The Ukrainian people formalized an act of self-determination in 1990–1991, when the Declaration of State Sovereignty explicitly established that Ukraine is a sovereign national state and that the bearer of sovereignty in the Republic is the people of Ukraine.

At the same time, the Declaration had a dual structure: in the section “Self-determination of the Ukrainian Nation” the national-ethnic component was enshrined — the act of self-determination of Ukrainians and the establishment of Ukraine as a national state, while in the section “Popular Sovereignty” the civic component was set out, where the people of Ukraine were defined as the totality of all citizens of Ukraine of all nationalities.

The 1996 Constitution enshrined in Article 5 the provision that the people are the sole source of power and sovereignty, but without specifying who exactly was meant by this term. At the same time, the formula “the people of Ukraine — the citizens of Ukraine of all nationalities,” which had been contained in the “Popular Rule” section of the Declaration of State Sovereignty, was for some unexplained reason transferred into the Preamble — a declarative part devoid of the force of a norm of direct action and not creating legal obligations.

This shift left open the possibility of a dual interpretation of the term “people” in Article 5 of the Constitution — both as the totality of Ukraine’s citizens of all nationalities, and as an ethnic collective subject. This became the legal basis for depriving ethnic Ukrainians of collective subjectivity in the future.

And until 2021, in Ukrainian legislation there were no special categories of “indigenous peoples” or “national minorities” as holders of collective rights, and therefore no political competition over the very definition of who constitutes the people. For this reason, the question was not raised either politically or legally: “the people” was understood as the totality of all citizens, and this inclusive narrative satisfied all sides.

However, the laws enacted by former President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not amend the text of the Constitution itself but effectively reinterpreted its meaning. Through ordinary legislation, the interpretation of key constitutional norms and concepts was changed. For the first time, specific ethnic groups were granted the status of “peoples” with collective rights, thereby dismantling the previous model of civil society in which all individuals were considered equal citizens.

This introduced a new legal interpretation of the term “people” through legislative acts, without the need to formally amend the Constitution.

Thus, the substitution of the legal definition of the term “people” in Ukraine was achieved through the adoption of two key laws: Law of Ukraine No. 1616-IX “On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” dated July 1, 2021, and Law of Ukraine No. 2827-IX “On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine” dated December 13, 2022.

These laws introduced norms of direct effect, in which the term “people” is defined as a collective ethno-cultural subject with special rights — in contrast to the previous inclusive definition enshrined in the Preamble of the Constitution and in numerous decisions of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, where the “Ukrainian people” was identified with the totality of all citizens.

As a result, a legal competition emerged between the civic and ethno-cultural interpretations of this concept — without any amendments to the text of the Basic Law, but with a de facto substitution of its meaning.

Unlike the Preamble of the Constitution of Ukraine, which is declarative in nature, contains no norms of direct effect, and does not entail any legal obligations or guarantees, Laws No. 1616-IX “On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” (dated July 1, 2021) and No. 2827-IX “On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine” (dated December 22, 2022) possess binding legal force as acts of direct application.

It is precisely these laws that effectively abolished the previous broad and inclusive interpretation of the concept of “people,” replacing it with a new legal construct in which collective rights are granted exclusively to indigenous peoples and national minorities. As a result, ethnic Ukrainians — as the titular majority — were excluded from all forms of collective legal subjectivity, in violation of the principle of equality established by the Declaration of the Rights of Nationalities of Ukraine No. 1771-XII of November 1, 1991, which guaranteed equal political, economic, social, and cultural rights to all peoples and national groups residing in Ukraine.

It is important to emphasize that the Declaration of the Rights of Nationalities of Ukraine No. 1771-XII of November 1, 1991 is the only normative act that directly guarantees equal rights specifically to peoples and national groups, not just to individual citizens. Unlike Article 24 of the Constitution of Ukraine, which affirms the equality of citizens before the law, the Declaration establishes the state’s obligation to ensure political, economic, social, and cultural rights for all peoples residing in the territory of Ukraine. This makes it a key legal source amid the legal vacuum that emerged after 2021.

Thus, the provisions of Articles 5 and 13 of the Constitution of Ukraine, which declare that it is the people who are the sole source of power and the owner of land, subsoil, and other natural resources, have lost legal clarity in interpretation after 2021.

It is important to emphasize that these articles refer specifically to the people, not to the citizens, as is systematically presented in official and media rhetoric. Such a substitution of concepts has no legal basis, since a “citizen” is an individual subject, while a “people” is a collective one. Ethnic Ukrainians were recognized as a people, but as a result of constitutional substitution and subsequent legislation, they were deprived of subjectivity — that is, the status of being the source of power and the holder of the right to dispose of land and resources.

Article 5 of the Constitution of Ukraine enshrines the principle of popular sovereignty and the provision that the people are the sole source of power, but the article itself does not specify who exactly is meant by this “people.” The definition appears only in the Preamble, which is declarative in nature and does not have the force of a norm of direct effect. As a result, this key concept has remained legally undefined and open to arbitrary interpretations — either in the direction of civil society, that is, the totality of all citizens of Ukraine regardless of nationality, or in favor of those groups that possess recognized ethnic subjectivity as a “people.”

At the same time, the materials of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine have established the position that the Preamble to the Constitution is of a political and declarative nature: it sets out goals and principles and serves as a guideline for interpretation, but does not contain norms of direct effect and does not constitute an independent source of subjective rights or obligations. This is explicitly stated in analytical materials of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine regarding constitutional interpretation (The Role of the Preamble in the Interpretation of the Constitution) and is confirmed in rulings where the Preamble was used only as contextual background for interpreting other provisions, but not as a self-executing norm.

Also, in the Opinion of the Venice Commission (“European Commission for Democracy through Law”) on the Draft Constitution of Ukraine prepared by a working group headed by V.M. Shapoval — Opinion on the Draft Constitution of Ukraine (prepared by a working group headed by Mr V.M. Shapoval), CDL-AD(2008)015, Venice Commission, 75th Plenary Session (Venice, 13–14 June 2008) — it is emphasized that the preambles of constitutions serve as a declaration of values and principles, but do not create norms of direct effect.

This approach is universally accepted around the world and has never been questioned by any legal system or court.

As a result, a legal anomaly has emerged: although the Constitution is formally the supreme legal authority, its Preamble has no direct effect. Therefore, the determining factor in defining who is considered a “people” became not constitutional provisions, but directly applicable laws initiated by the former President of Ukraine, in particular:

• Law No. 1616-IX “On the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” (2021),

• Law No. 2827-IX “On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine” (2022),

in which the term “ethnic Ukrainians” is explicitly excluded from the list of groups entitled to collective rights.

Article 13 of the Constitution of Ukraine, which establishes that the owner of land, subsoil, natural resources, and territories is the “Ukrainian people,” can formally be interpreted as referring to the totality of all citizens. However, after the adoption of special laws on indigenous peoples and national minorities, the term “people” acquired a new normative meaning through ethnic and status-based categories, under which the titular ethnic community — Ukrainians — may no longer be considered part of it. This created the possibility of an interpretation in which the “Ukrainian people” no longer includes Ukrainians themselves as an ethnic group.

Such a situation enables the arbitrary reinterpretation of sovereignty and ownership, whereby rights previously guaranteed to the entire people of Ukraine can be redistributed in favor of ethnically defined groups recognized by law, while legally excluding the titular majority.

As a result, the current Constitution and national legislation of Ukraine contain no legal confirmation that ethnic Ukrainians constitute a people — either in terms of collective subjectivity or even in principle. At the same time, national minorities and recognized “indigenous peoples” have received explicit legislative recognition as collective subjects endowed with special rights.

All legal succession of ethnic Ukrainians as a people historically entitled to land, resources, and power — as was enshrined in the constitutions of the Ukrainian SSR and the USSR through the concept of the “working people” — was effectively nullified by Law of Ukraine No. 2215-IX “On the De-Sovietization of the Legislation of Ukraine” of April 21, 2022. Under the pretext of de-Sovietization, legal provisions that directly linked the titular majority to sovereignty, property, and statehood were repealed, without granting them any new form of collective legal subjectivity.

Article 1 of the Law on National Minorities explicitly states that national minorities include all ethnic groups except ethnic Ukrainians. This means that the state officially acknowledges the existence of Ukrainians in an ethnic sense but uses this fact not to grant them rights or collective subjectivity — but solely to exclude them from all legal categories related to ethnicity.

The reference to Article 11 of the Constitution, which mentions the development of the Ukrainian nation, does not confirm the status of ethnic Ukrainians as a people. On the contrary, the article explicitly states that guarantees apply specifically to indigenous peoples and national minorities, indicating that the term “nation” is used in the civic rather than the ethnic sense. Moreover, the structure of the article, where indigenous peoples and national minorities are listed separately while ethnic Ukrainians are not mentioned at all, confirms their exclusion from the system of collective subjectivity. Taken together with the Preamble of the Constitution in its 1996 version, where the “Ukrainian people” is defined as the citizens of all nationalities, this confirms that Ukraine was legally framed precisely as a civic society, and not as a national state of the people who had exercised self-determination.

