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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.

Such relocation left room for a dual interpretation of the term “people” in Article 5 of the Constitution — both as the totality of all citizens of Ukraine of all nationalities, and as an ethnic collective subject. This, in turn, created an interpretative ambiguity that was later used to normatively remove ethnic Ukrainians from the framework of collective legal subjectivity.

Until 2021, Ukrainian legislation was based exclusively on a civic model of society, which did not provide for special collective statuses such as indigenous peoples. Within this model, Article 5 of the Constitution defined the people as the sole source of power and sovereignty without specifying its ethnocultural or other collective composition, while Article 13 explicitly established that land, subsoil, and other natural resources are objects of ownership of the Ukrainian people.

Since, in the absence of special collective statuses, the concept of the “Ukrainian people” was understood as the aggregate of all citizens of Ukraine regardless of nationality, this ensured the absence of legal competition in determining the bearer of sovereignty and collective rights.

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.

Short explanatory note: In the Ukrainian context, the term “people” is not a political slogan and not an abstract reference to the population. It is the legal name of the owner. The Constitution of Ukraine uses the term “the Ukrainian people” to designate the collective owner of the land, subsoil, and natural resources of the state. In other words, “the people” is the subject in whom the original title of ownership to the territory and national wealth is vested. Accordingly, who is legally recognized as “the people” directly determines who owns this property and who has the right to dispose of it.

This construction radically distinguishes Ukraine from all other post-Soviet states. After the collapse of the USSR, most former Soviet republics abandoned the principle of popular ownership and vested land and natural resources in the state as a legal entity. As a result, the people retained the status of the source of power but lost the title of owner of the territory and national wealth.

Ukraine and Kazakhstan became the only exceptions to this model, preserving the constitutional formula under which land, subsoil, and natural resources belong to the people. Thus, in these states a direct legal link between popular sovereignty and ownership of the material foundation of the state was maintained.

In the Russian Federation, no such link exists. Despite the formal recognition of the multinational people as the source of power, land and natural resources are held in state, municipal, and private ownership, which excludes the people from the category of owners and reduces their status to a purely political and declarative one.

In monarchies such as the United Kingdom, supreme authority and legal ownership of land belong to the Crown rather than to the people. In the United States, sovereignty is vested in the Constitution and the federal system, within which the people are understood primarily as a political community of citizens, not as a collective owner of the state.

For this reason, any change in the very definition of “the people” in Ukrainian legislation signifies not merely a political reform, but a redistribution of property rights and sovereignty within the state.

It is important not to confuse citizenship with the people. Citizenship is an individual administrative-legal status that denotes a person’s affiliation with the jurisdiction of a state and the scope of their personal rights and obligations. The people, by contrast, constitute a collective subject that the Constitution of Ukraine simultaneously recognizes as the sole source of power and the bearer of sovereignty (Article 5), as well as the original owner of the land, subsoil, and natural resources of the state (Article 13). A citizen exercises political rights not in their own name and not as an owner, but on behalf of the people as a collective subject.

A citizen as such is not a bearer of sovereignty and holds no title of collective ownership over territory, land, or resources. Consequently, it is possible to remain a citizen of a state while simultaneously losing the status of the source of power and the owner of the country, if the people as a collective subject are excluded or substituted in law. In such a situation, citizenship effectively approaches subjecthood, as in monarchical or feudal systems where the population is subordinate to authority but is neither its source nor the owner of the state. The coexistence within one territory of groups that possess the status of the people and groups that do not signifies the reproduction of an estate-based, feudal model of power incompatible with the principles of a republic and popular sovereignty.

Within the Ukrainian legal model, unique in the post-Soviet space, where ownership of territory, land, subsoil, and power belongs not to the state but to the people, the most effective method of capturing a country becomes not physical military conquest but the legal replacement of the owner. In such a configuration, military actions may serve as a background or a diversion, while the actual dispossession of the state occurs at the level of law—through redefining who is recognized as the people.

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 established norms of direct effect, in which the term “people” is defined as a collective ethnocultural subject with special rights. At the same time, the Law of Ukraine “On Law-Making Activity” No. 3354-IX of 24.08.2023, in Article 38, Part 2, explicitly provided that the preamble of a law “may not contain legal norms.”

Additionally, in the same Law No. 3354-IX, Section XIV “Final Provisions,” paragraph 2, subparagraph 7 originally stated that the preamble "does not contain legal norms." However, this subparagraph was later repealed by Law No. 3624-IX of 21.03.2024, which outwardly softened the wording but did not change the substance: the basic rule of Article 38 remained in force, and the preamble is still deprived of legal effect.

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.”

The Constitutional Court of Ukraine repeatedly affirmed in its decisions that the people of Ukraine are the citizens of Ukraine of all nationalities. At the same time, these same decisions recognized that the Preamble of the Constitution has a political and declarative character, does not have the force of direct action, and does not create legal norms. As a result, the formula of the people as the totality of citizens existed exclusively in the Preamble, which lacked binding legal force.

Until 2021, this ambiguity made it possible to maintain the civic interpretation of the concept of “people.” However, after the adoption of the Law of Ukraine “On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” (No. 1616-IX), the Law of Ukraine “On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine” (No. 2827-IX), the Law of Ukraine “On the Legislative Process” (No. 3354-IX), and the amendments introduced by the Law of Ukraine No. 3624-IX, the status of a collective subject was secured only for ethnic communities, while the Preamble was definitively deprived of any legal significance.

Additionally in the analytical materials of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine on the interpretation of the Constitution (“The Role of the Preamble in the Interpretation of the Constitution”) and in the corresponding decisions, it is confirmed that the preamble was used only as context for understanding other provisions, but not as a self-executing norm.

Furthermore, 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.

Thus, the previous model, where the people were identified with all the citizens of Ukraine, was completely devalued and replaced by a new construction in which ethnic Ukrainians were deprived of collective subjectivity.

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.

А reference to Article 11 of the Constitution, which mentions the development of the Ukrainian nation, likewise does not confirm the legal status of ethnic Ukrainians as a people or determine its composition. Moreover, when read together with the Preamble to the Constitution, where the Ukrainian nation and the Ukrainian People are associated with the citizens of Ukraine of all nationalities, it creates legal uncertainty and allows the term “Ukrainian nation” to be interpreted either as a civic or as an ethnic community. Furthermore, Article 11 does not even impose a legal obligation on the State to ensure such development, but merely provides that the State shall promote it, without establishing any legal status, collective rights, or mechanisms for their implementation. In other words, the Constitution requires no measurable result; in theory, even applauding could be presented as “promoting” such development.

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 effectively create a legal construct under which the collective rights to land, resources, and the very sovereignty of Ukraine are transferred to groups 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 a people, the next stage became a systemic blockade of any attempts to restore their collective subjectivity.

Since international law recognizes the right to self-determination exclusively for peoples as collective subjects, and not for citizens or individuals, Ukraine has created an internal legal and ideological system in which the very possibility of being a people becomes inaccessible specifically to ethnic Ukrainians.

