After many years, Ukraine’s Supreme Court did what the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian Parliament) has failed to do. On Feb. 25, it recognised two men in a long-term relationship as a “family” in the eyes of the law. Two months later, on April 28, the parliament voted 254 to 2 to advance a civil code that could make future judicial recognition of same-sex couples impossible.
That tension defines the current legal status of LGBTQ+ Ukrainians. The courts are slowly catching up to the lives of the country’s citizens, but the legislature seems determined to push those citizens back outside the law. The legislature is putting Ukraine at odds with its European Union accession commitments, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Ukrainian public itself.
Article 51 of the 1996 Constitution defines marriage as between “a woman and a man.” It does not recognise civil partnership or any registered union for same-sex couples. The only path to recognition is through the courts.
“If we talk about a heterosexual couple, they may meet, immediately apply to register their marriage, and they are considered married,” Vasyl Malikov, a Kharkiv-based LGBTQ+ activist and head of the NGO Spectrum, explained in an interview with Human Rights First. “For same-sex couples, the only way to be recognised as a family is through a court decision after demonstrating a prolonged partnership, a shared home, a mutual budget.”
The new draft code may take away even this option. On Jan. 22, Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk introduced a Civil Code that he described as “modern and European.” Both the original version and the one that passed first reading on April 28 define family as “the cohabitation of a man and a woman.” Same-sex partnerships are explicitly excluded. More than two dozen Ukrainian civil society organisations say the draft would “make it impossible for a court to recognise the fact of the existence of family relations between persons of the same sex.”
The bill also carries a new legal category: Dobrozvychainist, translated as “good morals” or boni mores. “The definition of boni mores is quite elusive,” Malikov says. “It means the set of moral norms, principles, standards of ethical conduct, and socially accepted notions of proper behaviour established in society. But it could be actually anything,” he adds. “When it comes to a court decision, there is no guidance to the judge to decide whether some act defies boni mores or supports it. It is completely discretionary.”
A judge unsympathetic to a same-sex applicant could simply find that recognising the relationship offends “good morals.”
In Maymulakhin and Markiv v. Ukraine, the European Court of Human Rights found that Ukraine had violated Articles 8 and 14 of the Convention by leaving same-sex couples without any avenue of legal recognition. “The Maymulakhin and Markiv decision was not only an individual decision, it was a general recommendation to Ukraine to provide recognition of same-sex families in Ukrainian legislation,” Malikov explains. “Any couple in the same situation may now appeal to the court, and it will be much faster for them.”
Under the current Ukrainian Family Code, family is defined as people “who live together, are connected by a common life and have mutual rights and obligations.” That covers married couples, who under Ukrainian law must be heterosexual. But it also covers people who live together as a family without formal marriage.
That family code’s wording allowed a major breakthrough in the case of Zoryan Kis, a Ukrainian diplomat, and his partner Tymur Levchuk. The Foreign Ministry refused to acknowledge Levchuk as Kis’s family member and denied him spousal rights to accompany Kis on a posting to Israel. The two had lived together since 2013, held an unofficial wedding ceremony in Ukraine in 2016, and registered their marriage in the United States in 2021. In June 2025, the Desnianskyi District Court ruled that their relationship constituted a de facto marriage under Ukrainian law. The Kyiv Court of Appeal upheld that ruling in September. On Feb. 25, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal brought by the conservative movement Vsi Razom (All Together), leaving the recognition in place. It was the first time a same-sex couple had been recognised as a family at every level of the Ukrainian judicial system.
The decision was welcome, but Malikov warns it is not a complete solution. “It is not a fair and practical solution to require a same-sex couple to appeal to a court every time they need recognition,” he says. “Obviously, that is not possible for every same-sex couple in a country of millions.”
A Kharkiv court ruling less than a month later made that limitation evident. National Guard serviceman Dmytro Lyaskovetskyi and his partner Yevhenii Donets asked the Industrial District Court of Kharkiv to recognise them as a family. They explained that because Dmytro is a serviceman, Yevhenii needs the right to visit him in hospital, or to be informed if he is wounded, captured, or killed. On March 20, Judge Viktor Chernyak refused the claim. The evidence, he ruled, was insufficient.
The rejection was fact-specific. The Kharkiv court did not reject the framework laid down by Maymulakhin and Markiv or Kis-Levchuk. But it illustrates the problem Malikov describes. When recognition depends on whether a particular judge is persuaded that a couple has crossed the evidentiary threshold, the route is unpredictable, slow, and expensive.
Human Rights First has worked for over a decade with local Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) in Ukraine to advocate for reforms and there has been some progress. While the parliament is taking a few steps back, public opinion is moving the other way. A 2024 Kyiv International Institute of Sociology survey found that 70 percent of Ukrainians believe LGBTQ+ people should have equal rights, and more than half have no objection to registered partnerships for same-sex couples. Opinion has shifted sharply in the past decade and part of that is because LGBTQ+ Ukrainians are visibly fighting and dying for their country.
“Public opinion in Ukraine has changed a lot in favor of equal rights for the LGBTQ community, including same-sex partnerships,” Malikov says. “But when it comes to the Verkhovna Rada, deputies are still led mostly by stereotypes and prejudices, rather than their obligations to support equal rights for all Ukrainians.”
Olena Shevchennko, chair of NGO Insight, says the bill represents a step backward in respect for the rights of women and the LGBTQ+ community. In a Facebook post, she said there is a need for a new Verkhovna Rada because this one does not listen to the people. Last week, six men followed Shevchenko and Anastasiia Gerasymenko through the streets of Ivano-Frankivsk after the two women left a peaceful protest against the draft Civil Code. The men, who had been at a parallel “For Traditional Values” rally, attacked from behind, pushed them to the ground, seized their posters, and fled. Police officers were on the scene and detained one of the attackers, but refused to take a statement. Shevchenko and Gerasymenko had to make their way to the regional police headquarters and wait more than five hours to file a complaint and were repeatedly urged not to. The police declined to treat the incident as a possible hate crime.
The draft Civil Code is also at odds with Ukraine’s EU obligations. On May 14, 2025, Ukraine adopted a rule of law roadmap setting out reforms tied to accession negotiations. One section identifies the introduction of registered civil partnerships as necessary to bring Ukrainian law into line with European standards, setting a target of the third quarter of 2025. That deadline has come and gone.
As accession progresses, Ukraine will increasingly be expected to align with the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union. In 2018, the CJEU held that EU states must recognise same-sex marriages performed elsewhere in the bloc for residency purposes. More recently, it expanded that principle, requiring member states to recognise these marriages even where domestic law does not permit them.
The Verkhovna Rada has the chance to correct course in the second reading of the Civil Code. If the law passes as it stands, Ukraine will fail on the benchmarks the EU asked it to meet, and will tell the LGBTQ+ Ukrainians serving on the frontlines that the country they are fighting for is not yet ready to recognise their families.
