Obstruction and attacks

In 2023 the High Qualification Commission of Judges recommended attorney Oleksandr Vikhrov for appointment as a judge of the Commercial Court of Zaporizhzhia region. While the HCJ was considering that recommendation, a number of circumstances emerged that raised well-founded doubts about his integrity and professional ethics. These concerned, among other things, inaccurate declarations, questions about the origin of funds, his conduct during a 2018 confrontation with the police, and the circumstances in which he obtained a deferral from mobilisation. After divorcing, Vikhrov married his former wife’s sister, almost immediately obtained a large-family father’s certificate and a deferral, while giving the HCJ untrue explanations about several related circumstances. On 3 June 2025, 11 of the 15 HCJ members supported my proposal to refuse his appointment.

Vikhrov then turned to the Bar Council of Ukraine. On 12 August 2025 the Bar Council adopted decision No. 82, which in effect passed judgment on my actions as an HCJ member: it alleged interference in the practice of law, inducement to disclose attorney-client privilege, review of a court decision, and breaches of ethical standards. The Bar Council proposed raising the question of the early termination of my powers as an HCJ member and initiated disciplinary proceedings against me as an attorney — even though my right to practise law was suspended for the duration of my HCJ service.

These accusations were entirely groundless. I did not interfere in Vikhrov’s practice of law and did not exceed my powers — I was discharging the direct duty of an HCJ member to verify whether a candidate for judicial office meets the criteria of integrity and professional ethics; I asked questions and assessed the answers and documents received. That is precisely why this episode is telling for me: it showed how easily a body of bar self-government can call white black — present an HCJ member’s performance of his lawful duties as a violation of an attorney’s rights, and use disciplinary machinery as a means of pressure.

The pressure then moved into the disciplinary sphere. On 17 October 2025 the Bar Council filed a complaint with the Qualification and Disciplinary Bar Commission (QDBC). The QDBC of Zakarpattia region demanded explanations from me regarding acts performed specifically in the exercise of my powers as an HCJ member, opened a disciplinary case on 12 January 2026, and on 2 March 2026 imposed a disciplinary sanction on me in the form of a warning.

The HCJ responded to this situation four times. In its decision of 14 October 2025 No. 2108/0/15-25 the Bar Council’s allegations were found groundless and a threat to the authority of justice. In its decision of 29 January 2026 No. 136/0/15-26 the HCJ expressly established interference by the Bar Council and the QDBC in the work of an HCJ member; after the materials were sent to the prosecutor’s office, criminal proceedings were opened under Article 351² of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. After the QDBC actually sanctioned me, on 26 March 2026 the HCJ, by decision No. 531/0/15-26, again found interference and stressed that the bar’s disciplinary machinery cannot serve as a means of external control over an HCJ member’s exercise of his constitutional powers. Finally, on 13 August 2026, by decision No. 1661/0/15-26, the HCJ found that the Bar Council was continuing conduct that undermines the authority of justice and the independence of the HCJ, and addressed the Congress of Advocates of Ukraine as the highest body of bar self-government.

An important legal assessment of these events was given by the Lviv District Administrative Court. By its judgment of 8 July 2026 in case No. 380/4669/26 the court fully granted my claim and quashed the QDBC decision. The court established that I had been held liable as an attorney for acts performed as an HCJ member, and that the QDBC is not empowered by law to classify such acts as an attorney’s disciplinary offence. The QDBC therefore acted beyond its powers, and any other approach would undermine the statutory guarantees of an HCJ member’s independence.

The QDBC and the Bar Council appealed against the judgment. On 23 September the Eighth Administrative Court of Appeal dismissed both appeals in full and upheld the first-instance judgment. In doing so, the appellate court gave a principled legal assessment of the very mechanism by which bodies of bar self-government hold an HCJ member disciplinarily liable for acts performed in the exercise of an HCJ member’s powers.

In particular, the court stated:

In the view of the appellate court, attempts to hold a sitting HCJ member disciplinarily liable through the QDBC for his position or his actions at HCJ sittings may be classified as unlawful interference in the work of an HCJ member and a breach of the guarantees of his independence provided for by Law No. 1798-VIII.

The court also concluded:

It follows that, although the general status of an attorney (and the duty to observe deontological norms in everyday life) does not disappear entirely for a person holding a valid certificate of the right to practise law, the QDBC may not give a legal assessment of procedural acts or statements that form part of that person’s direct official duties as an HCJ member — which refutes the arguments of the appeals on this point.