To achieve this, a stable image of Ukrainians is formed — as an aggressive, nationalist, and later fascist group whose recognition as a people allegedly poses a threat to international security. This image serves as a legal and political justification for denying Ukrainians collective rights and recognition of subjectivity.

Inside the country, this image is shaped through the actions of repressive structures — the police, the Security Service (SBU), the Territorial Recruitment Centers (TRC), and other agencies that carry out forced mobilization, public humiliation, abductions, torture, killings, and language pressure campaigns, including the system of “language patrols.” All of this takes place exclusively in the Ukrainian language, causing the language itself and Ukrainian identity to be perceived as symbols of power, fear, and violence. At the same time, fines for Russian-language content are imposed, along with public punishments and nationalist marches that create in society an image of aggressive Ukrainianness.

Outside Ukraine, the reputational image is formed not only through rallies and actions with radical symbols but also through visual oversaturation with flags, slogans, and demonstrative gestures. The countless Ukrainian flags displayed everywhere — from public events to private windows — are perceived in EU and US countries as intrusive and irritating. Against this backdrop, every manifestation of Ukrainian symbolism begins to be associated not with the struggle for freedom, but with demonstrative aggression and political intolerance. The situation is aggravated by stories of everyday conflicts between Ukrainian refugees and local residents related to language disputes or the display of national symbols. All this creates a persistent impression that the Ukrainian language and identity carry an element of aggression, solidifying the false association of Ukrainian identity with violent nationalism.

Despite the outward impression of ethnic Nazism actively promoted by Russian propaganda as justification for “denazification,” the phenomenon taking place in Ukraine has a different nature. It is not about ethnicity but about a civic-linguistic mechanism of suppression, in which the language of the state becomes an instrument of violence and arbitrariness. In public perception, the Russian language begins to be seen as a symbol of safety and neutrality, while Ukrainian becomes a marker of threat and state terror. As a result, Ukrainian identity is discredited both externally and internally: Russia perceives it as the image of an enemy, while Ukrainian society sees it as a tool of its own oppression.

Evidence of the artificial nature of this ideological construct lies in the fact that the country’s leader, former President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has usurped power and continues to exercise actual control over the state apparatus, is an ethnic Jew. Therefore, the notion of “Ukrainian ethnic Nazism” under the leadership of an ethnic Jew is impossible, confirming the fictitious nature of the entire scheme.

This is not an ethnic but an administrative-linguistic form of “Nazism” — a type of civic violence in which the state language is transformed into an instrument of intimidation. It is heard in military orders, at checkpoints, during arrests and mobilizations — in places where blood is shed. The Ukrainian language, detached from culture and human meaning, becomes a language of pain, violence, and fear, in which a person hears not the voice of the people, but solely the voice of tyrannical power.

This creates not merely an internal division, but a consciously provoked split orchestrated by the authorities — aimed at destroying the very foundation of Ukrainian identity. National minorities who have lived on Ukrainian land for centuries and used the Russian language as their natural means of communication are now forcibly drawn into an artificial system of loyalty, where refusing to switch to Ukrainian is equated with “collaboration with the aggressor.” Those who have spoken Russian all their lives are now forced to publicly prove that they are not enemies. People who have never been involved in politics are turned by the state into objects of suspicion and humiliation.

Thus emerges hatred — not toward the language itself, but toward the very idea of Ukrainian identity, which the authorities have turned into an instrument of violence and administrative coercion. Ukrainization ceases to be a cultural process and becomes a mechanism of suppression, where language is imposed under the threat of punishment. National minorities, witnessing this, begin to perceive the Ukrainian state not as their home but as a source of aggression and discrimination, gradually distancing themselves from everything associated with Ukrainian culture.

At the same time, this process also engulfs ethnic Ukrainians themselves. The Ukrainian language no longer serves as an expression of their identity, heritage, or dignity — it becomes associated with pain, violence, and forced mobilization. Those who speak it are feared and despised. The authorities seek to make Ukrainians abandon their own identity, because once they do, they effectively become a national minority — deprived of rights to land, resources, and sovereignty, as established by Zelensky’s legislative reforms.

The deprivation of subjectivity has already taken place, and now the state destroys what remains — the moral capacity and will to restore it. Ukrainians are made to believe that the very aspiration to be an ethnic Ukrainian is a form of radicalism or extremism. Thus, a demoralized people lose faith in their right to exist and ultimately turn into a managed mass, severed from their history, language, and name.

The displacement of the Ukrainian language does not occur through direct prohibition, but through its discrediting and the erosion of ethnocultural boundaries. The Ukrainian language no longer associates with ethnic Ukrainians — it becomes the language of all citizens, regardless of origin. Formally presented as a sign of unity and tolerance, it in fact deprives the titular nation of its last distinguishing feature.

If everyone speaks Ukrainian, then Ukrainians as a distinct people no longer exist — even culturally — because their ethnocultural identity ceases to be distinct from others. In the legal sense, it has already been erased: the laws have deprived ethnic Ukrainians of the status of a people and of subjectivity, and with it, of the right to collective self-determination. What remains are only individuals, bound by citizenship and subordinated to the administrative jurisdiction of the state.

Thus emerges a mechanism of unpunished assimilation. Since Ukrainians are not legally recognized as a people, their forced Russification is not classified as colonization, while the destruction of their language is presented as “denazification,” supported even within the country by an exhausted and suppressed population. This definitively blocks any possibility of self-determination: the people are deprived of legal status, the language — of ethnic identity, and the Ukrainian — of any cultural, legal, or historical reality.

As a result, any attempt by Ukrainians to restore their subjectivity and right to self-determination is perceived as radicalism or extremism. Such accusations become tools to deny them collective rights, political representation, and even the right to exist as a people. In parallel, a legal and ideological framework emerges that enforces the loss of identity: the concept of “Ukrainian” is pushed out of language and law, reduced to an administrative label for a population stripped of ethnocultural substance.

The Ukrainian language, universalized as the language of all citizens, loses its connection to ethnic origin and ceases to carry historical and property continuity. When everyone speaks Ukrainian, it stops being a marker of a people and becomes a language of administrative subordination and control. By discrediting the language, the state destroys the last point of reference through which Ukrainians could affirm their existence as a historical and rights-bearing community.

In conclusion, within the country there no longer exists any legal, linguistic, or registration mechanism through which the Ukrainian ethnic community could express its collective “we” in a way that would have legal force and legitimacy.

According to current legislation, the Ukrainian ethnic community has no established right to publicly express its will on behalf of the community — unlike national minorities, which are granted guaranteed forms of cultural representation, and Indigenous peoples, who possess a distinct and legally recognized right to collective expression.

