Key Initiatives

Initiated the restoration of public live broadcasts of HCJ proceedings. Championed legislative amendments mandating broadcasts of all HCJ plenary sessions and disciplinary chamber hearings.

Under my chairmanship, the Second Disciplinary Chamber broadcast its entire agenda, not just disciplinary cases. Grateful to colleagues who supported and continued this good practice.

When I joined the HCJ, voting was practically secret; even HCJ members did not know how colleagues voted. Submitted a dedicated memo to the HCJ Chairman requesting open nominal voting. Initiated open roll-call voting for HQCJ members and advocated legislative amendments at the Verkhovna Rada Legal Committee for fully open nominal voting across all issues.

At my initiative, the Regulation on the Automated Case Allocation System was amended: automated assignment protocols of disciplinary complaints among disciplinary inspectors became available for review on the official HCJ website and published as open data on the national open data portal.

Following the resumption of the disciplinary function, allocating ~20,000 backlog complaints meant generating over 20,000 allocation protocols. Grateful to colleagues who supported my proposals to amend the Regulation on the Automated Case Allocation System, making all protocols digitally signed via QES without printing a single sheet of paper.

Currently, most documents circulating within the HCJ are printed on paper, and the vast majority of HCJ and disciplinary chamber decisions are signed on paper. I repeatedly initiated a full transition to electronic document workflow and digital signing via QES, submitting multiple official memos proposing: • amending records management instructions to eliminate obstacles to digital workflows and reduce paper printing • signing all decisions of the HCJ and disciplinary chambers with electronic signatures • transitioning exclusively to electronic examination of disciplinary complaints with draft rulings on refusals or leaving complaints unconsidered.

Based on these memos, the HCJ Secretariat carried out substantial preparatory work and drafted amendment packages. Unfortunately, they remain unadopted and pending approval by the HCJ Chairman.

Meanwhile, the Second Disciplinary Chamber fully transitioned to generating and signing all decisions and procedural orders exclusively in digital form within the D3 software using QES, proving that with political will, everything is achievable.

With the adoption of the new ECITS Concept, open data publishing will be streamlined. Proposed building a dedicated "Open Data Constructor" in ECITS allowing publication of any dataset without coding changes or special engineering. This establishes a unified approach, standardizes datasets, and expands public access.

Recognizing that a modern dataset management system requires clean underlying data, I prepared numerous inquiries to resolve current dataset issues and initiated solutions. Work addressed publishing judge auto-allocation reports, restoring missing data from Kyiv Court of Appeal, and eliminating duplicate records.

Over 20,000 backlog complaints and ~11,000 new annual filings cannot be handled effectively without prioritization. Complaints involving grave offenses risking judge dismissal must be examined first. Actively initiated codifying this rule, successfully embedding it in the HCJ Law and HCJ Rules of Procedure.

Colleagues supported amendments prioritizing complaints that may warrant dismissal or carry significant public resonance.

Subsequently, my assistant Ihor Bilyk designed a tracking workflow in the D3 document system to monitor deadlines.

At the initiative of my assistant Ihor Bilyk, the JUSCORE working group on judicial analytics and statistics automation was established under the Standing Committee on ECITS.

From processing available open data, working group members began parsing and structuring judicial allocation reports and developed interactive dashboards. Structured data enables new tools to extract valuable statistical intelligence and detect automated distribution tampering in real time.

Videoconferencing (VCR) received the highest volume of initiatives personally from me and within the Standing Committee on ECITS. Every committee meeting examined VCR stability and solutions.

Issued numerous requests regarding court broadcast interruptions, blackout resilience, and configuring modern monitoring tools to identify root causes.

A specialized working group was formed with three core goals: audit source code and tech reliability, prepare a monitoring deployment roadmap, and integrate these tools into the live platform. Top Ukrainian experts were involved, notably Maksym Sokhatskyi, who audited code in 2 weeks, proposed monitoring instruments, and single-handedly built, deployed, and tested k8s infrastructure. Maksym went beyond expectations by evaluating free alternative technologies like GStreamer for future VCR milestones.