The Law of Ukraine “On Foreign Ukrainians” of March 4, 2004, No. 1582-IV, adopted during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma, explicitly stated that a foreign Ukrainian is a person of Ukrainian ethnic origin who recognizes Ukraine as their historical homeland. In this way, belonging to the Ukrainian nation had a clear ethnic content and was legally recognized as the foundation of diaspora identity.

However, on December 13, 2022, at the initiative of former President Volodymyr Zelensky, Law No. 2834-IX “On the Fundamental Principles of State Policy for Affirming Ukrainian National and Civic Identity” was adopted, which radically altered the meaning of previous legislation. 

The new act excluded the ethnic component from the concept of the “Ukrainian nation” and replaced it with cultural-symbolic attributes — language, culture, traditions, rituals, and commemorative dates. Moreover, Ukrainian identity was additionally tied to citizenship, which finally shifted it from the ethnic to the civic dimension.

Thus, former President Zelensky, through his law on identity, de jure nullified the ethnic content of the Law on Foreign Ukrainians, established under President Kuchma, and turned it from a legal instrument of diaspora protection into a mechanism of cultural propaganda without any legal recognition of Ukrainians as an ethnic people.

Thus, through this law on identity, former President Zelensky effectively nullified the ethnic content of the Law on Foreign Ukrainians, originally adopted under President Kuchma, and transformed it from a legal instrument for protecting the diaspora into a mechanism of cultural propaganda, without providing legal recognition of Ukrainians as an ethnic people.

As a result, an ethnic Ukrainian can no longer legally prove their existence as a people, because the entire legal framework is structured in such a way as to ensure their exclusion from the category of power-holders and rightful owners of territory and resources — despite the explicit provisions of Articles 5 and 13 of the Constitution of Ukraine.

It is also important to understand that any reference to decisions of the Constitutional Court, which previously interpreted the “people” as the totality of all citizens, has lost its legal relevance, since the direct-action laws No. 1616-IX, No. 2827-IX, and No. 2215-IX, adopted after 2021, introduced new ethnic and status-based categories, excluded the titular majority, and created a legal reality that did not exist at the time those court decisions were issued.

Even if the Constitutional Court, after 2022, recognizes that “all citizens constitute the people,” this will not resolve the structural problem. The right to self-determination remains inalienable under international law, but without recognizing ethnic Ukrainians as bearers of collective subjectivity, this right becomes legally unenforceable.

Laws No. 1616-IX, No. 2827-IX, and No. 2215-IX did not abolish the right itself, but they dismantled the institutional mechanisms for its realization by the titular nation. As long as the legal status of ethnic Ukrainians as a people is not formally established, any declarations about a “collective of citizens” fail to restore the legal frameworks through which rights to land, resources, repatriation, and collective identity are protected.

This maintains systemic inequality and elements of legal apartheid introduced after 2021.

There is also no law in Ukraine recognizing the titular nation or affirming the existence of a historical people in legal terms. The term “titular nation” remains purely a political or philological concept with no legal force, as it is not supported by any normative framework.

Therefore, the Ukrainian state effectively does not recognize the existence of ethnic Ukrainians as a people, since collective legal subjectivity under national legislation is granted exclusively to indigenous peoples and national minorities. As a result, it is these groups — and not ethnic Ukrainians — who legally become the sole source of power and sovereignty, as well as the rightful owners of land and territory, because there is not a single legal provision in Ukrainian law explicitly affirming that ethnic Ukrainians constitute a people.

 

1. Ethnic Ukrainians Deprived of the Right to Repatriation

Another piece of evidence that Ukraine does not recognize ethnic Ukrainians as a people is the complete absence of any repatriation program based on ethnic origin. Repatriation mechanisms are granted to indigenous peoples but not to Ukrainians, as they are not mentioned anywhere as a distinct ethnic subject.

In Ukraine, the right of return for ethnic Ukrainians is currently regulated solely by the Law of Ukraine “On Citizenship of Ukraine” No. 2235-III of January 18, 2001, where it is linked only to the fact of possessing or acquiring citizenship (Articles 8 and 19). In other words, if citizenship is lost, the right of return automatically ceases as well, since the law does not provide for a separate ethnic mechanism of repatriation, and no special laws for Ukrainians, similar to repatriation acts in other countries, exist.

Previously, the Law of Ukraine “On Citizenship of Ukraine” No. 1636-XII of October 8, 1991, signed by President Leonid Kravchuk, was in force, under which belonging to the Ukrainian nationality itself was recognized as a ground for acquiring citizenship and, accordingly, for return.

The situation changed after the adoption in 2001 of Law No. 2235-III, signed by President Leonid Kuchma, which eliminated the ethnic principle and established a civic-legal model. Since then, ethnic Ukrainians have been deprived of an independent legal basis for repatriation as a people, and their right of return has become entirely dependent on the possession of citizenship.

In the Law of Ukraine No. 1616-IX “On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” of 01.07.2021, the terms “repatriation” or “right of return” are not explicitly used. At the same time, Part 4 of Article 7 establishes a special procedure for reserving land plots for representatives of indigenous peoples “returning to the territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.” Formally, this mechanism is tied to the condition of de-occupation of Crimea, but de jure it enshrines an ethnic criterion of return, based not on citizenship but on belonging to a recognized indigenous community.

Thus, Ukraine introduced a selective principle of ethnic return, applying it exclusively to indigenous peoples (Crimean Tatars, Karaites, and Krymchaks). The titular nation — ethnic Ukrainians — is entirely excluded from this mechanism: their right of return is regulated only through citizenship under Law No. 2235-III “On Citizenship of Ukraine,” which automatically ceases to exist in the event of loss of citizenship. This legal construction establishes inequality between ethnic groups and deprives Ukrainians of an ethnic legal basis for returning to their own territory.

In international legal practice, similar repatriation mechanisms based on ethnicity exist and are widely applied in relation to titular nations:

• Germany: Article 116 of the Basic Law and the Federal Expellees and Refugees Act (BVFG) grant the right of return to ethnic Germans, regardless of their citizenship.

• Poland: The Repatriation Act of November 9, 2000 guarantees the right of return for individuals of Polish origin. Separately, the Pole’s Card (introduced in 2007) grants special rights to individuals identifying as Poles outside the country.

• Hungary: The 2010 Citizenship Act (Act XLIV of 2010) simplifies the acquisition of Hungarian citizenship for ethnic Hungarians living abroad, allowing them to apply without any residency requirement in Hungary.

• Israel: The Law of Return of 1950 grants the right of repatriation to all Jews, regardless of citizenship or place of residence, based solely on ethnic origin.

Thus, the international standard of repatriation is based on the inalienable right of return for a titular nation, grounded in ethnic belonging, not in formal citizenship. Ukraine violates this principle by leaving ethnic Ukrainians in a vulnerable position: their connection to their homeland depends entirely on a legal status (citizenship) that can be revoked — unlike ethnic affiliation, which is protected under international norms.

In effect, the only legal link between an ethnic Ukrainian and the state of Ukraine is their civil passport. There is no longer a single legal norm confirming their belonging to Ukraine as a people or collective subject — neither in the Constitution nor in national legislation.

 

2. Language and culture as an argument for subjectivity and recognition

The argument that the existence of the Ukrainian language and culture allegedly confirms the recognition of Ukrainians as a people is legally null and void. Language, anthem, cultural events, or symbolism are elements of state identity, but they do not confer any legal status on an ethnic community.

Support for a language does not grant the right to collective ownership of territory, does not recognize a people’s subjectivity, does not ensure protection from discrimination, genocide, forced assimilation, does not provide international guarantees, and does not secure rights to compensation, repatriation, participation in state governance, or status as a victim of aggression under international law.

Thus, cultural attributes cannot substitute for the absence of legal recognition of a people, and using these arguments is a deliberate substitution of concepts and an attempt to conceal the deprivation of basic collective rights from the titular ethnic majority.

Reducing the recognition of a people to the presence of a language or cultural traits is an approach used by aggressors to justify occupations and forced assimilation. This exact rhetoric was employed by Nazi Germany and Putin’s Russia to justify the annexation of foreign territories and the elimination of peoples as independent subjects.

If such logic had legal force, then Brazilians would be considered Portuguese, Argentinians — Spaniards, and Americans — English. But international law relies not on cultural coincidences, but on the factual recognition of a people as a distinct subject with collective rights.

Language and cultural traditions are only part of identity, but by themselves they do not ensure political or legal status. Without official recognition, a people does not possess the right to land, territory, power, representation, or protection from genocide. That is why the argument of “having Ukrainian language and culture” does not confirm the legal existence of Ukrainians as a people, but instead masks the absence of their legal status.

The legal recognition of a people is not a matter of culture, but a matter of collective rights, institutions, guarantees, and international mechanisms of protection against annihilation.