After 2021, as a result of consecutive legislative changes, Ukraine lost the legal mechanism of popular representation that had previously ensured the collective subjectivity of the titular nation. Law No. 1616-IX “On the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” assigned political subjectivity exclusively to Indigenous peoples, Law No. 2827-IX “On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine” — cultural subjectivity to national minorities, while Law No. 2215-IX “On the De-Sovietization of Ukrainian Legislation” effectively removed from the legal field the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine No. 55-XII of 16 July 1990, which recognized the people of Ukraine as the bearer of sovereignty and the Verkhovna Rada as the sole body authorized to act on behalf of the entire people.

Following the loss of the Declaration as a legal foundation for popular representation, the Verkhovna Rada and the President no longer possess the legitimate authority to express the will of the Ukrainian ethnic community as a people. Their powers retain administrative legitimacy with respect to citizens belonging to national minorities and Indigenous peoples, but they do not include the right to express the will of these communities as collective subjects — and even less so the will of the Ukrainian ethnic community as a people.

Thus ends the process of blocking not the right to self-determination itself — since it has an imperative character and does not depend on the will of the state — but the very mechanism of its implementation. The people have been removed from the legal field: Ukrainian official documents have long lacked the nationality entry, and therefore, there is no legal criterion by which belonging to ethnic Ukrainians could be established. The Ukrainian language no longer indicates origin, as it has been transformed into a universal civic identity devoid of ethnocultural substance. Ukrainian legislation contains no form, procedure, or provision through which ethnic Ukrainians could exercise their collective right to self-determination.

Against this background, a new system of legal coordinates is being formed, in which the disappearance of a people is not perceived as a loss but presented as the protection of cultural communities, the development of national minorities, or a “modern transformation into a civil society.” However, the deception lies in the fact that civil society in Ukraine already existed — until 2021, when all citizens were legally equal regardless of origin or language. The new legislative model destroyed this principle, creating a system of legal apartheid in which the scope of rights and the mechanisms for their realization depend on ethnic affiliation. National minorities are formally recognized but deprived of the right to land, sovereignty, and political representation, reduced to the role of cultural communities without real guarantees. As a result, the state has legally restored a feudal model in which the right to power, land, and status is determined by origin.

This process has a complex nature and represents a deliberate redistribution of sovereignty. As a result, the rights to land, power, natural resources, and the very position of the source of authority are in fact and in law appropriated by the State of Israel, since it is she who acts as the representative and successor of the groups legitimately recognized by Ukraine as indigenous peoples — the Karaites and the Krymchaks. Thus, Ukraine loses its own titular subjectivity, while its sovereign functions are usurped by a foreign state under the guise of protecting the rights of recognized ethnocultural groups.

Russia derives political benefits by using the destruction of Ukrainian subjectivity as justification for its aggression and as a tool to legitimize control over occupied territories. The Central European states — Poland, Hungary, and Romania — act within the framework of regional pragmatism, using the reputational discrediting of Ukrainian identity as an instrument to prepare for the subsequent redistribution of jurisdictions and spheres of influence.

 

8. International Legal Mechanism for Restoring Subjectivity

The refusal of Ukraine to recognize ethnic Ukrainians as a people does not eliminate their international legal subjectivity, since it does not depend on the will of the state. According to Article 1 of the UN Charter, as well as Article 1 of both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (both adopted in 1966), the right of peoples to self-determination is universal and inalienable. It has an imperative (jus cogens) character and cannot be limited by domestic legislation. A state that refuses to recognize its own people does not annul this right but merely loses legitimacy as its bearer.

International law distinguishes between the political subjectivity of a people and the collective rights of national or ethnocultural minorities. These categories are not identical but are interconnected. National minorities do not arise independently — they represent parts of a people who live beyond the borders of their state. Therefore, their recognition in other countries is, in fact, an international confirmation of the existence of the people itself, regardless of the position of the state of origin.

Ethnic Ukrainians are officially recognized as national minorities in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, and several other states. This recognition has independent international legal significance: it confirms the existence of Ukrainians as an ethnocultural community with continuous historical, linguistic, and cultural continuity. A national minority is not a civic category but evidence of belonging to a people whose existence does not depend on state registration.

According to Article 2 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (1992), such communities have the right to declare, develop, and preserve their identity, as well as to create their own organizations and associations to represent their interests. This gives them the right to publicly express their collective will, defend their identity, and bear witness to the existence of the people of which they are a part.

General Comment No. 23 of the UN Human Rights Committee on Article 27 of the ICCPR explicitly states that states cannot deny the existence of a de facto ethnocultural group even in the absence of its legal recognition. Therefore, Ukraine’s refusal to recognize Ukrainians as a people does not annul their legal personality; it merely transfers the matter into the international domain.

Ukrainian national communities, cultural associations, and representative councils in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia, and other countries have the right to make public statements on behalf of their communities. Such statements do not create a new sovereignty and do not replace state institutions, but they perform a critically important function — they record the fact of a crime against a people deprived of the opportunity to speak within its own state.

In international law, the silence of a victim is interpreted as the absence of a crime. If a people has no access to legal instruments within its own state, it retains the right to report violations through recognized external structures — precisely in those jurisdictions where its existence is officially acknowledged. Legally, such statements become the starting point for consideration of the violation of collective rights and may serve as grounds for international appeals to the UN Human Rights Committee, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Council of Europe, and the European Court of Human Rights.

Thus, even when direct self-determination is impossible, the Ukrainian people retain the right to a public declaration as collective evidence. Such a declaration records the fact of the crime, restores the legal visibility of the people in the international arena, and prevents any attempt to erase it juridically. As long as Ukraine excludes its own people from the category of collective subjects, it is precisely the nationally recognized minorities abroad that serve as the bearers of evidence and witnesses to the continued existence of the people who have been deprived of the right to speak in their own name.

 

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

By depriving ethnic Ukrainians of the status of a people, Ukraine has created a legal framework in which the titular nation can no longer be recognized either as a victim of aggression or as a beneficiary of international compensation. In official rhetoric, the term “Ukrainian people” is used in a civic sense—as a collective of persons holding Ukrainian citizenship. However, under international law, the status of a victim, the right to reparations, and collective protection are reserved for peoples in the ethnic sense of the term, not the civic-legal one. In international doctrine, a people is understood as a historically formed ethnocultural community possessing the right to self-determination, historical memory, and international protection.

A revealing example is the statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine dated 9 August 2025, 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. Ethnic Ukrainians were not mentioned at all. This demonstrates that the state recognizes as bearers of collective rights exclusively the indigenous peoples, while the titular nation has been reduced to a category of citizens and excluded from the international system of collective protection.

The adoption of three laws — No. 1616-IX, No. 2827-IX, and No. 2215-IX — resulted in the formation of a new legal model of the concept of the “Ukrainian people.” Law No. 1616-IX “On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” monopolistically vested the Crimean Tatars, Karaites, and Krymchaks with the status of sovereign bearers, effectively creating from them a new “Ukrainian people.” Law No. 2827-IX “On National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine” excluded from the system of collective rights both ethnic Ukrainians and national minorities, leaving the latter only the cultural sphere, without political subjectivity or the right to sovereignty.