Monitoring tools are currently being integrated into the live system.

This HCJ-based working group model demonstrated remarkable efficiency and agility in problem-solving.

HCJ decisions are collegial, yet information gathering previously depended entirely on the assigned rapporteur. Every voting member must have the right to independently gather necessary facts for mutual internal oversight and preventing data withholding. Proposed amendments to Article 31 of the HCJ Law granting all voting members inquiry powers. Parliament adopted this rule, and I actively exercised it by issuing hundreds of requests in colleagues’ files.

One of my first official memos urged connecting the HCJ to state databases. Despite early resistance from acting leadership, the process succeeded after administrative changes. Today, HCJ members, disciplinary inspectors, and analysts possess direct access to 9 core registries: • Unified State Register of Court Decisions (full access) • Arkan border crossing system • State Register of Property Rights • State Land Cadastre • Single Demographic Register (SMS) • State Taxpayer Registry (DRFO) • Unified Register of Powers of Attorney • Business Registry (EDR/EDRPOU) • Vehicles Register (EDRTZ) • Movable Property Encumbrances Register

The HCJ processes vast volumes of registry data requiring professional synthesis. Proposed establishing an Analytical Department, supported by colleagues. Today, the unit operates with 5 staff analysts, with instrumental contributions from my assistant Ihor Bilyk and department head Olena Atai.

Advocated for the HCJ to lead digital transformation in the judiciary. It took 2 years and 5 official memos to convince leadership to establish the Deputy Head of Secretariat for Digitalisation (CDTO) to coordinate ECITS and streamline internal operations. The post was created in May, with competitive recruitment launched in July.

Insisted on merit-based competitive recruitment for the Deputy Head of SJA for Digitalisation during martial law. The commission included international partners, the parliamentary Legal Policy Committee, Ministry of Digital Transformation, and Council of Judges, with live-streamed interviews.

In 2025, the director of SOE ICC was also competitively selected.

Following the exposure of SJA Head Oleksiy Salnikov for bribery (confirmed by a binding HACC criminal verdict), initiated disciplinary proceedings via official memo, leading to his unanimous dismissal by the HCJ.

The ruling documented illicit promises to influence Supreme Court cases via his deputy Maksym Pampura.

If, in the course of exercising their powers, an HCJ member learns of information indicating obvious and gross violations by judges bearing the hallmarks of disciplinary offences, at present they can do nothing about it. I initiated amendments to the law granting HCJ members the right to institute disciplinary proceedings, but this initiative was not supported.

Proceedings may be opened on the chamber’s own motion in one case only — where a case is already open and, while hearing it, the chamber discovers other violations. I made active use of this power, as such instances arose more than once. In particular, on my initiative the Second Disciplinary Chamber opened proceedings in the following cases:

The law provides a discriminatory and unjustified rule: while a judge can appeal any disciplinary decision unconditionally, a complainant can only appeal with specific leave granted by the chamber, without requiring any reasoned justification for refusal. I consistently advocated granting complainants consent to appeal; however, the chamber supported my position in only about 20% of cases, refusing without grounds in the remainder.

While vetting judicial candidates, I began making active use of information from blocked Russian social networks. This is how anti-Ukrainian posts by judicial candidate Hanna Zhuk were uncovered, which became the ground for refusing her appointment as a judge. That decision and the resulting practice were upheld by the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court.

In disciplinary proceedings I relied on data concerning rulings issued by so-called “courts” in the occupied territories, on Russian databases leaked into open access, and on other open data about events in the occupied territories. Taken together with other evidence, this data became the basis for the decisions to dismiss judges Liudmyla Arestova and Serhii Varniak.

There were instances where the facts uncovered pointed not only to disciplinary offences but also to possible criminal conduct. Although the law does not expressly provide for this, I considered that I had no right to turn a blind eye.