The Eighth Administrative Court of Appeal separately emphasised:

In the view of the appellate court it should be noted, proceeding from the legal relations under examination, that in conducting disciplinary proceedings the QDBC performs quasi-judicial functions. Under the case-law of the ECtHR, such bodies must meet the criteria of independence. Yet when the QDBC imposes a disciplinary sanction on a sitting HCJ member, it is in fact attempting to exercise unlawful control and censorship over the highest constitutional body of judicial governance. This creates an institutional conflict and destroys the guarantees of an HCJ member’s independence, which amounts to a breach of the principle of an “independent and impartial tribunal” (Article 6 of the Convention).

The court thus established that the QDBC decision was arbitrary and an encroachment on the independence of an HCJ member.

This case is a telling example of how the Bar Council and the QDBC — despite the obvious unlawfulness of their actions and the absence of any violation — can break the law and simply invent non-existent disciplinary offences in order to exert pressure or to persecute someone over decisions they dislike.

One story my critics regularly bring up is my vote in the case of the former President of the Supreme Court, Vsevolod Kniaziev. It is usually presented in the simplest possible terms: “Maselko was rescuing Kniaziev.” The real story was somewhat different.

Kniaziev was not dismissed over the $2.7 million bribe. The ground was a different case — the rental of an apartment in central Kyiv. The Pechersk Court found that Kniaziev had rented the apartment for UAH 1,000 a month, that is, had received a gift prohibited by law amounting to the difference between that sum and the market rent — UAH 906,600. On that basis the First Disciplinary Chamber of the HCJ imposed the sanction of a submission for dismissal, and on 18 July 2024 the HCJ upheld that decision. On 6 August Kniaziev was formally dismissed from judicial office.

I voted against upholding that decision. Not because I considered Kniaziev a person of integrity or wanted to “rescue” him. At the HCJ session he produced documents that substantially changed the picture: the original apartment lease and proof of payments to the owner of over USD 1,000 a month. In my public explanation I pointed out that there were two separate contracts: the UAH 1,000 concerned a parking space, while the apartment itself was priced at roughly USD 1,100. For me this meant something simple: you cannot dismiss a person for something that, on the evidence before us, they did not do — even if there are very serious claims against them on other grounds. I explained my position publicly and in detail.

And here is a fundamentally important detail that critics usually “forget”. There was already another disciplinary case against Kniaziev — one directly connected to the materials of the criminal proceedings on the bribe. The Second Disciplinary Chamber had opened it back on 20 December 2023 over facts that included extra-procedural contacts concerning court cases established by NABU. When it was proposed to effectively put that hearing on hold, I voted against the suspension. In my view the HCJ should not have waited for a verdict: if the materials of criminal proceedings confirm a judge’s extra-procedural communication with parties, promises as to the outcome of a case and the like, that in itself can be a ground for disciplinary liability. Yet that case went unheard for a long time and, after Kniaziev’s dismissal over the “apartment” episode, was eventually closed.

Subsequent events only sharpened the paradox. In June 2026 Kniaziev himself admitted participation in a corruption scheme, entered into a plea agreement, and the High Anti-Corruption Court found him guilty under Article 368 § 4 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, sentencing him to 5 years’ imprisonment with confiscation of property. So my position was never that “Kniaziev should be kept on the bench”. On the contrary: I believed he should have been held to account for real and proven acts connected with bribery, rather than for a dubiously established apartment episode.

But after my vote, almost no one discussed these nuances. Instead a wave of publications began: “Maselko saved Kniaziev”, “pressed the wrong button”, “shielded a corrupt official”. Telegram channels spread this, including million-subscriber channels, and the claim was then used in attacks on me for years. I collected some of the examples in my own posts.

It is also interesting to work out the market price of such attention. A standard advertising placement in “Trukha Ukraine” currently costs around UAH 80,000 per post, and in “Insider UA” around UAH 92,000. Journalists at NGL.media, running an experiment, agreed with “Trukha” to publish an invented negative story about a politician for USD 4,000 — around UAH 150,000 at the time.

Of course, I have no proof that the publications about me were paid for, so asserting that would be wrong. But if one simply calculates their market equivalent, a wave of 5–10 placements on large Telegram channels could have cost somewhere between UAH 400,000 and 1.5 million. So if my “friends” really were paying for this, they may have spent on the order of a million hryvnia promoting my name. Explaining to people why I actually voted the way I did would, admittedly, have been far cheaper.