Law No. 2215-IX “On De-Sovietization of the Legislation of Ukraine” finally eliminated the continuity of legal acts in which Ukrainians were recognized as the source of state power. As a result, under current Ukrainian law, the “Ukrainian people” is legally confined exclusively to the three recognized indigenous groups — the Crimean Tatars, Karaites, and Krymchaks.

The Crimean Tatars were recognized as an indigenous people only after the factual annexation of Crimea, which from the outset made this recognition purely formal. Ukraine did not ratify ILO Convention No. 169, which establishes the obligations of the state to protect the rights of indigenous peoples and their international legal personality. By doing so, the state consciously refused to assume international responsibility for their protection and effectively removed the Crimean Tatars from the legal framework.

Unlike the Karaites and Krymchaks, who mostly reside in Israel and enjoy freedom of movement and international protection, the Crimean Tatars are physically blocked within the territory of the Crimean Peninsula, forced to hold Russian passports and deprived of access to Ukrainian citizenship. This turns their recognition into an element of legal fiction, created not to grant rights but to conceal the recognition of the Karaites and Krymchaks as indigenous peoples and to facilitate the transfer of Ukraine’s practical sovereignty in favor of the State of Israel.

In addition, on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula, which remains under the conditions of factual annexation by the Russian Federation, the activities of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People are prohibited by a decision of the Russian authorities that declared it an “extremist organization.” This has created a complete legal blockade. Formally, a “representative body of the Mejlis” exists in Ukraine, yet it has no legal or communicative connection with the Crimean Tatars residing on the territory of Crimea.

It should also be noted that since 2014 no elections of the Mejlis have been held, which means the absence of a renewed representative mandate. The current composition of the body retains only formal legitimacy within the Ukrainian legal framework but lacks actual international recognition as a representative of the people. Thus, the Crimean Tatars are legally recognized but, in practice, deprived of the ability to exercise their collective right and to act as a subject of international procedures.

The situation of the Crimean Tatars is further complicated by the adoption of the Law of Ukraine No. 4502-IX “On Amendments to Certain Laws of Ukraine Regarding the Implementation of the Right to Acquire and Retain Citizenship of Ukraine,” which formally introduces the institution of multiple citizenship but in reality establishes a mechanism of exclusion. According to Article 19 of the Law of Ukraine “On Citizenship of Ukraine,” the acquisition of the citizenship of the aggressor state by a resident of a temporarily occupied territory “is not considered voluntary.” However, the law does not provide any procedure for confirming this fact.

The absence of a register of residents of temporarily occupied territories, the lack of judicial oversight, and the absence of clear criteria for determining voluntariness turn this provision into a legal fiction. Every Crimean Tatar residing in Crimea who has been forced to obtain a Russian passport will have to individually prove the “involuntariness” of this acquisition before the Ukrainian state. The collective right of the indigenous people has been replaced by an endless series of individual cases in which the outcome depends not on facts but on the discretion of the authorities.

Thus, although recognized as an indigenous people, the Crimean Tatars—deprived of practical guarantees and isolated under conditions of annexation—find themselves in a state of legal paralysis. By failing to ratify ILO Convention No. 169 and by not establishing a mechanism for the collective recognition of the status of residents of the occupied territories, Ukraine has effectively created a situation in which the very fact of living on one’s native land becomes a potential ground for the loss of citizenship.

This completes the legal scheme of exclusion: ethnic Ukrainians have lost the status of a people, and the Crimean Tatars—the possibility of being one.

The Karaites and Krymchaks, on the other hand, found themselves in a completely different configuration. Their collective subjectivity within Ukraine is confirmed by Law No. 1616-IX, while in the international dimension it is reinforced by their belonging to the Jewish people and the Israeli diaspora, which possess recognized legal personality and their own institutions of protection. They do not require ratification of ILO Convention No. 169, since their international guarantees are ensured through Israeli legislation and international agreements functioning in favor of the Jewish people.

Thus, the right to represent the interests of the “Ukrainian people” and to receive international protection has been distributed monopolistically. Ukraine’s collective legal personality on the international stage is effectively concentrated in the hands of the Karaites and Krymchaks — groups connected to the Israeli legal system.

This logic repeats an already existing historical precedent. After World War II, the Soviet Union did indeed receive reparations from Germany — but not as a union of peoples-victims, rather as a centralized victorious state. The reparations were directed not to the nations that had suffered enormous losses, but to the Party center. The state appropriated the suffering of its peoples and deprived them of the right to be recognized as victims.

More than twenty million Soviet citizens were killed—among them, Ukrainians accounted for a greater share than any other nation of the Union—yet they were never recognized as victims in the ethnic sense. The Nazis exterminated Ukrainians in the same way as Jews, executing and burying them in the same mass graves—the Babyn Yar massacre being one such example. However, while one group was recognized as victims on ethnic grounds, Ukrainians were killed under the labels of “communists” and “Bolsheviks.” As a result, millions of murdered Ukrainians were legally deprived of the right to be recognized as a people-victim, because state ideology erased ethnic distinction and replaced it with a political one.

The only ethnic group that received international recognition and compensation as a people-victim were the Jews, since their extermination was classified precisely on ethnic grounds. The presence of a clearly defined cultural and national identity made it possible to establish the crime as genocide and to secure international mechanisms of remembrance and restitution. This legal asymmetry consolidated the collective status of one group while depriving other peoples of the right to equal recognition and historical justice.

The only ethnic group that received international recognition and compensation as a victimized people were the Jews, since their extermination was classified explicitly on the basis of ethnicity. Ukrainians, who suffered far greater losses — over ten million dead — received no such recognition. Under Soviet colonization, their collective subjectivity existed only formally, in the state framework of the Ukrainian SSR and its seat at the United Nations, but without any right to express an independent will.

This was a delegated form of subjectivity, fully controlled by Moscow and disconnected from the Ukrainian people as an ethnocultural community. For this reason, the international community has still not recognized as genocide the Holodomor, the Gulag system, the Stalinist repressions, or the mass executions and deportations — crimes that resulted in the destruction of millions of Ukrainians. They had no independent subject capable of speaking about these crimes on behalf of their people. After the collapse of the USSR, this formal subjectivity was transferred to the state of Ukraine, but without any real mechanism of self-determination. Zelensky’s legislative reform ultimately destroyed even this nominal form, excluding Ukrainians from the legal category of a people.

Furthermore, the Soviet Union retained the status of a victor, but that very status erased its status as a victim. Ukraine now repeats the same pattern in a new form: it presents itself as a victim state while depriving its titular nation of that status. In international documents, the formula “Ukrainian people” will continue to appear familiar, yet legally it will refer not to ethnic Ukrainians, but to the recognized collective subjects — the Karaites and Krymchaks — whose legal subjectivity is tied to the State of Israel.

