Dmytro Yagunov: Crime in Ukraine: Trends, Structure and Transformations (January–October 2025)

1. Introduction

1.1. Research Context and Methodology

Ukraine’s criminal justice system in 2025 operates under extraordinary strain due to Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion. The fourth year of war has driven profound structural shifts in crime patterns that extend well beyond statistical fluctuations.

1.2. Overview of the Reporting Period

Between January and October 2025, overall crime rates stabilized at elevated levels while the composition of offences worsened, with serious and particularly serious crimes comprising a growing share. Criminologists describe this as “criminal severity inflation” — a direct result of societal militarization, weapon proliferation, and heightened psychosocial stress. A troubling “statistical gap” has emerged between registered proceedings and cases sent to court, indicating a critical backlog of uninvestigated cases, particularly regarding war crimes.

2. Overall Crime Structure Analysis

2.1. Quantitative Data and Severity Classification

The Prosecutor General’s Office recorded 524,552 criminal offences during the first ten months of 2025. This figure, while statistically dry, reveals the true magnitude of law enforcement challenges.

The breakdown by severity reveals a concerning shift toward the most dangerous offences, with nearly three-quarters falling into serious or particularly serious categories:

The combined 74.2% share of serious and particularly serious crimes is abnormal for peacetime but typical for states experiencing intense armed conflict. This stems partly from legislative changes under martial law that elevated penalties for certain crimes (such as theft and robbery), automatically reclassifying them as serious offences. Additionally, crimes against national security and peace — inherently particularly serious — significantly inflate these statistics.

2.2. Pre-Trial Investigation Effectiveness

Analysis of pre-trial investigation outcomes reveals substantial gaps between crime registration and prosecution, with clearance rates varying by offence category and reflecting law enforcement priorities.

For crimes against life and health, investigators served suspicion notices in only 18,000 of 72,500 registered cases — a clearance rate of approximately 24.8%. This low rate likely reflects investigation difficulties in combat-adjacent areas, where evidence collection is hampered or impossible due to shelling. Cases involving missing persons and civilian casualties requiring lengthy investigations also contribute to this figure.

Conversely, crimes against Ukraine’s national security (Criminal Code Articles 109-114-2) show significantly better results. Suspects were identified in 2,056 of 4,968 registered proceedings — a 41.4% rate. This demonstrates focused, effective work by the Security Service of Ukraine and prosecutors in identifying collaborators, traitors, and spotters. The higher rate also reflects that such crimes are often documented during commission or through irrefutable digital evidence.

The overall picture reveals a systemic problem: courts cannot process the investigative caseload, while investigations are overwhelmed by registration volumes, preventing quality investigative work.

3. Military Justice: Disciplinary Crisis and Institutional Failure

Among 2025’s most critical and politically sensitive trends is the explosive growth in military criminal offences, particularly unauthorized absence from duty and desertion. This phenomenon transcends legal concerns to impact national defence capacity.

3.1. Unauthorised Absence From Military Service: Scale and Dynamics

The Prosecutor General’s Office registered over 161,000 criminal proceedings under Criminal Code Article 407 (unauthorized absence from military service) during the first ten months of 2025.

This figure is shocking both in absolute terms and growth trajectory — four times higher than the same period in 2024.

The acceleration rate illustrates the crisis depth: while 2022 averaged 6,000 annual cases, 2025 sees approximately 16,000 new desertion cases monthly. The entire 2022 year’s caseload now accumulates in less than two weeks.

These statistics point to interconnected problems:

1. Personnel psychological exhaustion: Unclear demobilization and rotation timelines demoralise even motivated service members.
2. Recruitment challenges: Mobilisation quality issues and coercive methods result in individuals neither morally nor physically prepared for service.
3. Command deficiencies: Desertion often responds to internal unit conflicts or inappropriate orders.

3.2. Procedural System Collapse

Crime registration is merely the first step. The greater problem is law enforcement agencies’ (State Bureau of Investigation, military prosecutor’s office) and courts’ inability to respond effectively to this wave. Military crime prosecution statistics reveal effective paralysis.

Of 161,461 registered proceedings, only 9,300 military personnel received formal charges—just 6% of total cases. Court referrals are even worse at approximately 5%.