 

3. Misinterpretation of international practice in recognizing indigenous peoples

The problem with Ukrainian legislation does not lie in the recognition of indigenous peoples itself — this mechanism is a widely accepted international practice. The key anomaly lies in the asymmetric approach, which grants collective rights to certain groups while deliberately excluding the titular nation from this system, resulting in the loss of its legal subjectivity.

If, alongside the recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples and national minorities, a separate law had been adopted affirming the status of the titular nation — whether as historical, autochthonous, or otherwise collectively recognized — this could have created a balanced legal framework. However, no such law exists, and ethnic Ukrainians have no legally affirmed collective subjectivity. This constitutes a case of institutionalized inequality and a violation of the principle of equality between peoples.

Unlike Ukraine, in other countries around the world, the recognition of minority rights is not carried out at the expense of the majority:

· In Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland), the recognition of the Sámi people’s rights to cultural autonomy, Sámi parliaments, and reindeer herding management does not deprive Swedes, Norwegians, or Finns of their status as state-forming nations, nor does it annul their collective rights.

· In Latin American countries (Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico), where indigenous peoples make up a significant portion of the population, their recognition and expanded rights (such as autonomy, language, and customary law) are integrated into a system in which the Spanish-speaking majority also retains its full subjectivity. In Bolivia, when proclaiming a “plurinational state,” the mechanisms of power and rights were constructed in a way that no group legally dominates another, and the rights of all communities are protected mutually.

Ukraine, however, has chosen a different path. The mechanism for protecting indigenous peoples was applied to groups, a significant portion of which reside abroad and have strong ethno-political ties with other states. At the same time, the ethnic Ukrainian majority — deprived of the right to repatriation and of any form of collective legal status — found itself in a state of legal vacuum. Thus, international instruments designed to protect vulnerable groups were used instead to legally displace and marginalize the titular majority within its own state.

 

4. Mechanism of Raiding Ukraine’s Sovereignty

Recognition of the Crimean Tatar ethnocultural group as an indigenous people of Ukraine under Law No. 1616-IX raises no questions, since this community historically developed on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula and does not have its own state-forming entity outside Ukraine.

However, the situation with the Karaites and Krymchaks is fundamentally different. By the time Law No. 1616-IX was adopted, they had already been incorporated into the legal system of the State of Israel as part of the Jewish people and enjoyed the right of repatriation under the Law of Return. The State of Israel does not recognize the Karaites and Krymchaks as separate peoples but treats them as an integral part of the Jewish people, granting them corresponding rights to repatriation and citizenship. This position is also confirmed by members of these communities themselves, who accept such an identity, exercise the rights granted to them, and actively use Israeli citizenship.

Thus, recognition of the Karaites and Krymchaks as indigenous peoples of Ukraine creates a legal conflict. Ukraine has, in effect, granted the same community a dual status: as part of the Jewish people in Israel and as a distinct indigenous people in Ukraine. Such a construction contradicts norms of international law, as it violates the principle of the uniqueness of a people’s collective subjectivity. According to Article 1 of Law No. 1616-IX, an indigenous people cannot have its own state entity outside Ukraine. In the case of the Karaites and Krymchaks, this requirement is not met, since their ethnocultural identity has already been institutionalized within the framework of the State of Israel.

Additionally, this contradicts Article 33 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which establishes the right of a people to determine its identity and institutions independently. The incorporation of the Karaites and Krymchaks into the Jewish people in Israel means that Ukraine had no legal authority to unilaterally assign them a different status.

Consequently, this amounts to the creation of a legal fiction whereby Ukraine recognizes as indigenous peoples groups that already possess an internationally recognized ethnocultural identity within another people. This violates the principle of the legal inadmissibility of dual collective subjectivity and undermines the internal consistency of both Ukrainian legislation and the state’s international obligations.

In fact, the state is using the institution of indigenous peoples not to protect vulnerable communities, but as a tool of political manipulation — arbitrarily assigning indigenous status to groups that, according to the law and international standards, cannot hold it. This undermines legal certainty, erodes trust in legislation, and opens the door to the unlawful redistribution of collective rights and resources in favor of a foreign state.

At the stage of adopting the law, the mass media and public discourse emphasized that it concerned only extremely small communities — approximately 100 Krymchaks and about 700 Karaites. This was presented as a limited measure and framed, in particular, as Ukraine’s fulfillment of its “European obligations” regarding the protection of indigenous peoples’ rights.

However, the very structure of Law No. 1616-IX contains no restrictions based on numbers or geography. As a result, its scope extended to the entire global Karaite and Krymchak diaspora. According to various estimates, only in the State of Israel there live between 30,000 and 50,000 Karaites, and this community was automatically brought under the law’s provisions, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of its members in practice hold citizenship and ethnocultural identity within another state and have never had a stable territorial connection to Ukraine.

Thus, Ukraine legally recognized as indigenous peoples communities that are already integrated into other state legal systems, which in effect amounts to the transfer of elements of sovereignty beyond the country’s borders.

This means that collective rights — including the right to self-determination, territorial governance, and international representation — were granted to a group that in practice represents the interests of another state. As a result, bypassing any referendum and without a public mandate, a transnational legal channel of sovereignty transfer in favor of Israel was established.

It is important to clearly distinguish between religious, cultural, and legal aspects. No one denies that the Karaites have their own religious traditions and may differ from Rabbinic Judaism. However, from the perspective of Israeli law, these differences do not affect their legal status: Karaites are recognized as part of the Jewish people for the purposes of the Law of Return and have the same rights to repatriation and citizenship as other Jews.

An additional factor is the religious prohibition among Karaites on participating in censuses. This makes it theoretically possible to legalize any population size under the law — including the entire global Israeli diaspora — as there are no objective criteria for establishing its boundaries.

This interpretation violates not only the principle of legal certainty enshrined in Article 8 of the Constitution of Ukraine. It also:

· undermines the foundations of Ukraine’s state sovereignty and territorial integrity;

· creates a mechanism for foreign state interference in domestic affairs through collective rights granted to its diaspora;

· contradicts Article 5 of the Constitution of Ukraine, which states that the people — not external or diasporic structures — are the sole source of power and bearer of sovereignty;

· contradicts the provisions of the Declaration of the Rights of Nationalities of Ukraine No. 1771-XII of 1 November 1991, which guarantees equal political, economic, social, and cultural rights to all peoples and national groups residing in the territory of Ukraine;

· establishes a legal framework that may lead to the transfer of control over land, resources, and sovereignty to a foreign state — which falls under the definition of high treason under Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine;

· creates conditions for the impunity of depriving the titular nation of the right to self-determination and territorial integrity — in violation of Article 1 of the UN Charter and Articles 1 and 55 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Taken together, this is not merely an internal legal contradiction but a systemic subordination of national legislation to the interests of a foreign state — involving elements of usurpation of sovereignty and signs of crimes against the foundations of national security.

Thus, the indigenous peoples became the first on the territory of Ukraine to receive a legal definition of “people” as a collective subject with direct ethnic affiliation — i.e., with collective rights to territory and power enshrined in law — whereas before the adoption of Law No. 1616-IX, this category did not exist and was implicitly understood as the totality of all citizens without distinct ethnic subjectivity.

For twenty-nine years, the Ukrainian state and official rhetoric consistently insisted that nationality did not matter, that a unified civic society was being built in which everyone was equal and ethnic affiliation played no role. Under this premise, the right to indicate nationality in passports was abolished, and the very idea of ethnic identity was portrayed as an anachronism and a manifestation of xenophobia.

However, after nearly three decades of such a policy, a sudden legislative distinction was introduced — based precisely on ethnic criteria: “indigenous peoples” and “national minorities” appeared, to whom collective rights and the status of “people” were explicitly granted, while the titular ethnic community — Ukrainians — was deliberately excluded.

As a result, under the rhetoric of civic equality and rejection of ethnicity, the legal foundation for the national identity of the majority was first dismantled, and then ethnic legal subjectivity was created for selected groups, leaving the titular nation outside all legal constructions.

Article 5 of the Constitution of Ukraine stipulates that the people are the sole source of power and sovereignty, without clarifying whether this refers to the totality of all citizens in a civic-legal sense or to ethnic groups with collective subjectivity. Article 13 of the Constitution establishes that land, subsoil, and natural resources belong to the Ukrainian people.

The introduction of the definition of “indigenous peoples” and the granting of collective subjectivity to them has created legal uncertainty and dual interpretations of these constitutional provisions — which may now be interpreted exclusively in favor of indigenous peoples and national minorities, rather than the entire population of Ukraine.

The legal neutralization of the Crimean Tatars as potential competitors for the legal definition of the “people of Ukraine” and for the realization of collective rights was achieved in two ways.

First, Ukraine has not ratified ILO Convention No. 169 on the Rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, which is the only international document that establishes binding obligations on states to recognize and protect the collective rights of indigenous peoples, including rights to land, resources, participation in governance, and their own representative institutions. Without its ratification, the Crimean Tatars cannot rely on international monitoring mechanisms, appeal to supervisory bodies, or demand that Ukraine implement these rights as an international legal obligation. For them, this Convention is the main instrument: Article 7 secures the right to preserve identity and institutions, Article 8 guarantees the protection of traditions and customs, Article 13 establishes rights to land and resources, and Article 15 secures the right to participate in their management.