In May 2024, just as the HCJ began considering the HQCJ recommendation to dismiss judge Inna Otrosh, a whole series of information attacks suddenly sprang up around me and those close to me. First came a parliamentary inquiry — in particular from MP Maksym Buzhanskyi — demanding a check of my integrity, and then, almost simultaneously, “investigations” into my family’s property appeared on Facebook, in anonymous Telegram channels and in Zakon i Biznes.

The “investigators” had in fact found nothing new. What they described was an apartment my wife bought back in 2019, two apartments my aunt invested in in 2021, and the estate of my grandfather, who died in 2015 — seven years before I was appointed an HCJ member.

My wife’s apartment, 57 square metres, was bought for UAH 1.6 million. The money came from our declared savings and a loan of UAH 440,000 from my aunt. I also had official income. The arithmetic adds up perfectly. The publications placed particular emphasis on my aunt being a pensioner and therefore supposedly unable to have such money. They “forgot” to mention that in 2015 she inherited about UAH 1.7 million held in bank accounts, and that her husband has lived and worked in Poland for many years, teaching at the Opole University of Technology.

The next sensation was my aunt’s two apartments. I learned of their purchase from these very publications. That did not stop the authors from effectively tying her property to me and calling my aunt a “golden” one.

What surprised me most was the attempt to explain my grandfather’s estate by some corrupt income of my aunt’s. My aunt had retired back in 2010 — five years before she received the inheritance.

My grandfather, Roman Maselko, worked all his life and stayed in his profession practically to his final days. He led repair teams that serviced transformers at nuclear power plants and for Ukrzaliznytsia. It was demanding work, and it paid well.

He accumulated his savings and kept them on bank deposits from the 1990s onwards. After his death in 2015 those bank deposits remained and were formally included in the estate. I published the certificate of inheritance listing those funds.

So the technique was already familiar: take a real fact — an apartment, a loan or an inheritance — strip away the essential context, and fill the gap with inventions about “hidden income” and “laundering”.

All my income and savings were declared, and the circumstances relating to my family’s property were examined by the Ethics Council during the competition for the HCJ.

The only thing in this story that genuinely stung was that my relatives were dragged into an information attack — above all the attempt to cast doubt on my grandfather’s good name. I am named after him. He is the one who taught our family to live honestly, to achieve everything by our own work and to care about our reputation.

Another good example of how the information attacks against me worked is the story about my supposed “driving under the influence of alcohol”.

The real event was thoroughly mundane. On 5 September 2022 I was riding my bicycle along Sichovykh Striltsiv Street in Kyiv. I was briefly distracted and collided with a Toyota Corolla pulling out of an archway. The car sustained minor damage, we called the police, and the incident was duly recorded. I did not contest my fault, asked the court to hear the case as quickly as possible, and paid the fine immediately after the ruling. That is exactly how I later described the story publicly.

But a completely different version soon appeared on Telegram: that I had allegedly been stopped drunk at the wheel of a car under Article 130 of the Code of Administrative Offences, and that the US Embassy had then intervened and the record had been “wiped” from police systems. This version was spread by, among others, the channel “Pod Mantiyey”. There was not a shred of evidence for it. Moreover, the same outlets later published the actual accident records — and these made plain that the vehicle was a bicycle and that the offence consisted of inattention and failure to keep a safe distance. There is no mention whatsoever of alcohol or Article 130 in the factual description of the incident. The piece nevertheless ran under the headline “HCJ member Roman Maselko caused a road accident while intoxicated”.

The absurdity went so far that a lieutenant colonel from the Interior Ministry’s internal security service came to see me at the HCJ, conducting a check on this information and taking written explanations from me. When I asked whether they had interviewed the police officers who actually recorded the accident, he replied that they had not — he had been instructed to interview only me. I do not drive at all, I did not own a car at the time, and I do not drink alcohol. I published my response to this story on Facebook as well.

And that was not the last manipulation to feature my bicycle.

In March 2026 attorney Rostyslav Kravets published a photo showing the track of my bicycle near the Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Kyiv and accused me of breaking the traffic rules, claiming I had been riding on a section intended for pedestrians. He even called on the police to draw up an administrative report against me. After my explanation, Kravets continued to insist that there is no cycle lane at that spot at all, and publicly quipped that I could “find a cycle lane even where there is none”.

