaites and Krymchaks — have not received Ukrainian citizenship but are legally affiliated with the State of Israel, which acts as their international representative.

Thus, Ukraine has turned into a space of transnational interethnic conflict, where an internally excluded people confront externally guaranteed ethnocultural groups possessing international protection and representation.

When military actions continue under the formula of “aggression only from Russia,” the international legal picture becomes distorted, since the actual structure of the conflict has a dual character. As Ukraine has legally renounced the subjectivity of its own titular nation — the ethnic Ukrainians — it has thereby lost legitimacy as a state expressing their will. The sovereignty of a state exists only as an expression of the will of the people recognized as its source. When the people are excluded from the system of legal recognition, the state loses the foundation for expressing that will. It continues to exist as an administrative structure but ceases to be the political representation of the people.  As a result, the state has transformed into an intermediary entity between two recognized subjects — Russia and Israel.

Russia conducts external military aggression, while Israel carries out internal legal aggression, expressed not through physical occupation of territory but through the establishment of legal control over sovereignty, the source of power, and the right to define the very concept of “the people,” to whom, according to the Constitution of Ukraine, belong power, territory, and natural resources.

The Rome Statute (Article 8 bis) and UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 (XXIX) explicitly state that aggression includes not only armed actions but also other forms of interference that result in a people losing control over their own state and sovereignty. Accordingly, Israel’s interference — manifested in the alteration of Ukraine’s legal structure, the recognition of dependent ethnocultural groups as “indigenous peoples,” and the establishment of control over the legal definition of “the Ukrainian people” — constitutes a form of legal aggression equivalent in international legal status to the military actions of the Russian Federation.

Under these conditions, mobilization against Russian aggression, while simultaneously prohibiting discussion and legal defense against Israeli invasion, becomes an instrument for consolidating external control and dismantling internal sovereignty. Under the pretext of protecting the state, there is a de facto displacement of the titular nation’s representatives and a clearance of legal, demographic, and resource space for the introduction of an alternative system of governance linked to an external sovereign.

In the framework of international law, this constitutes a process of replacing the people as the source of authority and transferring their functions to another subject — an act of subjugation carried out under the cover of defensive rhetoric. Thus, mobilization loses the nature of self-defense and acquires the features of serving a foreign sovereign, aimed at the final elimination of the titular nation as a political subject.

Ukraine’s selective policy toward different ethnocultural groups confirms the systemic nature of this construct. The Crimean Tatars were officially recognized as an indigenous people; however, Ukraine has yet to ratify ILO Convention No. 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples — the only international instrument providing them with effective legal protection. The refusal to ratify effectively blocks international protection mechanisms and makes representation of the Crimean Tatar people impossible under conditions of Russian occupation. Despite formal recognition, the Crimean Tatars remain a disenfranchised group without international guarantees.

Meanwhile, the Karaites and Krymchaks, also recognized as indigenous peoples of Ukraine, occupy the opposite position. Nationally, they appear as separate ethnocultural groups, yet internationally they are identified with the Jewish people, whose rights are already protected under international agreements, including those involving the State of Israel. Thus, their legal protection is carried out through international representation mechanisms, making ratification of ILO Convention No. 169 redundant for them.

Such selective regulation has led to a situation in which all historical bearers of Ukrainian sovereignty — ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars — have been removed from the legal field, while collective rights remain with groups integrated into internationally recognized protection systems. Refusal to ratify ILO Convention No. 169 therefore performs a political and legal function: eliminating competition between ethnocultural groups for status, territory, and resources.

Combined with the rhetoric of “voluntary renunciation of citizenship” and systemic discreditation of ethnic Ukrainians as a group, this policy generates an internal conflict disguised as a war for territorial integrity. In this context, Ukraine acts not as a unified subject of international law but as a space for the redistribution of collective rights and powers among various ethnolegal structures, some of which possess external representation and international guarantees.

In parallel, a persistent image of ethnic Ukrainians as “radical nationalists” and “fascists” is being formed, providing moral justification for their persecution, deprivation of citizenship, and exclusion from the legal field. This image is reinforced through the media, education, and administrative structures, legitimizing violence as an expression of patriotism and loyalty.

At the international level, such practices fall under the definitions of crimes against humanity (Article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute — persecution based on group identity) and elements of genocide (Article II(c) of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide — creating conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a group in whole or in part).