I filed my first criminal complaint after analysing how mass claims were handled by the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi Court of Odesa region — claims to determine a child’s residence with the father and to strip mothers of parental rights. The manner of filing, automated allocation and adjudication of these cases, along with the content of the rulings, indicated interference with case allocation and manifest breaches of the law, while the identical pattern of conduct pointed to an outright scheme. NABU subsequently exposed an entire criminal organisation operating in that court. Court staff and 3 judges were charged; some verdicts are already final. My criminal complaint is one of the grounds for that criminal case.

I also personally filed criminal complaints concerning: • the loss, at the Pechersk Court, of an administrative offence case under Article 130 of the Code of Administrative Offences against Kyrylo Harnyk, a judge of the Kyiv District Administrative Court; • signs of interference with automated case allocation at the Zavodskyi Court of Mykolaiv; • signs of a Supreme Court judge failing to declare valuable real estate.

A further set of criminal proceedings was registered on the basis of HCJ decisions I initiated on measures to safeguard the authority of justice, following the discovery of: • the use of forged documents and the likely giving of false testimony in court, uncovered while hearing the case of judge Kozina; • the use of a forged medical certificate by judge Makharynets to escape punishment for drunk driving — the judge has since been charged in that case; • the forgery of documents on the dispatch of summonses by a judicial assistant of the Solomianskyi District Court of Kyiv.

Excessive judicial workload is an enormous problem and a barrier to access to justice. Yet at least a third of courts carry a light caseload. The overload problem can therefore be solved not only by increasing the number of judges, but also by making full use of remote hearings and introducing centralised automated allocation of certain categories of cases to less busy courts across Ukraine. To implement this idea I drafted an appeal to Parliament seeking the necessary legislative amendments, which was supported by a majority of the HCJ.

Years of work on this strand brought to light a great many institutional, technical, legal and other problems with the automated allocation of cases among judges. Drawing on that work, Ihor Bilyk prepared a Concept for the Automated Allocation of Court Cases in Ukraine, which was submitted by memorandum to the Chair of the HCJ for the further development of this strand of work.

In the final week of my term I sent the Head of the State Judicial Administration a request on the judiciary’s readiness for winter, the potential problems with electricity supply and heating of court premises, and the steps needed to ensure that readiness. I hope that, on the basis of the reply, colleagues will hear the Head of the SJA on this matter and keep it under review.

In the final month of my term, together with Ihor Bilyk, I worked on drafting the Digitalisation Strategy of the High Council of Justice for 2026–2030 and the framework for the use of AI in justice. The draft strategy was presented at the meeting of the Standing Committee on UJICS on 10 August 2026, which resolved to adopt it as a basis and to finalise it within one month of the approval of the overall HCJ Strategy, approved on 13 August 2026.

On 17 April 2026 the Council of Europe, together with the High Council of Justice, held a one-day workshop, “Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities, Tools, Limits”, for HCJ members and disciplinary inspectors. The aim was to build a practical and critical understanding of the safe use of AI in justice and of its limits, to demonstrate tools for document analysis, drafting routine procedural decisions and organising work, and to outline a framework for the responsible use of such technologies.

Participants gained a working understanding of language models, the differences between search engines and AI tools, and the key risks — notably “hallucinations” and the need to verify every answer critically. Particular attention was paid to the regulatory context: the recommendations on the responsible use of AI for legal professionals and European regulation (the EU AI Act).

The event was held with the support of the Council of Europe project “Supporting Ukraine in Implementing Council of Europe Standards on the Judiciary”.

In an official memo of 27 May 2026 I proposed moving from the ad hoc use of AI by individual staff to the systemic use of corporate AI solutions at the High Council of Justice and its Secretariat. The memo called for exploring a local secure environment for work with sensitive information, developing unified prompts for routine tasks, and carrying out a needs assessment and staff training.

I also stressed the value of using different AI models depending on the nature of the task, and their potential for analysing large bodies of case law, preparing analytical materials, comparing documents and automating routine processes.

Acting on this initiative, the HCJ Secretariat examined the practical applications of artificial intelligence and identified promising areas for its use in its work. This became one of the first steps towards a more systemic and organised institutional approach to AI.