There is just one problem — the track of my bicycle was precisely on the cycle lane 😊. I deliberately filmed the route: the video shows the cycle lane itself along with the corresponding road markings and signs. That made it hard for me to write this off as an ordinary mistake. Kravets was standing right there and could not have failed to see either the cycle lane or the road signs, yet he publicly asserted the opposite.

These two stories neatly illustrate the technique behind such attacks. A real fact is taken — I really do ride a bicycle, I really was in a minor accident, I really did ride past the court. Then an invented detail is added that completely changes the meaning: “drunk at the wheel”, “the US Embassy wiped it all”, “riding in breach of the rules”. And the correction always travels far worse than the vivid falsehood.

It turns out I wield far more influence than I ever knew.

Member of parliament Serhii Vlasenko announced that I allegedly “control a certain part of the HCJ”, effectively influence the dismissal of judges, and generally play something close to the role of a new Portnov in the judicial system.

I must admit the news came as a surprise. For some reason, all these years I had thought the HCJ was a collegial body where decisions are taken by vote and one member of the Council has exactly one vote. It turns out things are far more interesting.

But if a member of parliament says I have such influence, I shall not argue. I will use it exclusively for the good of judicial reform: to cleanse the system of judges lacking integrity, to establish proper standards of accountability, and to build a culture of integrity.

As for the comparison with Portnov, the device is equally transparent. You take a figure with the most toxic reputation available, equate your opponent with him, and after that you need not prove anything further. It is especially convenient when untrue assertions about “control over the HCJ” are presented not as facts requiring proof, but as supposed value judgments.

So I thank Serhii Vlasenko for such a high assessment of my capabilities. I did not know myself that I could do so much.

Now the main thing is not to disappoint expectations and to use this “influence” properly. 🙂

One of the complaints I heard regularly throughout my term was that I filed too many recusals. Supposedly this meant I was dodging work while still drawing a salary.

The reason for the large number of my recusals is very simple. Before being elected to the HCJ I spent many years working on judicial reform and filed a substantial number of disciplinary complaints against judges. I also cooperated with the DEJURE Foundation and Automaidan, whose representatives likewise made active use of the disciplinary complaint mechanism. So after my election to the HCJ, cases regularly arose concerning judges about whom I had written earlier, against whom I had filed complaints, in whose integrity assessment I had taken part, or with whom I had other prior professional contacts.

In such cases a recusal is neither a whim nor a way of avoiding work. It is a requirement of the law and a mechanism for securing impartiality. If circumstances exist that may cast doubt on the impartiality of an HCJ member, that member must declare a recusal. Whether those circumstances are sufficient for an actual withdrawal is then decided by colleagues.

Over four years I filed several hundred such applications. Incidentally, the HCJ refused roughly a third of my recusals, after which I went on to take part in considering the matters concerned.

The claim that recusals somehow reduced my workload is not borne out by the actual caseload either. The number of cases in my work was no lower than that of my colleagues. And given that over four years I took almost no leave, my actual workload was even higher. The recusals concerned specific cases, not the exercise of my powers as a whole.

That is why the complaints about my recusals look particularly manipulative. In effect I am being blamed for observing the safeguard against possible bias that the law itself prescribes.

There is one more figure that explains well where such a number of withdrawals came from.

As of today, counting from 2017, disciplinary complaints in which I was the complainant or one of the complainants have resulted in 73 decisions holding judges disciplinarily liable. Forty-nine of those decisions were adopted during my term at the HCJ.

By type of sanction, these 73 decisions break down as follows:

So in 27 cases, or 37 %, the outcome was the most severe disciplinary sanction — a submission for the judge’s dismissal. In another 13 cases a reprimand or a severe reprimand was imposed, in 32 a warning, and in one a temporary suspension.

And here it is fundamentally important not to confuse cause with effect.

These decisions are not evidence of my influence over my colleagues. On the contrary, the recusals were precisely what ruled out any possibility of such influence.

In my view, these figures speak above all to the quality of the complaints themselves. I filed them not because I disliked a particular judge or a particular ruling, but only when I saw specific facts and real indications of a disciplinary offence. At the same time, far from every complaint of mine ended in a sanction against the judge. That too is good evidence that I had no automatic “influence” on my colleagues’ decisions.

Here is the list of decisions holding judges liable on my complaints:

Another interesting discovery about myself. It turns out I was among the organisers of the “Cardboard Maidan”. Here is where I learned about it.