Thus, the same historical and legal deception is being repeated. Ukrainians are once again being destroyed — physically and legally. Their deaths will be acknowledged as the deaths of citizens, but not as the annihilation of a people. And the right to be recognized as a people-victim — the right to memory, justice, and reparation — is being transferred to those who have legally taken their place within the international system.

If Ukraine preserves its statehood in the future, it is these groups that will obtain rights to restoration, representation, and participation in compensation and legal processes. Should there be a full or partial loss of territory, Israel, through the recognized groups, will retain the right to receive international reparations on behalf of the “Ukrainian people,” already legally fixed in its person.

Thus, the exclusion of the titular nation from the category of “people” signifies not only the loss of sovereignty but also the deprivation of the very right to be a victim. Ukrainians are denied the right to suffering, to recovery, and to historical justice. The war itself, the destruction, and the occupation cease to be qualified 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 able to fully exercise collective rights — including political representation, as well as rights to land, territory, subsoil, natural resources, and governance — are the Israeli diaspora. Its internationally recognized legal personality and connection with the State of Israel allow these norms to be applied in a practical and institutional manner, while the rights of the Crimean Tatars are effectively blocked, national minorities are limited to the cultural and humanitarian sphere, and ethnic Ukrainians are completely excluded from the system of collective subjectivity.

Thus, Israel acts not only as a beneficiary but also as an actual party to the conflict, using the legal framework created by Ukraine to redistribute sovereignty and collective rights in its favor.

While the recognized indigenous peoples need only refer to specific articles of law to confirm their collective rights — to land, resources, autonomy, sovereignty, and even to exist as a people — ethnic Ukrainians are forced to prove this through endless legal, political, and philosophical disputes, persuading lawyers, officials, and even artificial intelligence of the very fact of their existence as a people.

National minorities are formally included in the system of protection, yet their rights are confined to the cultural and humanitarian sphere and do not extend to land, territory, or political power.

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.

It should be emphasized that the absence of Israel in the Ukrainian media space and in public political processes does not mean its actual absence as a subject of influence. Israel operates through a network of international institutions and lobbying structures legally registered and functioning in the United States.

According to U.S. law, including the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), the activities of organizations representing the interests of foreign states are subject to mandatory registration. However, pro-Israel structures, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and affiliated funds, operate lawfully within the framework of American lobbying legislation but formally do not fall under the requirements of FARA, as they are legally positioned as independent American organizations. They may finance members of Congress and U.S. politicians to shape both foreign and domestic policy in the interests of Israel.

In this context, the United States functions as Israel’s political and legal proxy in international affairs, ensuring the implementation of its strategic interests through foreign policy and a system of military and financial support. This is not an assumption but a legally established mechanism of interaction between allied states, confirmed by official documents and registration records. Such a form of presence explains why many U.S. actions that appear aggressive or illogical from the standpoint of the interests of its own citizens and taxpayers acquire complete internal logic when viewed through the prism of the interests of the State of Israel.

In other words, what seems irrational in the context of American policy turns out to be entirely consistent and purposeful within the system of Israeli priorities.

 

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.

A similar situation applies to Russians (ethnic). Despite being the numerical majority, the Russian people within the Russian Federation itself possess no legally established collective subjectivity. They are not recognized as bearers of sovereignty, have no right to self-determination, and are not represented as a collective subject in the international system.

The Russian Federation constructs a rhetoric of protecting Russians (ethnic) beyond its borders, yet it does not recognize them even within its own state. Formally, the people are declared “multinational,” but they lack their own subjectivity and collective “we” — they have no representation, and are deprived of the right to self-determination. Any expression of Russian identity is portrayed as nationalism or extremism, which renders the very idea of protecting Russians (ethnic) abroad absurd: a state that denies its own people internally cannot protect them externally.

Furthermore, references to the Russian-speaking population as an object of international protection are also devoid of legal meaning. In international law, there is no such category as “Russian-speaking population”; language is not a basis for recognizing collective sovereignty, political representation, or the status of a people.

Thus, the entire rhetoric of protecting Russians (ethnic) and Russian-speakers is a political fiction designed to legitimize external aggression and expand spheres of influence while the Russians (ethnic) themselves have no real rights within the Russian Federation.

The facts of the total destruction of Ukraine’s most Russian-speaking cities — Mariupol, Bakhmut, partially Kharkiv, and others — under the pretext of “denazification” sound absurd, since these regions have always been the most Russian-speaking and culturally closest to Russia. Their annihilation to the ground completely contradicts the declared goal and renders the rhetoric of “denazification” fictitious, serving merely as a cover for aggression.

The Azov Regiment, which took part in the defense of Mariupol, long held official status within the structure of the National Guard of Ukraine and received state support despite the presence of radical symbolism. After some of its fighters were captured, they became a central element of Russian propaganda, which uses their imagery as “evidence” of Ukraine’s supposedly Nazi character. Thus, Ukrainian state policy that allowed the formation of such units effectively provided Russia with a ready-made ideological foundation to justify its own destruction and war crimes.

Taken together, these facts point not to spontaneity but to a structural coordination of the informational and political actions of both sides: Ukraine produces the symbols, while Russia turns them into an instrument for legitimizing aggression. As a result, a stable symbiosis of narratives emerges, where each side reinforces the other, and the real victims — primarily the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine — end up destroyed and deprived of their voice.

It should be noted that the Russian Federation does not recognize any right to repatriation based on ethnicity. Russian legislation does not link affiliation with the state to origin or nationality. The so-called State Program for the Resettlement of Compatriots, approved by Presidential Decree No. 637 of June 22, 2006, regulates the return of persons who have “maintained a spiritual, cultural, and legal connection with Russia.”

In November 2023, Presidential Decree No. 872 introduced a new status into this program — “repatriate.” It applies to former citizens of the USSR, persons born in the RSFSR, and those whose relatives came from the territory of the Russian Empire or the USSR. However, this status does not constitute a right to ethnic repatriation. It merely allows participation in an administrative resettlement program without any guarantee of automatic citizenship or recognition based on origin.

Thus, even after the introduction of the concept of “repatriate,” the Russian system remains bureaucratic and does not acknowledge any ethnic connection to the state. Russian citizenship continues to represent an administrative status rather than an expression of national identity or belonging to a historical territory.

As a result, citizenship in the Russian Federation represents an administrative-legal status that does not express national identity and does not imply a legal connection between an individual and their people, cultural heritage, or territory of origin.

For this reason, when the Russian Federation forcibly imposes its citizenship on residents of occupied territories of Ukraine, it grants them no subjectivity. Receiving a Russian passport does not restore rights or create belonging — it dissolves a person into a depersonalized mass of citizenship where there is no people, no nation, only population.

Such a practice constitutes colonization and enslavement in the direct sense — through forced inclusion into a foreign jurisdiction, the loss of national identity, and the destruction of collective subjectivity. In accordance with international law, such actions are classified as crimes against humanity and have no statute of limitations.

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.

