Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine — archived official copy of the original document

The official response from the Central State Archive of the Highest Authorities of Ukraine, dated September 1, 2025, confirms the existence and validity of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine No. 55-XII of July 16, 1990, as an archival document preserved in the archive’s holdings.

The attached copy contains the full authentic text of the Declaration, which proclaims Ukraine’s state sovereignty based on the right of the Ukrainian nation to self-determination, the primacy of the Constitution of the Ukrainian SSR, territorial supremacy, exclusive rights to natural resources and cultural heritage, as well as the aspiration for international recognition.

At the same time, it should be noted that the current Law of Ukraine No. 2215-IX “On the Desovietization of Ukrainian Legislation”, adopted in April 2022, establishes in Section II, Paragraph 2, that:

“On the territory of Ukraine, acts of the state authorities and state administration bodies of the USSR and the Ukrainian SSR (Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic) shall not apply, except for provisions that do not contradict the Constitution of Ukraine and the Law of Ukraine ‘On Legal Succession’.”

Although the Declaration of Sovereignty was not formally repealed, it falls within the scope of this law, since it is an act of the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian SSR adopted during the Soviet period before August 24, 1991.

As a result, a legal collision has occurred: the Declaration, which historically served as the constitutional foundation for Ukrainian statehood, legal succession, territorial integrity, and the recognition of the titular nation, has in fact lost legal force after the entry into force of Law No. 2215-IX, as it was neither re-enacted nor integrated into the current legal system.

In its response, the archive merely confirms the existence of the document in storage, but does not assess its validity within the current legal framework.

The conclusion is that Ukraine, through the indirect effect of Law No. 2215-IX, has de facto removed from the legal field the key act proclaiming its state sovereignty — the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine No. 55-XII of 16 July 1990 — without formally annulling it, but depriving it of legal force.

At the same time, the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine cannot formally be classified as an act that “contradicts the Constitution of Ukraine” or the Law “On Legal Succession of Ukraine,” since it is precisely this Declaration that proclaimed the foundations of statehood, territorial sovereignty, constitutional supremacy, legal succession, and the right of the Ukrainian people to self-determination.

Therefore, there are no legal grounds to consider that its provisions lost validity under the criteria established by Law No. 2215-IX itself.

Nevertheless, due to the absence of formal reaffirmation or re-adoption of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukrainein post-Soviet legislation, it has been displaced from the legal system — creating a situation of legal conflict and undermining the sovereign title.

This situation poses a serious threat to Ukraine’s legal sovereignty as a state, creates grounds for the revision of legal succession and the Ukrainian people’s ownership of territory and resources, and may be used in international legal disputes as evidence of the state’s abandonment of its original title.