It is especially pleasant to find myself in such company. Those protests drew civic activists, veterans, volunteers and other people with rather interesting biographies and a clear civic stance. And the public call for the rally with which the “Cardboard Maidan” began was in fact made by Dmytro Koziatynskyi, a veteran and former assault trooper.

So it is even hard to take offence. If someone decided, without my knowledge, to list me among the organisers of a Maidan, they at least picked good company.

There is just one small problem: I did not organise it.

But after everything I have already learned about myself from Telegram and Facebook, this is a trifle. As it turns out, I control the HCJ, have my own court, influence international partners and all but determine the fate of the entire judicial system.

Fitting a Maidan in between all that was clearly no trouble at all.

This is probably the most consistent label in Rostyslav Kravets’ repertoire. He uses it not as a one-off emotional insult but literally as a permanent epithet before my name — “Hitler supporter Roma Maselko”.

The reason this label appeared is much the same as with Russian propaganda, which has spent years calling Ukrainians “Nazis”. Evidence is superfluous here — it is enough to repeat the word often enough.

It is especially symbolic that towards the end of my term the label became part of a daily countdown staged by Kravets: “Until the end of the term of Hitler supporter, HCJ member Roma Maselko, and the beginning of the restoration of the judiciary’s independence, there remain…” — 9 days, 8, 4, 3, 2, 1.

And I take that countdown very positively. If people like Kravets are counting the days until my powers expire, then these four years were certainly not spent in vain. Evidently my work really did get in the way of many who lack integrity — especially those who lost their office during my term.

It would be hard to invent a better confirmation that the work was effective.

A few more interesting things about myself that I learned from the information attacks.

One might think that after “Hitler supporter”, control over the HCJ and organising a Maidan I would be hard to surprise. But no. People keep working.

1. I displayed boredom with European standards.

The evidence is serious: at one of the meetings I propped my head on my hand.

The authors even carried out a psychological analysis of the photograph and explained: if a person props their head on their hand, they are so bored that they have effectively “switched off from the process”. And since the meeting was about European standards, the conclusion is obvious: Maselko is bored by European standards.

Thank you. From now on, at international meetings I shall monitor not only what I say but also the angle of my head and the position of my hands. Because European integration, as it turns out, depends on that too.

2. I wanted to join FIFA.

Here the story is on an even grander scale. “Our sources” reported that after the HCJ I had allegedly decided to apply for an international grant in order to vet the integrity of FIFA football officials. But FIFA did not appreciate my grant ambitions and, according to the authors, my proposal was effectively “thrown in the bin”.

This was especially instructive, because I first learned of my plans to work at FIFA from that very post. A pity, of course. I was already picturing myself vetting the integrity of referees and opening disciplinary cases over a wrongly called offside.

3. It turned out I had a secret love at the HCJ. ❤️

Here the evidence is even more compelling: in a group photograph from the congress of judges, Tetiana Bondarenko and I were arm in arm. That was enough for the headline “Love at the HCJ” and a report that we had “decided to hide our feelings no longer”.

After the story about the position of my head, nothing surprises me any more. Evidently, at the HCJ every movement of the body carries legal, political and now also romantic significance.

Though I must admit that after that post my relations with Tetiana Znamenivna, whom I had greatly respected before as well, became considerably warmer ❤️

4. And, of course, they found me a relative — a “Russian scholar”.

This is one of my favourite stories, because here the manipulation is almost mathematical.

My uncle holds a candidate of sciences degree in mathematics; he defended his dissertation back in 1984 in Lviv. For thirty years now he has been a lecturer at a polytechnic institute in Poland and effectively lives there permanently. He never defended a dissertation in Russia and never underwent any certification there.

But the authors of the “investigation” found a photograph of his dissertation on a Russian website. Next to it stood the code of the academic speciality under the classification of the Russian Higher Attestation Commission — 01.02.04, “Mechanics of a deformable solid body”.

And here a miracle of journalistic deduction occurred. 01.02.04 turned into the year 2004, and the speciality code turned into proof that my uncle had supposedly “been certified by the Russian Higher Attestation Commission in 2004”.

And so a man who defended his dissertation in Lviv in 1984 and has been lecturing in Poland for thirty years became a “Russian scholar”.

I must admit the method is highly promising. If it is enough to read the code 01.02.04 as a date, then academic classifiers can yield a great many more sensational biographical discoveries.

The main thing is not to let numbers and facts spoil a good story.

All in all, thanks to these people my life has turned out to be far more interesting than I thought.

Perhaps the greatest shortcoming of these stories is that my reality was considerably duller.