Second, since April 26, 2016, when the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People was recognized as an extremist organization in the Russian Federation, its activities were officially banned in Crimea. This effectively blocked all political representative institutions of the Crimean Tatars on their historical territory. As a result, the Crimean Tatars lost the ability to form legitimate self-governing bodies, to defend their interests before international organizations on behalf of the entire people, and to participate in negotiations concerning their rights and status as a collective subject.

Without recognized political representation, their claims to Ukraine or to international structures take the form of fragmented initiatives of separate groups and cannot be considered the position of the indigenous people as a whole, which significantly weakens their ability to secure protection of their collective rights. As a result, the status of the Crimean Tatars as an indigenous people of Ukraine remains purely formal and does not provide them with real collective rights.

At the same time, the Karaites and Krymchaks, recognized as indigenous peoples of Ukraine by Law No. 1616-IX, are in the opposite situation. These groups are part of the Jewish diaspora, which already possesses internationally recognized collective subjectivity and the right to repatriation to the State of Israel under the 1950 Law of Return. Their rights do not depend on the ratification of ILO Convention No. 169 or the existence of national representative institutions, since at the international level their guarantees are secured as part of the Jewish people, while in Ukrainian legislation they are designated as separate indigenous communities.

This creates a paradox: until the ratification of ILO Convention No. 169 “Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries,” the Crimean Tatars, Karaites, and Krymchaks do not exist as independent peoples in international law. However, while the rights of the Crimean Tatars remain blocked without this Convention, the rights of the Karaites and Krymchaks are nonetheless ensured through their affiliation with the Jewish people, which has recognized collective subjectivity and an internationally established right to repatriation to the State of Israel.

Therefore, within Ukraine they appear as “independent peoples,” while at the international level their status is directly tied to Israel.

This scheme allows the direct political connection with Israel to be concealed and effectively eliminates competition from the Crimean Tatars, whose rights directly depend on ILO Convention No. 169. By recognizing the Karaites and Krymchaks as indigenous peoples, Ukraine effectively granted them a “double” status: the international rights of the Jewish people were supplemented by collective rights enshrined in Ukrainian legislation.

This created a legal construct in which, de jure, sovereignty over land, resources, and the right to self-determination is legally secured for groups directly linked to a foreign state, while the Crimean Tatars were left with only symbolic status, and the titular people — the ethnic Ukrainians — were completely excluded from the system of collective rights.

 

5. Elimination of the Succession Rights of Ethnic Ukrainians

Since 2014, a systematic policy has been implemented in Ukraine aimed at dismantling the historical and legal continuity of ethnic Ukrainians as a people and bearers of sovereignty. These steps, initiated after the events of the Maidan, gradually created a mechanism by which the titular majority is deprived not only of collective subjectivity but also of any legal foundation for recognizing themselves as successors of Ukrainian statehood and territorial ownership.

The first step was a large-scale program for the clearing and restoration of Jewish cemeteries, which had been abandoned for decades. Starting in 2014, these efforts became systemic: they began to be organized by village and city councils, which at the time had not yet been consolidated into territorial communities but were already receiving targeted funding to carry out such work. The specific sources of this funding were never officially clarified, but the fact that funds were allocated and distributed through local authorities indicated a centralized and planned nature of the program.

In international practice, the documentation and preservation of sites of cultural heritage serve as proof of the historical presence of ethnic or religious groups and can be used to justify their collective rights, including rights to land, property, and historical status.

It is important to emphasize that this is not a denial of the historical presence of Jews on the territory of Ukraine. They have lived here since the times of the Russian Empire, due to the existence of the Pale of Settlement, beyond which Jews were not permitted to reside. As a result, they were forced to settle on these lands. Their presence is neither disputed nor denied.

The problem lies elsewhere: the restoration of cemeteries and the documentation of Jewish heritage would have had exclusively historical significance if, in parallel, the Ukrainian state had not simultaneously excluded ethnic Ukrainians from legislation as a people, thereby destroying their historical and legal continuity.

In 2022, a systemic legal liquidation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) began. The UOC had been the only canonical successor of the Kyiv Metropolis and the bearer of the historical title to the land, churches, and spiritual heritage of ethnic Ukrainians.

The basis of this process was a series of amendments to the Law of Ukraine “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations” No. 987-XII of April 23, 1991. These amendments were introduced by Law No. 2107-IX of March 3, 2022, Law No. 3894-IX of August 20, 2024, and Law No. 4579-IX of August 21, 2025. The key instrument was Article 5-1, introduced by Law No. 3894-IX, which prohibits the activities of religious organizations “affiliated” with foreign religious centers from a state recognized as an aggressor.

The wording on “canonical and organizational dependence” (Art. 5-1, Part 3, paras. 1–7) legalized the recognition of the UOC as part of the structure of the Russian Orthodox Church, which allowed state authorities to initiate the procedure of its liquidation.

Article 16 of the same law expanded the grounds for terminating the activities of a religious organization, including such criteria as “use for propaganda of the ideology of the Russian world” and “subordination to centers in the aggressor state.”

In practice, this enabled the initiation of mass liquidations of UOC parishes and monasteries through the courts.

At the same time, Article 17 of the Law of Ukraine “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations” was supplemented with a provision prohibiting the transfer of churches and other religious property for use by those organizations that fall under Article 5-1 of the same law. It establishes that in Ukraine, the activities of religious organizations affiliated with foreign religious centers from states recognized as aggressors or occupiers are not permitted. If an organization is recognized as such “affiliated,” its activities are restricted or subject to termination.

In the combination of these provisions, a complete mechanism was created: under Article 5-1 the UOC (as “linked to the Moscow Patriarchate”) is recognized as “affiliated,” and under the supplement to Article 17 it is automatically deprived of the right to use churches, monasteries, land, and other religious property.

Thus, this is not merely a restriction but a de facto scheme for the liquidation of the historic UOC as the canonical successor of the Kyiv Metropolis. As a result, all religious buildings in communal or state ownership began to be transferred to new structures.

Articles 8 and 9 established a mechanism for changing the canonical subordination of communities by a simple decision of two-thirds of members of the assembly, under which dissenters are forced to create new communities without retaining their churches. This tool became the legal basis for mass re-registrations of UOC parishes in favor of the state-created Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU).

Thus, without directly amending the Constitution, amendments to Law No. 987-XII created a whole system of direct-action norms that eliminated the UOC as the canonical successor of the Kyiv Metropolis and transferred its property to the OCU.

The new structure possesses neither canonical succession nor recognition by the majority of local Orthodox Churches worldwide. This destroyed the spiritual and legal foundation of the historical subjectivity of Ukrainians, undermining their connection with tradition, churches, and succession on their own land.

The Kyiv Metropolis is an ancient church structure established in 988, when Prince Volodymyr baptized Rus. It was part of the universal Orthodox Church and under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Kyiv Metropolis is considered the “mother church” for all Orthodox Christians on the lands of Rus, from which the Moscow and other dioceses later emerged.

Succession means that a present-day church can prove it is the continuation of that very ancient structure, and therefore holds lawful and canonical rights to churches, monasteries, land, and spiritual heritage. For ethnic Ukrainians, this is crucial because it was precisely through the UOC (Moscow Patriarchate) that the link with the Kyiv Metropolis was preserved — a link that historically served as their spiritual and cultural foundation.

When the state began liquidating the UOC, it effectively severed this succession. The new structure — the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) — was created administratively in 2018–2019, but it lacks such succession: it is not recognized by the majority of Orthodox churches worldwide and has no legal connection to the Kyiv Metropolis.

Thus, the struggle is not merely over property but over who is recognized as the heir of the millennium-old spiritual tradition and, consequently, the bearer of the historical subjectivity of the Ukrainian people.

On April 21, 2022, Law No. 2215-IX “On the De-Sovietization of Ukrainian Legislation” was adopted, which repealed more than 250 legal acts, including all constitutions of the Ukrainian SSR and laws that recognized the Ukrainian people as a historical subject and bearer of sovereignty. This legally eliminated the entire legal continuity that connected ethnic Ukrainians with the statehood and territory of Ukraine.

In 2023, former President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed Law No. 3258-IX on July 28, adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on July 14, 2023, which removed the celebration of Christmas according to the Orthodox calendar from the list of state holidays and moved it to December 25 — the Catholic date. The same law moved Ukrainian Statehood Day from July 28 to July 15 and Defenders of Ukraine Day from October 14 to October 1. The law entered into force on July 30, 2023, and Zelenskyy explained these changes as a rejection of “Russian ideology” and the Julian calendar used by the Orthodox Church.

Legally, this means that the state has officially abandoned the celebration of Christmas according to the Orthodox calendar, which for centuries had been part of the cultural and spiritual identity of the country’s titular majority. As of the law’s effective date, January 7 lost its status as an official holiday, and all normative acts regulating state holidays and days off no longer recognize this date. Simultaneously, December 25 — corresponding to the Catholic tradition — received official status as a national holiday, thus enshrining a different religious and cultural orientation in the legislation.