This situation differs radically from early war conditions. In 2022, the court referral rate was 20% (one in five cases). The fourfold efficiency drop combined with a tenfold workload increase indicates the system has reached capacity limits. SBI investigators physically cannot conduct necessary procedural actions (interrogations, document seizures, suspicion announcements) across thousands of new monthly proceedings.

4. Economic Crime: War Adaptation

Economic crime demonstrates remarkable adaptability to martial law conditions. Criminal organizations are transforming methods, exploiting digital space vulnerabilities and citizen social insecurity.

4.1. Fraud Evolution (Criminal Code Article 190)

Fraud remains among the most common property crimes, though 2025 dynamics show some decline from previous years’ peaks.

Throughout 2022, the Prosecutor General’s Office recorded 32,000 Article 190 proceedings (with suspicions reported in 7,500 cases).

However, just the first ten months of 2025 saw 42,000 Article 190 proceedings (with suspicions reported in 10,000 cases).

This confirms war has created favourable manipulation conditions: from fake Armed Forces fundraising to housing rental schemes targeting displaced persons and fraudulent “UN aid” claims.

5. Crimes Against Public Morality: Digital Pornography

Morality-related crimes, particularly pornographic content circulation (Criminal Code Articles 301 and 301-1), show steady growth reflecting global sex industry digitalization trends.

5.1. Statistical Patterns and Structure

During the first ten months of 2025, nearly 1,522 criminal proceedings were opened under Article 301 (with suspicions reported in 1,438 cases).

5.2. Legal Paradox and High Detection Rate

This crime category exhibits phenomenally high detection rates. Suspects receive suspicion notices in 95% of cases, with 81% of proceedings successfully referred to court. This efficiency stems from documentation simplicity: digital traces, bank transactions, and test content purchases provide indisputable evidence.

6. Russian Federation War Crimes: Documenting Genocide

A separate, extensive law enforcement area involves documenting and investigating international crimes committed during Russia’s armed aggression. While excluded from traditional “peacetime” crime statistics, this category places the greatest burden on the justice system.

6.1. Documented Atrocities Scale

As of October 2025, the Prosecutor General’s Office had officially documented over 170,000 war crimes, with later updates approaching 190,000 cases. These represent systematic violations of war laws and customs (Criminal Code Article 438), including indiscriminate shelling, torture, deportation, and civilian killings.

6.2. Infrastructure and Medical Facility Attacks

A defining feature of 2025 war crimes was systematic critical infrastructure attacks. The World Health Organization documented 2,195 attacks on Ukrainian medical facilities between February 2022 and December 2024, with 459 occurring in 2024 alone. This tactic continued in 2025, aimed at creating humanitarian catastrophe. Between March and August 2025, over 100 energy infrastructure attacks occurred, causing significant generation deficits.

8. Conclusions and Forecast Scenarios

Analysis of the first ten months of 2025 yields the following conclusions:

1. Structural Crime Deformation: War has completely transformed Ukraine’s crime landscape. The predominance of serious and particularly serious crimes (74.2% of total) indicates increased criminal act danger. Rising crimes involving weapons and explosives directly result from uncontrolled weapon circulation.
2. Critical Military Justice State: Military crime investigation (offences, desertion) has reached systemic collapse. The gap between registered proceedings (over 161,000) and court referrals (5%) demonstrates the existing law enforcement model’s inability to address the military disciplinary crisis. This demands immediate approach revision: from specialised military court creation to personnel management paradigm shifts.
3. Economic Crime Adaptability: Cybercrime and fraud show high resilience, rapidly adapting to new social realities. Despite some proceeding decreases, fraud levels remain significantly above pre-war levels, requiring constant cyber countermeasure improvements.
4. Procedural Overload: Low suspect identification rates in life/health (24.8%) and property crime cases indicate investigative resources are diverted to priority areas (national security, war crimes), leaving “ordinary” crime peripheral. These risks increased latent crime and declining public law enforcement confidence.
5. International Dimension: Ukraine’s ICC integration and active international institutional cooperation are key factors in combating war crime impunity. However, the national justice system must prepare to shoulder the main investigative burden for tens of thousands of crimes beyond The Hague’s jurisdiction.