Thus, the concept of the “multinational people” functions as a declarative formula concealing a colonial-feudal model of governance without any real right to collective identity. Within this construction, only formal cultural self-expression of certain peoples is permitted, while the political or historical subjectivity of the titular majority — Russians (ethnic) — is not recognized. The absence of even a symbolic mechanism of self-determination turns the idea of the “multinational people” into an instrument for legitimizing internal colonization. It is on this basis that the rhetoric of a “united people” is built — serving not as a defense of the rights of Ukrainians or Russians (ethnic), but as a mechanism of legal subordination and assimilation that erases boundaries between nations and eliminates all forms of collective subjectivity.

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 adoption of Federal Law No. 317-FZ of August 3, 2018, “On Amendments to Articles 11 and 14 of the Federal Law ‘On Education in the Russian Federation’ Concerning the Study of the State Languages of the Republics of the Russian Federation and the Native Languages of the Peoples of the Russian Federation,” the republics effectively lost their linguistic autonomy. The law abolished the mandatory study of the state languages of the republics, making it voluntary, thereby depriving the national republics of one of the key elements of cultural sovereignty. From that moment, the Russian language was established as the only mandatory one in the education system and public administration, while the languages of the republics were reduced to an optional status.

The 2020 constitutional reform completed this process, formally preserving the federal structure but eliminating its political substance. The mention of the Federal Treaty disappeared from the Constitution, the republics were prohibited from using the term “state” in their official titles, and the positions of “presidents of the republics” were renamed to “highest officials of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation (heads of republics).” For some time, only Tatarstan and Bashkortostan retained this title, but in 2023 it was also abolished there.

Thus, between 2018 and 2023, Russia underwent a consistent process of dismantling republican subjectivity: first cultural — through the destruction of linguistic independence, and then political — through the elimination of symbols and institutions of internal sovereignty.

According to the Constitution and laws of the Russian Federation, land and natural resources do not belong to the people. They are held in state, municipal, and private ownership. The people are not subjects of ownership at all — unlike in Ukraine, where land and resources are constitutionally defined as the property of the people.

Article 9 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation states explicitly:

1. Land and other natural resources shall be used and protected in the Russian Federation as the basis for the life and activities of the peoples living on the corresponding territory.

2. Land and other natural resources may be in private, state, municipal, and other forms of ownership.

Thus, the people are mentioned only as the “basis of life” but not as the owners.

Federal property includes subsoil resources, oil, gas, gold, forests, the continental shelf, maritime zones, and strategic reserves. Their owner is the state, which manages them through agencies such as Rosimushchestvo, the Ministry of Natural Resources, and Rosnedra. Municipalities own roads, public utilities, and local lands. Private individuals may purchase land, lease subsoil resources, and use natural assets under license. The federal law “On Subsoil Resources” No. 2395-1 establishes that all subsoil resources are exclusively state property. In other words, every citizen of Russia is legally cut off from the right to own what is formally declared to be the “basis of his life.”

In Soviet constitutions (for example, the 1977 Constitution of the USSR), it was stated explicitly that land, subsoil, water, forests, and factories were the common property of the people. The people were the owners, and the state was merely the manager acting on their behalf. After 1991, this principle disappeared. People’s property was turned into state property and then partially privatized.

Under the Soviet Union, the people were the owners of everything; under the “independent” Russian Federation, the people own nothing. According to Article 1 of Federal Law No. 86-FZ “On the Central Bank of the Russian Federation (Bank of Russia),” the Central Bank is not subordinate to any governmental authority, does not bear responsibility for state obligations, and the state does not bear responsibility for the obligations of the Central Bank. It operates autonomously, determines monetary policy, and manages the country’s reserves outside the jurisdiction of the government and parliament.

If we add to this that under Article 9 of the Constitution land and subsoil resources do not belong to the people but are held by the state, it becomes evident that power and resources in Russia are concentrated in the hands of supranational structures.

According to Article 3 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power in the country is the multinational people of the Russian Federation.

However, the preamble, which states:

“We, the multinational people of the Russian Federation, united by a common destiny on our land… adopt the Constitution of the Russian Federation,”

contains no legal norms and has no direct effect — it creates neither rights nor obligations, just as in Ukraine. As a result, the people are formally proclaimed the source of power but are in fact deprived of the instruments to exercise it, which nullifies their subjectivity within the state.

The Constitution of the Russian Federation also contains no article defining the concept of civil society. Its existence is merely implied in Article 13, which speaks of the freedom of public associations and ideological diversity. Yet all such associations must register, report, and can be declared “foreign agents” or “undesirable organizations.” Therefore, civil society in Russia exists only formally — as a constitutional decoration, not as a genuine form of popular sovereignty.

In practice, the Russian Federation is not a union of peoples but a centralized system of administration in which all forms of collective subjectivity are suppressed. Its political model is not based on the idea of the people but on the concept of a state corporation that governs the population as a resource.

Russia’s military activity also confirms the absence of ideology and genuine subjectivity. The war is waged not by the people and not on the basis of national self-determination, but by mercenary formations, private military companies, and mobilized citizens without political will. The use of PMCs, including the Wagner Group, demonstrates that Russia’s participation in the war is of a commercial and coercive nature: those who fight are not citizens defending their homeland but mercenaries receiving payment. This excludes the very possibility of viewing Russian actions as an expression of popular will.

Consequently, the Russian Federation is not a state of the people and cannot legitimately appeal to the concept of “national interests.” Its legal model excludes the existence of a collective subject, and therefore any claims about “protecting Russians” in Ukraine are false — not only politically but legally. Russia defends not its people but its own system of colonial control.

Thus, the Russian Federation, acting not as a people’s state but as a mercenary system, bears responsibility for the destruction of infrastructure and the violent transformation of economic and demographic space. Such a model is typical of colonial conflicts, where military operations are followed by the creation of “special economic zones” and “reconstruction regimes” under the supervision of external actors.

Within such zones, mechanisms of external governance emerge — investment funds, joint ventures, humanitarian missions, and financial instruments that, in practice, perform the functions of temporary administrations. Through these mechanisms, ownership is redistributed, infrastructure restored, and new forms of jurisdiction consolidated.

As a result, a region devastated by war becomes a territory with a dual legal status — formally under the control of the aggressor state but in fact administered by a network of international and corporate actors. This is a form of neo-colonial expansion, in which war serves as an instrument of economic and legal reformatting of space, and the people living there lose not only their homes but also their legal subjectivity.

Under such dual jurisdiction, the demand for autonomy ceases to be a purely local claim; it becomes a logical element of the process of consolidating a new legal reality and a precondition for the creation of an autonomous or even sovereign entity under the patronage of external actors.

Thus, the model “military destruction → humanitarian and investment control → demographic change → demand for autonomy” represents a stable scenario of territorial transformation that requires no mystical motivation from the executors — only a combination of economic interests, managerial mechanisms, and legal instruments of reconstruction.