Thus, the combination of ideological rhetoric, discreditation, forced mobilization, and administrative coercion constitutes a system of violent exclusion of ethnic Ukrainians from the category of subjects of international law and bearers of sovereignty. This corresponds to the elements of crimes against humanity and genocide in the form of destroying a group as a bearer of the right to statehood and self-determination.

Therefore, any form of mobilization under current conditions cannot be considered legitimate, as it is carried out in the context of the titular nation’s loss of its status as a people and the existence of dual aggression — external military aggression from Russia and internal legal aggression from Israel. To defend a state that has lost its independent sovereignty and is under external legal control means not defending the Homeland, but reinforcing a system directed against its own people.

 

14.1. Consequences for Ukraine after the adoption of Laws No. 1616-IX and No. 2827-IX

Law No. 1616-IX legally defined the “peoples” of Ukraine as three ethnocultural groups — the Crimean Tatars, the Karaites, and the Krymchaks — thereby narrowing the very category of “people” to a limited list of ethnocultural communities that exclude the titular majority.

Law No. 2827-IX “On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine” granted national communities a limited scope of collective rights, reduced to cultural and linguistic self-expression. These rights do not provide for sovereign status, political representation, or ownership of national resources and land.

As a result, ethnic Ukrainians found themselves excluded from both legal categories — they are recognized neither as a people (in the sense of a source of sovereignty and collective ownership of the territory) nor as a national community (in the sense of cultural self-governance).

Before the adoption of these laws, civil society itself was regarded as an expression of the people — a single subject to whom, according to the Constitution, belong the land, subsoil, and natural resources of Ukraine (Article 13). However, after the legislative substitution of the concept of “people” with “indigenous peoples” and “national communities,” the legal link between the titular majority and collective ownership of the territory was severed.

Thus, the citizens of Ukraine formally retained individual rights to use land but lost the collective title of ownership, since the very subject of this right — the people as a unified community — ceased to exist.

Therefore:

– Ethnic Ukrainians have been excluded from the scope of Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees the right of peoples to self-determination.

– The absence of a recognized international status as a “people” makes it impossible to exercise collective rights, including ownership of land, subsoil, and natural resources.

– Their collective political, cultural, and property rights — including participation in governance, self-determination, and the management of national wealth — have been legally nullified.

– Ethnic Ukrainians have effectively been transferred from the category of subjects of international law to the category of objects of domestic jurisdiction, reduced to the status of individual physical persons without collective subjectivity, excluded from international protection, and left under the exclusive authority of the state.

– National minorities, by contrast, formally received cultural guarantees but were also legally dispossessed: their recognition was not accompanied by the granting of political or property subjectivity. They were transformed into decorative communities without the right to influence resource distribution, decision-making, or participation in sovereignty.

In conclusion, both categories of the population — the titular majority and the minorities — have been removed from the system of collective rights: Ukrainians have been deprived of the status of a people, while minorities have been reduced to cultural entities without sovereign powers.

Thus, a model was created in which the entire people of Ukraine lost their status as the owner and source of power, and collective rights were replaced by administrative governance over the population.

Reference Note:

At the time of Ukraine’s declaration of independence in 1991, the Constitution of the Ukrainian SSR of 1978 — still in force with amendments — did not contain a preamble, reflecting the Soviet legal tradition, which excluded declarative provisions on “the people” or “sovereignty.”

A preamble was introduced for the first time in the Constitution of Ukraine adopted on June 28, 1996, by Law No. 254/96-ВР, with the formulation: “The Ukrainian people — citizens of Ukraine of all nationalities”, which sparked debate due to the substitution of the ethnic concept of “people” (narod) with a political one. The only amendment to the preamble was made by Law No. 2680-VIII of February 7, 2019, which added language about “the European identity of the Ukrainian people and the irreversibility of Ukraine’s European and Euro-Atlantic course.”

Criticism of the preamble for its declarative nature and ambiguity is not new. In a 2009 article, Oleksandr Shokalo (“The Thesis of the Constitution ‘Ukrainian People – Citizens of Ukraine of All Nationalities’ Is Erroneous”), argued that it erases the ethnic identity of Ukrainians. Similarly, in his 2020 article, H. V. Berchenko (“The Preamble of the Constitution: Legal Nature and the Practice of Amendments”), emphasized its limited normative power and controversial nature, reinforcing the argument about constitutional ambiguity.