The actual sequence of these decisions — from the seizure of churches to the rescheduling of key Orthodox holidays — demonstrates a deliberate policy aimed at dismantling the historical and spiritual continuity of Ukrainians as a people. These measures originated from a single center of power and were legally formalized through legislation, which makes them part of a unified program to destroy the institutional and cultural identity of the titular majority.

Formally, the status of “people” has been granted to the Crimean Tatars, Karaims, and Krymchaks. However, the Crimean Tatars are effectively deprived of the ability to exercise their collective rights: Ukraine has not ratified ILO Convention No. 169 on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and since 2016, the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People has been designated as an extremist organization within the territory of the Russian Federation.

Thus, the only actual beneficiaries of collective subjectivity remain the Karaims and Krymchaks — groups that belong to the Jewish diaspora, which possesses internationally recognized collective subjectivity and a legal right to repatriation to the State of Israel.

These steps have effectively created a legal construct in which collective rights to land, resources, and elements of Ukrainian sovereignty are transferred to groups that are legally affiliated with a foreign state — Israel.

From the standpoint of international law, these actions:

· destroy the legal continuity of the Ukrainian people and state

· create a legal fiction that denies the existence of the titular people

· establish conditions for the unpunished deprivation of their right to self-determination and sovereignty

According to Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), actions aimed at the destruction of a national group by denying its existence as a subject fall under the definition of genocide, including “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court classifies as crimes against humanity “persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, or religious grounds,” including the deprivation of fundamental rights based on membership in such a group.

The exclusion of ethnic Ukrainians from the legal definition of “people,” the liquidation of their legal continuity, and the transfer of collective subjectivity to foreign groups constitute the elements of a crime against humanity and fall under the definition of genocide through the denial of the existence of a people.

However, while Ukraine has formally recognized certain provisions of the Rome Statute, it simultaneously provided for a deferral of its full applicability and limited the ICC’s jurisdiction to specific crimes and designated dates. As a result, any actions associated with the destruction of the titular people’s legal subjectivity — including through Laws No. 1616-IX and No. 2215-IX — are effectively removed from international accountability.

This deliberate restriction of ICC jurisdiction creates an intentional legal vacuum: the state adopts laws that meet the criteria for crimes against humanity and genocide (Articles 6 and 7 of the Rome Statute) but simultaneously ensures impunity for all participants.

In this scheme, each party acts in pursuit of its own interests, and the existence of a single coordinator or unified plan becomes irrelevant. Even if such a plan existed, it would not change the legal assessment, as international law primarily evaluates consequences and the factual outcome — not the motives or internal agreements of the parties involved. Therefore, this is not about proving conspiracy — such accusations are easily dismissed as speculation and distract from the core issue: an objective system of actions has emerged, the consequences of which reinforce one another and lead to the destruction of Ukrainian subjectivity.

Israel acts as a beneficiary, as the recognition of Karaims and Krymchaks as Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine is practically used as a legal basis for the transfer of sovereignty — including rights to land, resources, cultural heritage, and collective subjectivity — in favor of groups linked to Israel. This became possible precisely because all other categories, including the titular majority, were excluded from any form of collective rights. As a result, Ukrainian legislation is structured in such a way that the only legally recognized bearer of collective subjectivity becomes the Jewish diaspora, which possesses international legal personality.

Russia plays the role not only of a military aggressor in political and informational perception but also of a legal operator, whose actions become possible precisely due to Ukraine’s legal policies. While the international community’s attention is focused on the visible acts of invasion and destruction, Ukraine had already established a legal framework in which the Russian invasion does not fall under the international legal definition of aggression. By excluding ethnic Ukrainians from the category of “people” and stripping them of legal subjectivity, Ukraine de jure eliminated a recognized subject of international law against whom aggression could be qualified under Articles 1 and 2 of the UN Charter.

This allows the Russian Federation to present its actions as an internal operation of “restoring order” on its “own territory” among a “part of the Russian people,” thereby avoiding direct qualification under international norms. For this reason, within the framework of the United Nations, Russia was recognized as an aggressor against the state of Ukraine (UN General Assembly Resolution ES-11/1 of March 2, 2022), but there is no recognition of aggression against Ukrainians as a people: formally, there is no established subject against whom such actions could be directed. Aggression against a people is impossible without recognition of that people itself, and Ukraine, through its legislation, has removed this recognition.

What is most important is that these actions not only cause direct harm but also create a legal environment in which internal repression, restrictions of rights, and the abandonment of democratic procedures in Ukraine are presented as necessary measures. In this way, aggression becomes the backdrop that legitimizes processes aimed at dismantling the rights of the titular people.

Thus, Russia not only diverts attention from the internal liquidation of Ukrainian subjectivity but also uses the legal vacuum created by Ukraine to legitimize its intervention. Ukraine’s refusal to recognize Ukrainians as a people enables warfare to be conducted outside the framework of international law — where there is neither an aggressor nor a victim, and therefore no accountability.

Ukraine effectively plays the role not only of a victim but also of an aggressor against its own titular people, as its legislative and administrative policy has deliberately excluded ethnic Ukrainians from all forms of collective legal subjectivity and stripped them of their status as a people and bearer of sovereignty. Laws No. 1616-IX, No. 2827-IX, and No. 2215-IX redistributed rights to land, resources, cultural heritage, and self-determination in favor of limited groups — indigenous peoples and national minorities — leaving the titular majority without any legal protection.

This exclusion created a legal mechanism for the transfer of sovereignty via indigenous peoples in favor of Israel, while also facilitating Russian aggression, since forced assimilation and occupation of a population stripped of the status of a people no longer fall under the direct definitions of aggression and colonization in international law. If Ukrainians are legally excluded from the category of “people,” then formally they cease to exist as a distinct subject under international law. Consequently, Russia, by positioning them as part of the “Russian people,” gains the ability to frame its actions not as war against another state or people, but as a “special military operation” within its own people and its own territory.

And since Ukraine itself has excluded Ukrainians from the legal category of a people, it avoids declaring a state of war and instead operates under a regime of martial law with partial mobilization. Formally, this allows the Russian invasion not to be qualified as an act of external aggression against a people under international law, because legally, the people against whom the aggression is committed is not recognized by the state.

Thus, through its own laws, Ukraine created the conditions under which external invasion and internal liquidation of the titular people became possible without direct contradiction of international law, and the very concept of aggression was legally blurred.

Moreover, on October 6, 2022, more than six months after the start of hostilities, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted Resolution No. 2633-IX, appealing to the international community to support the right of the peoples of Russia to self-determination. The document included strong references to the UN Charter, international law, and human rights, presenting Ukraine as a defender of freedom and democracy.

However, by that time Ukraine itself had already adopted a series of laws that systematically excluded the titular ethnic community — Ukrainians — from the legal category of “people” within the country. Law No. 1616-IX “On the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” of July 1, 2021 granted collective rights to indigenous peoples, but did not include Ukrainians. Law No. 2215-IX of July 21, 2022 eliminated the legal continuity of the Ukrainian people with the constitutions of the Ukrainian SSR and the USSR. Law No. 2827-IX “On National Minorities” of December 13, 2022 granted collective rights to national minorities, but once again left the titular people without legal subjectivity.

Thus, a legally codified double standard is being formed: publicly, Ukraine demands the right to self-determination for the peoples of Russia, while domestically it deprives its own titular people of the status of a people, creating a legal basis for their assimilation and potential territorial redistribution.

 

6. Forced Assimilation into the “Russian” Identity

The deprivation of ethnic Ukrainians of recognized subjectivity — as a people, as the titular nation, and as a historical subject — creates a legal vacuum. Under international law (Art. 1 of the UN Charter, Arts. 1 and 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights), peoples have the inalienable right to self-determination and to the protection of their cultural identity. Therefore, the condition of a “people belonging to no one” is legally impossible: exclusion from one’s own category in practice leads to their assignment to another category, above all to that claimed by an external power.

Since the Russian Federation officially denies the existence of Ukrainians as a separate people and declares that they are “part of the Russian people,” Ukrainian legislation, by excluding Ukrainians from the legal field, objectively facilitates their forced assimilation into “Russians.” This occurs not only at the level of propaganda but also through the creation of a legal framework that deprives Ukrainians of the possibility of proving their existence as a distinct people with the right to self-determination and historical continuity.

The situation is further aggravated by the fact that in most cases Ukrainians are not granted refugee status under the 1951 Geneva Convention anywhere in the world. Exceptions are possible in individual cases, but the procedure itself is so complex and bureaucratic compared to other forms of protection that Ukrainians are forced to abandon it en masse at the very first stage.

Instead, the mechanism of temporary protection is applied, under which all Ukrainians receive the status of temporarily displaced persons, but not refugee status. Initially, this mechanism was conceived as a humanitarian measure justified by the mass influx of displaced persons, yet in practice it results in the facts of persecution and circumstances of flight not being recorded or legally assessed.