Even in the event of a military liberation of the occupied territories by NATO Joint Forces and the formal restoration of Ukraine’s state jurisdiction, the consequences of the destruction of infrastructure and property assets will remain irreversible. The physical loss of housing, industrial facilities, and land resources means that the constitutional right of ownership of those autochthonous communities that historically inhabited these territories persists only on paper, without any material embodiment.

At the same time, the collective ownership formally enshrined in the Constitution as belonging to the so-called “Ukrainian people” in the current legal model in fact passes to groups recognized by the state as indigenous peoples and legally correlated with the State of Israel. Thus, the formal restoration of Ukraine’s jurisdiction does not entail the restoration of property rights for ethnic Ukrainians and other native inhabitants, since their collective subjectivity in Ukrainian law has been eliminated and replaced with the legal fiction of the “Ukrainian people” as an abstract title assigned to other ethnocultural groups.

During subsequent reconstruction financed by external funds, international corporations, or investment mechanisms, control over the restored assets will be consolidated in the hands of the entities carrying out the reconstruction. This creates a new property and legal layer of ownership, effectively detaching the territory from its previous legal subject — the autochthonous population that historically inhabited these lands.

Thus, the formal return of jurisdiction and the proclaimed “liberation” in international discourse may result in the opposite outcome — the consolidation of external control over the restored territory and the exclusion of the titular nation from real rights of ownership, use, and disposition.

 

10.1. Dual Occupation and the Absence of Elections as Proof of the Loss of Sovereignty

It is important to emphasize that according to Article 38 of the Constitution of Ukraine, the right to vote and to be elected belongs to the citizens of Ukraine. However, citizens exercise this right on behalf of the people, who, according to Article 5 of the Constitution, are the sole source of power.

After the adoption of Law No. 1616-IX on Indigenous Peoples, which for the first time established the category of a people in its collective legal sense through a directly applicable rule of law, Law No. 2827-IX on National Minorities (Communities), which confined them exclusively to the civic composition of the population and nowhere defined them as a people in its collective legal sense or as part of the Ukrainian People, Law No. 2215-IX, which eliminated the legislative continuity of ethnic Ukrainians as a people in its collective legal sense, and Law No. 3354-IX, which excluded the Preamble to the Constitution from legal application as a rule of law, a legal collision arose.

The titular nation — ethnic Ukrainians — was deprived of the legal status of a people in its collective legal sense and of legal membership in the Ukrainian People, while national minorities were deprived of legal membership in the composition of the Ukrainian People, which, alongside the statement of the Russian Federation that Ukrainians are Russians, creates a legal situation in which ethnic Ukrainians, lacking their own legal status in Ukraine, are regarded as ethnic Russians and acquire the legal status of a national minority.

The indigenous people of Ukraine (Crimea) — the Crimean Tatars — are effectively blocked on the annexed territory and have no possibility to participate in the political life of Ukraine or to exercise their collective rights, as the activity of their representative body — the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People — has been recognized as an extremist organization, which effectively blocks the expression of their collective “we” and any forms of self-organization.

The other recognized indigenous peoples — the Karaites and Krymchaks — practically do not possess Ukrainian citizenship and likewise do not participate in the political processes of the state, since the law on multiple citizenship has not yet entered into force.

An additional element of this construction was introduced by Law No. 3354-IX “On Law-Making Activity” of 24 August 2023, which, in Article 38, part 2, explicitly states that the preamble of a law does not contain legal norms and has no direct legal effect. Since the Constitution of Ukraine, by its legal nature, is also a law, this principle extends to it as well, making the provisions of its preamble declarative and devoid of binding legal consequences.

It should be emphasized that the legal position regarding the non-normative character of the preamble has already been implemented and is being applied in the official document circulation of state authorities. According to the official response of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine to a public information request dated September 12, 2025 (No. 131881/PI-M-3846/7.1.3), the Ministry is already—prior to the entry into force of Law No. 3354-IX—referring to its key provision: “the preamble of a law has no legal force.” At the same time, the Ministry, invoking the fulfillment of Ukraine’s obligations in the field of European integration and the adaptation of legislation to the provisions of European Union law (acquis EU), interprets this not-yet-effective norm as mandatory, thereby creating a precedent for its de facto application.

According to paragraph 1 of Section XIV “Final Provisions” of the Law of Ukraine No. 3354-IX “On Law-Making Activity,” this law enters into force on the day following its official publication, but is brought into effect only one year after the termination or cancellation of martial law introduced by Presidential Decree No. 64/2022 and approved by Law No. 2102-IX.

This construction creates intentional legal uncertainty: the law has formally entered into force but has not been put into effect, placing its provisions in an intermediate status — they technically exist, but their practical applicability is undefined. As a result, a grey zone emerges in which the law appears to be enacted yet simultaneously remains in a state of “partial legal capacity,” allowing selective references to it without bearing responsibility for its official implementation.

This decision represents a political and legal mechanism aimed at circumventing Article 157 of the Constitution of Ukraine, which prohibits any amendments or actions of a constitutional nature during a state of war or emergency. The provision of the law stating that the preamble does not contain legal norms has constitutional significance and effectively transforms the legal nature of the preamble, excluding it from the system of sources of law.

The law was adopted by parliament, signed by the president, and officially published, yet it is kept in a “dormant” state, creating a legal presumption that the Preamble to the Constitution can be reduced to a mere declaration by an ordinary law without a formal amendment to the constitutional text.

It should be recalled that in 2019 the Verkhovna Rada amended the preamble of the Constitution through an ordinary law, No. 2680-VIII “On Amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine (regarding the strategic course of the state to acquire full membership of Ukraine in the European Union and in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization)”, adding the formula on “the irreversibility of the European and Euro-Atlantic course.” This step created a precedent for an ordinary law directly affecting the preamble of the Constitution, even though the Constitution itself does not provide any procedure for amending the preamble: Chapter XIII defines procedures only for amendments to articles and sections, but not to the preamble. Thus, Parliament acted outside the constitutional limits, inserting ideological provisions into the foundational act of popular sovereignty without a referendum, and therefore the claim that “a law cannot affect the Constitution” does not correspond to the actual legislative practice of the Ukrainian state.

Since the Constitution of Ukraine explicitly defines itself as the Fundamental Law, it is legally classified as a law. Consequently, the rule established by Article 38 of Law No. 3354-IX — that the preamble of a law cannot contain legal norms — automatically extends to the preamble of the Constitution. The absence of a specific exemption for the Fundamental Law effectively demonstrates a deliberate intent to deprive the constitutional preamble of its normative force, which, combined with the exclusion of ethnic Ukrainians from the category of “the people,” indicates the systemic nature of these actions and forms a mechanism of institutional liquidation of the Ukrainian people as a subject of authority.

Thus, the formula in the preamble stating that the Ukrainian people consist of citizens of Ukraine of all nationalities has lost its normative significance and can no longer be used for interpreting Article 5, which designates the people as the sole source of power, and Article 13, which establishes that the land, subsoil, and natural resources belong to the Ukrainian people. As a result, Ukraine has lost the civic interpretation of the concept of “the Ukrainian people,” breaking the connection between the source of power and the subject of ownership over the territory and resources.