This is explained by the fact that temporary protection has a collective character and is granted automatically—merely presenting an identity document is sufficient, without the need to file an application, provide reasons, or document violations. By contrast, refugee status under the 1951 Geneva Convention requires an individual procedure, which involves submitting an application, providing testimony, establishing ethnic belonging, and confirming the fact of persecution with identification of a specific persecutor.

If refugee status procedures were actually carried out, it would become evident that the main reason for Ukrainians fleeing is not only Russian aggression but also the aggression of the Ukrainian state against its own population. For the majority of the population, Ukraine functions less as a protector and more as an internal aggressor and colonizer, having excluded the titular majority from subjectivity and effectively transformed them into the status of subordinates.

Under the pretext of external aggression, the state employs a regime of derogation not for protection but for institutionalized oppression: it obstructs evacuation, closes borders, legalizes arbitrary detentions, deprives people of the right to a fair trial and freedom of religion, turning repression and violence into the norm.

Taken together, this creates a mechanism of legal and physical destruction of the people as such—deprivation of legal subjectivity is compounded by practices that create conditions for demographic and cultural disappearance.

Despite the enormous threat to life and safety resulting from external aggression with its missile strikes, air raids, and open hostilities, this threat remains localized and episodic, whereas the arbitrariness of the state itself extends to the entire population and by scale and institutional nature vastly exceeds the consequences of external military threats.

By force of circumstances, temporary protection has effectively turned into an instrument that simultaneously creates conditions under which facts of war crimes remain unrecorded and also excludes the possibility of legal assessment of the complicity of donor states supporting this regime. It maintains the official narrative of the war exclusively within the framework of the global media agenda, without entering the domain of international law.

As a result, a legal “grey zone” is formed in which Ukrainians fall under neither the guarantees of the 1951 Geneva Convention nor the principle of non-refoulement. This construction makes it possible at any moment to deport or extradite people back, stripping them of their ethnic identity and replacing it with another category. This creates conditions for forced assimilation: if a Ukrainian is not legally recognized as a Ukrainian, he can be declared a “Russian” and sent “home” to Russia.

Thus, temporary protection de facto ceases to be a means of humanitarian assistance and becomes part of a broader legal construction in which millions of people are deprived of the right to recognition, documentation of crimes, and collective protection, while their fate is used as an instrument to justify geopolitical scenarios.

It is important to understand that in conditions where their own state does not recognize them as a people, while the Russian Federation officially claims them as belonging to the “Russian people,” a legal vacuum arises. In the absence of formalized self-determination, this opens the possibility of considering them part of another ethnic category, which is used by the Russian Federation to reinforce its narrative of “denazification” and “liberation.”

Thus, this very legal vacuum places international structures in a contradictory position: they cannot recognize Ukrainians as “Russians,” since this would contradict their mandate and the fundamental principles of international law, effectively legitimizing the position of the Russian Federation and qualifying Ukraine as the aggressor.

At the same time, it is evident that such a construction could in the future be used as an argument for ending the war and consolidating a new status quo. However, its premature exposure would undermine the official narrative and reveal internal contradictions, and therefore at this stage such issues are deliberately kept outside the scope of public discussion to avoid undermining the official position.

As a result, a legal construction is being formed in which ethnic Ukrainians are eliminated as heirs and successors of the land and territory of Ukraine through three interrelated processes operating simultaneously:

The first process is physical extermination in war, where the death of a significant part of the population deprives the titular community of the ability to maintain historical, demographic, and cultural continuity on its own territory.

The second process is forced assimilation into “Russians” within Ukraine itself and in the occupied territories. Since the state has legally excluded Ukrainians from the category of people, and the Russian Federation openly declares them part of the “Russian people,” a legal and political basis is created for their absorption by another ethnos under the guise of “reunification” or “restoration of historical unity.”

The third process is global assimilation outside Ukraine through regimes of temporary protection and denial of refugee status. Temporary protection does not require the documentation of ethnic affiliation or persecution, so millions of people who have left the country gradually lose their legal connection with their homeland and dissolve into host states without the possibility of claiming collective rights as representatives of a people.

Taken together, these three mechanisms deprive the titular community not only of territory and political subjectivity but also of the very status of a people in international law, turning it into a population without historical, ethnic, or legal continuity.

Thus, forced assimilation has not only a cultural and ethnic dimension but also direct legal consequences. If ethnic Ukrainians are removed from their own category of people and reclassified into another, they lose the right to be considered owners of territory, land, subsoil, and natural resources, as well as the source of power and sovereignty under Articles 5 and 13 of the Constitution of Ukraine. As a result, competition over land, resources, and statehood disappears, and the right to dispose of them is assigned to other ethnic or political subjects.

Since national minorities in Ukraine, under the Law of Ukraine No. 2827-IX “On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine,” are recognized exclusively as cultural communities integrated into Ukrainian society, their collective rights are limited to the spheres of language, education, traditions, religion, and the right to self-identification, but do not extend beyond the cultural-humanitarian level and are not connected to political subjectivity.

Political rights are exercised by representatives of minorities solely on an individual basis — as citizens of Ukraine, through participation in elections, holding office, and access to state institutions.

Thus, as a group they are not recognized either as a source of authority or as owners of land, subsoil, and territory, which are explicitly vested in the “people” (Article 5) and the “Ukrainian people” (Article 13) of the Constitution.

Accordingly, the status of national minorities is cultural-humanitarian in nature and does not compete with the right of the Ukrainian people to remain the sole bearer of sovereignty and the owner of land and territory.

As a result, the only real beneficiary of this legal construct turns out to be the Israeli diaspora, which possesses internationally recognized collective subjectivity and the right to repatriation to the State of Israel as part of the Jewish people. This effectively makes Israel a party to the conflict through the recognition and consolidation of its ethnically related groups in Ukrainian legislation, while Ukraine becomes the aggressor against its own titular ethnos, deprived of all forms of collective subjectivity.

The most dangerous aspect of this system lies in the fact that it involves not only individual politicians but also entire states. Many of them act blindly, without fully realizing the consequences of the established legal framework, and thus become part of the architecture of forced assimilation of an entire people. Their participation objectively results in complicity in a crime, even if they perceive it as carrying out a humanitarian mission.

When this architecture is publicly exposed, its true scale will become evident. It will then be clear that millions of people were deprived of the right to recognition and protection, while entire states were drawn into a process they themselves believed to be humanitarian assistance.

 

7. Blocking the Right of Ukrainians to Self-Determination

After the legal exclusion of ethnic Ukrainians from the category of “people,” the next stage was the systematic suppression of any attempts to restore their collective subjectivity.

Since international law recognizes the right to self-determination exclusively for peoples, Ukraine undertook actions aimed at preventing ethnic Ukrainians from forming or reclaiming their identity as a people. To achieve this, a persistent image is constructed portraying ethnic Ukrainians as an aggressive, nationalist, and potentially fascist group whose recognition as a people allegedly poses a threat to international security.

Domestically, this image is cultivated through campaigns of forced mobilization, the actions of territorial recruitment centers (TCCs) and police, aggressive imposition of the language, the activities of so-called “language patrols,” fines for Russian-language content, public humiliations and abductions, nationalist marches, and more. These measures disproportionately target ethnic Ukrainians and are widely disseminated through video content circulating in Ukrainian media space.

Abroad, the image is reinforced through politically charged rallies featuring nationalist symbols, marches, and demonstrations, which are often perceived as provocative and intrusive. In EU countries and the United States, such activity fuels rejection, irritation, and social fatigue, forming a negative public perception. Gradually, an associative pattern is established: the Ukrainian language becomes the language of violence, Ukrainian symbols become symbols of aggression, and the Ukrainian identity becomes synonymous with Nazism.

This artificially constructed image is then used to generate public consensus for depriving Ukrainians of their right to self-determination. A mechanism of analogy is triggered: just as after World War II collective responsibility was imposed on the German people, Ukrainians are being prepared for a similar deprivation of collective rights — this time through formal legal codification.

Thus, any attempt by Ukrainians to reclaim their status as a people will be met with accusations of Nazism, aggression, and extremism. These accusations will serve as justification for denying them collective rights, territorial jurisdiction, and legal subjectivity.

In parallel, conditions are being created for the reputational transformation of Ukrainians into “Russians.” Since Ukrainians are not recognized as a people, and Russia’s actions are interpreted as “denazification,” the remaining population is consequently identified as part of the Russian people. This makes it impossible to protect the rights of Ukrainians as a distinct people, and international law, failing to identify a recognized subject, will be unable to record the facts of aggression, occupation, or cultural destruction.

Thus, a closed system is being formed: elimination of collective rights → discrediting of identity → blocking of self-determination → transformation into another population.

Against this background, jurisdiction and cultural-legal continuity are transferred to other groups recognized as indigenous peoples.

This process benefits not only Russia and Israel, but also the countries of Central Europe — Poland, Hungary, and Romania — which are interested in expanding their territorial influence and are using the reputational discrediting of Ukrainian statehood as a tool to prepare for subsequent jurisdictional redistribution.

 

8. International Legal Mechanism for Restoring Subjectivity

Ukraine itself, having refused to recognize ethnic Ukrainians as a people, created a legal framework in which the restoration of Ukrainians’ collective subjectivity within the country became legally impossible. At the same time, all responsibility for what is happening — discrimination, mobilization, incitement to hatred — is placed directly on the Ukrainians themselves, as if it were the result of their own will.

However, international law still upholds an alternative mechanism of self-determination through diasporas and national minorities officially recognized in other states. In countries such as Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia, and others where ethnic Ukrainians have legal status as a national minority, their existence is automatically recorded as part of a people. A national minority cannot exist in relation to abstract “citizens” — it can only exist in relation to a people as an ethnic community.

Therefore, recognition of Ukrainians as a national minority in other countries confirms their collective subjectivity and legally affirms the existence of the Ukrainian people at the international level, regardless of the positions of Ukraine and Russia. Any public statement made by such communities — through national councils, parliaments, or other recognized bodies — may qualify as an act of self-determination under Article 3 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Even a collective statement by two individuals who identify as part of the Ukrainian ethnocultural group creates an international legal precedent.

Such a step does not require recognition from the Ukrainian state. It merely emphasizes that the Ukrainian state denies the existence of a people already recognized by other countries. This forms the basis for an international claim and opens access to human rights protection mechanisms, including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Minorities, and the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights.

Thus, even under conditions of internal blockage of self-determination, international recognition of Ukrainians as an ethnic group with collective subjectivity preserves the legal possibility of restoring national subjectivity through external legal mechanisms.

 

9. The Ukrainian People as the Victim of Aggression — But Not Ethnic Ukrainians

By stripping ethnic Ukrainians of their subjectivity as a people, Ukraine has created a legal structure in which Ukrainians cannot be recognized as victims of aggression or as recipients of international reparations. All political rhetoric about the “suffering of the Ukrainian people” is reduced to the notion of a collective of citizens. However, under international law, reparations, compensation, and victim status are granted not to citizens, but to peoples — in the strict legal sense as collective subjects.

A telling example is the statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine dated August 9, 2025, issued on the occasion of the International Day of Indigenous Peoples. In it, Ukraine called on the international community to recognize the Crimean Tatars, Karaites, and Krymchaks as victims of Russian aggression and to support their rights in international forums.

Such appeals show that the state recognizes only the indigenous peoples as bearers of collective rights and as recipients of international protection, whereas ethnic Ukrainians have never once been mentioned by the official authorities throughout the entire period of the war as a people — only as citizens, who under international law have no right to reparations, compensation, or collective protection.

By granting a special status to the Crimean Tatars, Karaites, and Krymchaks under Law No. 1616-IX, the Ukrainian legislation formally equated them with the “Ukrainian people.” However, their situations differ. For the Crimean Tatars, the key international guarantees remain inaccessible: Ukraine has not ratified ILO Convention No. 169, which provides for the protection of the rights of indigenous peoples, and in Russia the activities of the Mejlis are banned, depriving them of recognized representative institutions.

The Karaites and Krymchaks, by contrast, found themselves in a different legal configuration. Internationally, their rights are secured through their belonging to the Jewish people, which possesses collective subjectivity and the right of repatriation to Israel, while within Ukraine they additionally obtained recognition as indigenous peoples in their own right.

Thus, the right to represent the interests of the Ukrainian people and to obtain international protection has in practice been distributed asymmetrically: the Crimean Tatars are kept in a position of symbolic status without real guarantees, whereas the Karaites and Krymchaks have acquired a “double” subjectivity — national-legal within Ukraine and internationally recognized through their belonging to the State of Israel.

If the international community recognizes the fact of Russian aggression against Ukraine, the legally recognized injured party will not be the ethnic Ukrainian community, but the recognized collective subjects — i.e., the indigenous peoples under Law No. 1616-IX. This means that mechanisms for compensation, including reparations, legal guarantees, and reconstruction programs, will be de facto and de jure allocated to those who are legally recognized as a people. Since ethnic Ukrainians are excluded from this category, they will receive no political representation, no historical justice, and no international protection as a people.

In the event of full occupation of Ukraine, the status of the oppressed, enslaved, and colonized will not be legally attributed to ethnic Ukrainians, who have been stripped of subjectivity, but solely to those groups already recognized as collective subjects.

Accordingly, the right to international recognition as an oppressed people, as well as the right to protection, reparations, participation in sanctions and compensation mechanisms, and in decolonization processes, will be granted to those who are already legally recognized as a people — primarily to the Jewish diaspora, recognized as an indigenous people of Ukraine and acting as the only legitimate representative of the Ukrainian people in the international legal system.

A similar scheme was applied after World War II. Despite the deaths of over 20 million Soviet citizens, not a single people of the Soviet Union — except for the Jews — received compensation as a collective victim. The reason was that the Soviet Union did not recognize the national subjectivity of its peoples — they were all considered part of the “Soviet people.” The only recognized ethnic group with the right to collective memory, reparations, and victim status remained the Jewish people, thanks to international recognition of their subjectivity and institutional mechanisms in Israel and the diaspora.

Today, the same legal scheme is repeating itself: despite the millions of casualties among ethnic Ukrainians, their exclusion from the legal status of a people makes it impossible to assert collective claims. As a result, Ukrainians are dying, but the legal beneficiary of victim status is not the Ukrainian people, but the recognized indigenous peoples — the Karaites and Krymchaks, whose legal subjectivity is directly tied to Israel.

If Ukraine retains its statehood in the future, it will be these groups who receive the rights to restoration, representation, and participation in compensation and legal processes. If the country loses all or part of its territory, Israel — through the recognized groups — will retain the right to receive international reparations on behalf of the “Ukrainian people,” now legally codified in their identity.

Thus, the exclusion of the titular nation from the category of a people means not only the loss of sovereignty, but also the loss of the very right to be a victim. Ukrainians are denied the right to suffer, to recover, to seek historical justice. The war, destruction, and occupation cease to be classified as crimes against a people — because legally, that people no longer exists.

 

10. Conclusion

Israel

Based on the above, it becomes evident that the only people on the territory of Ukraine who have been granted the full ability to exercise collective rights — including political representation and rights to land, territory, subsoil, and natural resources — are the Israeli diaspora. Their status and internationally recognized legal subjectivity allow them to fully utilize these provisions, whereas the rights of the Crimean Tatars are effectively blocked, national minorities are limited to the cultural-humanitarian sphere, and ethnic Ukrainians are entirely excluded from the system of collective legal subjectivity.

This makes Israel not only a beneficiary but also a party to the conflict.

While for indigenous peoples and national minorities it is enough to refer to a specific article of law to confirm their rights — to land, resources, power, sovereignty, and even their very existence as a people — ethnic Ukrainians have to prove this through endless legal, political, and philosophical disputes, convincing lawyers, officials, and even neural networks that they exist as a people at all.

As a result, for Ukrainians, their own subjectivity is no longer a legal status, but an object of interpretation. In essence, a form of religion.

The Constitution becomes a sacred text to be interpreted rather than read. Rights are not enshrined — they are presumed. They cannot be invoked — they can only be believed in.

To be Ukrainian means to believe in your existence — which is nowhere to be found in the law, but allegedly “implied.”

It is important to note that the escalation of the conflict in Palestine has been accompanied by a sharp rise in hate crimes in the United States, where more than 7.5 million Jews reside and, according to FBI data, up to 70% of all religiously motivated crimes are committed against the Jewish community. In parallel, Ukraine has already established a legal framework allowing the recognition of diaspora groups as indigenous peoples — including the right to political representation and land.

Against this backdrop, a noticeable and tangible shift in global public attention is taking place: the focus of international sympathy is shifting away from Ukraine — now increasingly associated with protracted conflict, fatigue, and accusations of aggressive nationalism — toward Palestine, which is increasingly perceived as a universal symbol of victimhood and oppression. While Ukraine receives support mainly from state and intergovernmental structures, the Palestinian issue garners broad emotional and cultural solidarity from civil society, media, and transnational communities.

In this context, a legally permissible and normatively formalized model is being formed, whereby, against the backdrop of rising hate incidents and increasing social vulnerability, Ukraine is effectively turning into a priority space for the resettlement of certain groups positioned as victims in need of protection.

The legislative framework — including the Law of Ukraine “On Preventing and Countering Anti-Semitism in Ukraine” No. 1770-IX of September 22, 2021 — in combination with martial law and strict administrative control, effectively blocks all forms of public criticism or legal competition. Any protest or attempt to question these processes can be qualified as an expression of anti-Semitism, which automatically entails administrative or even criminal liability.

The convergence of these legal, demographic, and informational processes does not necessarily point to a pre-agreed strategy. However, the totality of these factors has already created — and continues to reinforce — the conditions for legitimizing new collective subjects with rights to land, resources, and political representation within Ukraine.

In this context, the role of the Palestinian conflict functions as a trigger, initiating a cascade of secondary effects — including migratory and legal consequences.