This means that Law No. 3354-IX itself did not cause the loss of popular sovereignty but merely gave legal confirmation to a condition that had already taken shape earlier. Before the adoption of special laws on indigenous peoples and national minorities, the absence of a separate law defining the subjectivity of the titular nation was not perceived as a problem — Ukraine remained a unitary civic society without ethnic division. However, after 2021, when the state legally established subjectivity for certain ethnocultural groups, the absence of a similar law for the majority resulted in the people as a whole being left without any legal mechanism for exercising their authority and collective subjectivity.

The collective category that once encompassed all citizens of the state was shifted into the ethnocultural sphere and now applies only to those groups explicitly recognized by law. Thus, the term “Ukrainian people” no longer denotes the totality of citizens and has become a formula applicable only to ethnocultural communities endowed with a special legal status.

Consequently, within Ukrainian jurisdiction, there no longer exists a collective subject capable of delegating power. Electoral rights formally remain but have lost their source of legitimacy — popular sovereignty. This makes the conduct of elections legally impossible, as there is no longer a people on whose behalf the government could be elected.

This means that in the new legal reality, the concept of the “Ukrainian people” has been effectively reduced to the indigenous peoples — the Crimean Tatars, the Karaites, and the Krymchaks. However, as noted above, the Crimean Tatars are isolated in Crimea, while the Karaites and Krymchaks do not yet hold Ukrainian citizenship.

Consequently, within the Ukrainian jurisdiction, there no longer exists a collective subject endowed with the right to delegate power. Electoral rights remain only formally but have lost their source of legitimacy — popular sovereignty. This makes the holding of elections legally impossible, as there is no longer a people on whose behalf authority could be elected.

This situation constitutes a form of institutional usurpation, directly prohibited by Part 3 of Article 5 of the Constitution of Ukraine and defined in the Decision of the Constitutional Court No. 6-rp/2005 as a violation of the people’s right to determine and change the constitutional order. In the international legal dimension, it corresponds to the characteristics of depriving a people of the right to self-determination and violates the peremptory norms of international law (jus cogens) enshrined in Article 1 of the UN Charter, as well as in Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966.

Ukraine is effectively in a state of constitutional vacuum, where the organs of power have lost all popular legitimacy and operate in a mode of legal simulation. Martial law has become an instrument for concealing this loss and a cover for the occupational authority that acts without the people and against them. Under the pretext of external aggression, the regime maintains a state of permanent emergency and legal uncertainty, in which the holding of elections is allegedly impossible, although in reality the people have been deprived of the very right to elect and be elected as the source of power. The constitutional order exists only as an appearance — a political and legal façade designed to legitimize the already accomplished occupation and to prolong the existence of the regime beyond the boundaries of the historical people’s right to self-determination.

The direct disclosure of the fact that a multi-million-strong people in the center of Europe have been deprived of their legal subjectivity would trigger not just a protest, but a political collapse and a revolution. Therefore, this topic has been deliberately excluded from the public sphere, with silence maintained both domestically and internationally. The very fact itself destroys the entire system of power and the international narratives upon which the war relies: it undermines the legitimacy of the Ukrainian regime, its Western sponsors, and at the same time exposes the falsity of Russian rhetoric. This fact cannot be refuted — it is legally provable and politically fatal. Its recognition would mean not merely a crisis, but the end of the entire existing structure and an inevitable revolution.

A state without a people cannot hold elections — it can only prolong its own existence by administrative decree.

In summary, the Russian Federation is a military occupier under Article 42 of the Hague Regulations on the Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907) and Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), exercising effective control over part of Ukraine’s territory through armed force.

Such actions simultaneously violate Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations, which prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, as well as Articles 8 and 51 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which qualify such acts as war crimes and aggression under international law.

The State of Israel, in turn, acquires the status of a de jure legal occupier, since through the recognition of the Karaites and Krymchaks as indigenous peoples of Ukraine, it has obtained institutional access to the sovereign title over national resources and territories without the use of military force.

This form of occupation contradicts Article 1 of the UN Charter, which enshrines the principle of equality and the right of peoples to self-determination; Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits interference and the use of force against the territorial integrity of a state; as well as Articles 42 and 43 of the Hague Regulations (1907) and Articles 47 and 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), which explicitly prohibit the appropriation or management of the resources of an occupied territory regardless of the presence of military control.

The absence of a citizenship requirement in Law No. 1616-IX allows the mentioned transnational community, even without acquiring Ukrainian citizenship, to claim ownership rights and use the corresponding title in the form of tokenization of natural resources, digitization of assets, and their circulation within international financial instruments. Thus, the mere recognition of ethnocultural status creates a legal foundation for including national assets in global market circulation without the need for citizenship or physical presence in Ukraine.

Such actions may be formalized as state-backed financial guarantees, collateral instruments, or derivative securities, since the ownership title arises from norms of direct effect under Ukrainian law.

International financial institutions and stock platforms, guided by the principle of pacta sunt servanda (Article 26 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969), are therefore obliged to recognize the legitimacy of such transactions based on a sovereign act of Ukraine.

Thus, Israel becomes the main beneficiary and de jure legal occupier, as it possesses the country on the level of law, while Russia maintains only physical control over part of the territory.

 

Editorial Note:

Despite the absence of the author’s name and the open nature of the publications, the project’s materials are not anonymous and are not intended to conceal identity. This is a fundamental policy of the project — to separate the substance of analysis from the author’s personality in order to prevent discreditation and personal attacks. The author is known on social media and does not evade either public visibility or legal responsibility for the published materials.

At the same time, despite the full scope of the information provided — concerning signs of high treason, the undermining of territorial integrity, the transfer of sovereignty, and international collusion — there has been no reaction whatsoever. Neither the Security Service of Ukraine, nor the Prosecutor General’s Office, nor the CIA, FBI, MI6, nor the intelligence services of the states whose taxpayers officially finance the continuation of this war, have requested explanations or taken any steps to verify or refute the presented facts.

The lack of interest from international institutions, human rights organizations, and leading media outlets — including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and UN structures — also confirms the existence of systemic silence. This silence cannot be regarded as neutral; it carries legal significance, as it effectively demonstrates consent to what is happening and a refusal to fulfill the obligations established by international law to investigate the above-described crimes.

The only recorded reaction was a hacker attack on the website 19.10.2025, as a result of which only the English-language versions of three key publications were deleted:

1. The Theory of the Mechanism for the Gradual Dismantling of the Collective Subjectivity of Peoples

2. Why Israel Is a Party to the Conflict, and Ukraine Is an Aggressor Alongside Russia

3. Ukrainian National Bar Association is a Private Entity

The Russian and Ukrainian versions of these materials remained untouched, indicating a deliberate intervention specifically targeting the international segment of the project’s information space.