 

Ukraine:

The legal qualification of Ukraine as an aggressor state toward its own titular nation is based on the deliberate and systemic destruction of the collective legal subjectivity of ethnic Ukrainians. This exclusion has effectively removed them from the category of a “people” in the sense of international law — that is, from the status of a subject possessing sovereignty, the right to self-determination, territory, representation, and cultural continuity.

The adoption of Laws No. 1616-IX (“On the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine”), No. 2827-IX (“On National Minorities”), and No. 2215-IX (“On Decommunization”) during the period 2021–2022 did not merely introduce legal asymmetry. These laws institutionalized the removal of the titular nation from all forms of collective existence and legal agency.

This constitutes an act of internal aggression and structural usurpation of power, whereby the Ukrainian state no longer acts on behalf of its foundational ethnos but operates in the interests of other ethnic, transnational, and foreign-aligned groups — which have been granted legal subjectivity, access to state mechanisms, as well as political and resource representation.

The formal exclusion of ethnic Ukrainians from legal recognition as a “people” entails:

· internal colonization and the subjugation of the majority population under a legal regime that denies them sovereign agency;

· legal control over the titular nation without its consent, in direct violation of Article 1 of the UN Charter and the principles of popular sovereignty;

· forced assimilation through policies of linguistic transformation, historical annihilation, and de-ethnicization, disguised as modernization or decommunization;

· alienation of land, cultural heritage, and public representation in favor of recognized minority and diasporic groups with legal affiliation to foreign states;

· the creation of an apartheid-like structure, in which only non-titular groups possess legal instruments for collective self-expression and protection;

· the dismantling of protective mechanisms that would otherwise be available under international frameworks for the defense of peoples under threat.

Although the right to self-determination is enshrined as inalienable in international law — specifically:

• In Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which states:

“All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”;

• In Article 1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which contains the same wording;

• And in Articles 1 and 55 of the Charter of the United Nations, which obligate states to promote the self-determination of peoples and equality as the foundation of international peace and justice —

Ukraine has established a legal regime in which this right has become legally inaccessible to the only people who gave the country its name, language, and statehood.

Such a legal configuration is not merely a violation of democratic principles or an infringement of the rights of a particular group. It corresponds to the characteristics of an organized, targeted, and institutionalized campaign of state violence that encompasses several categories of internationally recognized crimes.

• Genocide in political and legal form — consists in the removal of ethnic Ukrainians from the number of recognized subjects of international law. They are deprived of the status of a people, and therefore of the ability to reproduce themselves as a historically continuous, legally recognized, and sovereign community. This falls under the expanded interpretation of Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), in the part referring to “creating conditions calculated to bring about the partial or total destruction of a group.”

• Cultural destruction — the systematic dismantling of the legal succession of the Ukrainian SSR and the USSR, the liquidation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as the successor of the Kyiv Metropolis, aggressive de-Russification under the guise of de-Sovietization, the replacement of ethnic identity with civic identity through the Law on Identity, and the erasure of historical memory, symbols, and legitimate forms of cultural continuity of the titular people.

Such practice corresponds to the signs of cultural annihilation, despite the fact that the 1948 Convention does not explicitly record the concept of cultural genocide — it is actively considered within the doctrine of genocide based on the cases of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

• Colonization — is manifested in the fact that resources, territory, cultural representation, and international legal capacity are taken away from the titular nation and redistributed in favor of ethnic and diasporic groups legally connected with other states. This violates Article 1 of the UN Charter and Article 1 of both 1966 International Covenants, where the right of peoples to freely dispose of their resources and determine their political status is enshrined.

• Crimes against humanity — the systematic deprivation of legal subjectivity of an ethnic group in conditions of war, institutional pressure, and legislative manipulation qualifies as a form of persecution under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. This particularly concerns subparagraphs (h) and (k) of Article 7, which cover “persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity” and “other inhumane acts intentionally causing great suffering.”

Therefore, Ukraine must be recognized not only as a state engaged in armed conflict and a victim of external aggression, but also as a subject of internal aggression against its own titular people — through non-conventional, institutional-legal mechanisms aimed at the legally formalized destruction of ethnic identity, the dismantling of legal succession, the liquidation of collective subjectivity, and violent subjugation.

 

Russian Federation:

This text deliberately does not include a separate analysis of the crimes and acts of aggression committed by the Russian Federation against Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, not because they are insignificant, justifiable, or due to any pro-Russian stance. On the contrary — the crimes and aggression of the Russian Federation are evident, large-scale, and well-documented in international practice. Their classification as acts of external aggression is undisputed and has already become the subject of numerous accusations and investigations in international institutions.

However, the focus of this article is not external, but rather the internal legal violence carried out by the state of Ukraine against its titular nation — ethnic Ukrainians. These processes are almost never discussed in the public or human rights sphere and remain outside the scope of international mechanisms. The absence of dedicated sections on the Russian Federation in this text should not be interpreted as an attempt to diminish its responsibility — the emphasis is shifted solely to demonstrate another, equally destructive mechanism: the systemic deprivation of a people’s subjectivity within its own state.

It is important to emphasize: the claim of the Russian Federation that Ukrainians are “part of the Russian people” has no legal basis. Within the Russian Federation itself, there is no recognition of the Russian people as a distinct bearer of collective rights. The Russian legal system does not provide mechanisms for self-determination, the rights of peoples, or national sovereignty — neither for Russians nor for any other ethnic communities. Therefore, such statements are not expressions of concern for rights, but rather instruments of legal assimilation, colonization, and subjugation.

Support for the Russian model, which is based on the denial of any people’s subjectivity, means complicity in a system of legal dehumanization. In this sense, both Ukrainians and Russians are simultaneously deprived of mechanisms for collective representation and legal self-protection. This article aims to expose this symmetrical structure of legal exploitation.

Moreover, in the legal system of the Russian Federation, Ukrainians as an ethnic group are not recognized at all — neither as a people, nor as a national minority, nor as an ethnocultural community with rights to political representation, linguistic protection, cultural expression, or international legal protection.

The same applies to Russians: despite their demographic majority, the Russian people within the Russian Federation have no legally recognized collective subjectivity. They are not acknowledged as a source of sovereignty, have no right to self-determination, and are not represented as a collective subject in the international system.

Against this background, the propaganda slogan “we are one people,” actively used by the Russian Federation — including in the occupied territories of Ukraine, in the media, and in official rhetoric — is not an act of recognition but a form of legal fiction. It has no internal or international legal foundation. The Russian legal system lacks the very concept of “people” as a source of power, and any form of collective identity not embedded in the vertical structure of state authority is perceived as a threat.

Therefore, the rhetoric of a “unified people” is not an attempt to protect the rights of Ukrainians or Russians but an instrument of legal subordination and assimilation. In practice, both groups are deprived of mechanisms for collective representation, rights to self-determination, and access to international legal protection. Everything is reduced to the concept of an abstract “multiethnic people of the Russian Federation,” where there are no titular ethnicities, no federal structure, and no autonomous subjects.

Identical rhetorical constructs were used in the 20th century to justify aggression. In particular, Adolf Hitler invoked the doctrine of a “unified German people” as the basis for the Anschluss of Austria, claiming that Austrians and Germans were one nation by virtue of a shared language. This approach was condemned as manipulative and lacking any legitimacy under international law.

The rhetoric about protecting the “Russian-speaking population” in the occupied territories of Ukraine follows the same pattern. Russian-speaking identity, as a cultural and linguistic characteristic, does not endow a group with legal subjectivity — neither in international law nor in national constitutional systems. Therefore, the Russian Federation’s attempts to present its aggression as “protection” amount to political manipulation devoid of legal substance.

After the 2020 reforms, the republics within Russia were effectively reduced to administrative units: references to the federal treaty were removed, the term “state” was prohibited, and the offices of “presidents of republics” were renamed “heads of subjects.” Thus, even the symbolic form of sovereignty was abolished.

In fairness, it should be noted: despite the authoritarian nature of the regime, the legal model of the Russian Federation is not a system of ethnic apartheid in the classical sense. Peoples are formally recognized — particularly within the republics of the Federation — but this recognition is limited strictly to the cultural sphere. Political collective rights — such as self-determination, sovereignty, or international representation — are absent for everyone without exception.

Russia’s federal structure does not make it unique in this regard: in fact, it implements the same model as unitary states like France or post-apartheid South Africa. In France, no peoples are recognized — all citizens are considered part of a single French nation, regardless of ethnic origin. In South Africa, after the collapse of the apartheid regime, peoplehood was also not restored for any group: formally, all are equal, but none possess collective rights in the political sense.

Thus, the model of the Russian Federation does not represent a system of ethnic hierarchy, but rather a mechanism of general nullification of the political subjectivity of peoples.

Unlike Ukraine, where political and collective rights — including the right to self-governance, land ownership, and control over resources — are selectively granted to national minorities and ethnocultural groups institutionally linked to other states, while being denied to the ethnic majority — the Ukrainian ethnic community, Russia deprives all groups of such rights without exception, regardless of their ethnic origin. It allows only limited cultural self-determination, which is not accompanied by political representation or sovereignty.