From Maidan to a “Double Debt”: How Judge Vitaliy Ukraynets Is Headed for a “Promotion”

From Maidan to a “Double Debt”: How Judge Vitaliy Ukraynets Is Headed for a “Promotion”

The head of the Solomianskyi District Court of Kyiv is known for notorious rulings against Maidan protesters and in favor of corrupt officials, as well as for an “invisible” cottage in the capital’s suburbs that was not included in his declaration.

Will he manage to obtain a new position — at the Kyiv Court of Appeal — after a new scandal involving double collection of a debt from an entrepreneur?

Are lies in declarations no obstacle to a career?

Persecution of Euromaidan participants, “clearing” the son of a minister suspected of corruption, ties to Medvedchuk and the Russian defense industry, failing to declare an elite construction project outside Kyiv. Can one imagine that a person with such a “record” dispenses justice in a country that for the fifth year is repelling full-scale aggression and for more than a decade has been carrying out judicial and anti-corruption reforms? And dispenses justice not just anywhere, but as head of one of the key capital courts of first instance while still successfully seeking a “promotion” — to the Kyiv Court of Appeal?

The question, of course, is rhetorical. The answer is in a post by the Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC), published 20 October, which concerns the head of the Solomianskyi District Court of Kyiv, Vitaliy Ukraynets. The anti-corruption activists reported that the notorious “Maidan judge” recently passed an interview before panel No. 2 of the High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ), received a high score, and is moving forward in the competition for the desired position — judge of the city appellate court. Despite a negative opinion from the Public Integrity Council (PIC), his candidacy will be considered by the plenary HQCJ and, if approved, submitted to the High Council of Justice (HCJ), which in turn will send it for the president’s signature.

“Now the key question: will Ukraynets receive the ‘green light’ from the full HQCJ? If so, society should be given an explanation of what evidence removed the doubts. At stake is trust in the Kyiv Court of Appeal and the competitive procedure that forms its composition,” the AntAC warns.

Recall that earlier, in March this year, anti-corruption activists published a high-profile investigation focused on Vitaliy Ukraynets. The head of the Solomianskyi court was found to own real estate in the village of Stari Bezradychi outside Kyiv — 0,12 hectares of land purchased in 2020 for 130 thousand hryvnias (approximately $358 per hundred square meters). On this plot, since 2021, the judge has been building an elite cottage. Experts estimated the cost of the work at $150 – $200 thousand — far more than the savings declared by Vitaliy Ukraynets’s family for that period. In addition, the judge “forgot” to disclose the expensive unfinished building in declarations for 2021–2025, as required by law. He corrected this only after speaking with an AntAC journalist: he hastily amended the declaration for 2025 exactly three hours after the phone call. The purchase of the land itself is not entirely clean either, the market value of which starts at several thousand dollars per hundred square meters. The elite land in the capital’s suburbs where the judge is building appears in National Police criminal proceeding No. 42025112340000284, which concerns its possible seizure from the Kozyn forestry. Ukraynets bought it from the gardening association “Druzi,” linked to Daniil Pryvalov — the son of the late Kharkiv mayor Hennadiy Kernes.

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From Maidan to a “Double Debt”: How Judge Vitaliy Ukraynets Is Headed for a “Promotion”

From Maidan to a “Double Debt”: How Judge Vitaliy Ukraynets Is Headed for a “Promotion”

The cottage of Judge Vitaliy Ukraynets in the village of Stari Bezradychi outside Kyiv. Photo: AntAC

Following this investigation, AntAC journalists in March appealed to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP), and the HQCJ, asking them to legally assess these facts. Anti-corruption bodies have remained silent. Instead, on 2 September the High Qualification Commission of Judges held a session where it decided to conduct a verification of Vitaliy Ukraynets’s integrity declarations for 2023 and 2024, setting a six-month term for this. At the same time, as we already know, appointing an extraordinary verification did not prevent the judge from successfully advancing in the competition for a position in the Kyiv Court of Appeal, conducted by the HQCJ.

“Pay Twice”: the scandalous ruling in the debt case

Can dubious schemes and lies in declarations coexist with fair, impartial, and professional judicial performance? The answer seems obvious. However, let’s look more closely at the professional side of Vitaliy Ukraynets’s activity — how he is accustomed to administering justice. To save time, we’ll refer to one of the recent cases presided over by the head of the Solomianskyi District Court of Kyiv. It ended with the defendant’s side filing a complaint to the High Council of Justice (HCJ) requesting that the judge be subjected to disciplinary action: the complaint dated 19 October states that Vitaliy Ukraynets grossly violated procedural rules and issued an illegal, unfounded, and unsubstantiated ruling.

From the verdict of 21 September 2026 we learn the circumstances of the dispute. The parties were two Kyiv entrepreneurs who on 22 April 2024 concluded a loan agreement: the first lent the other $443 665 — for 12 months at 18% per annum. The obligation was secured by the borrower transferring corporate rights in two companies to the lender; the authorized capital of those companies included 16 real estate objects. Their value according to appraisal reports was $1195 thousand. It was stipulated that after repayment an Acceptance-Transfer Act of the share in the authorized capital would automatically be annulled and the corporate rights would return to the borrower.

However, the entrepreneur delayed repaying the loan and on 3 June 2025 returned only part of the debt — $200 thousand. But a few days before that the lender replaced the directors of the two companies, personally headed them, and completely removed the borrower from their management. In effect, he thus repaid the debt himself, even with a considerable overpayment. Nevertheless, in August the lender filed a claim in the Solomianskyi District Court of Kyiv demanding that his former debtor pay an additional $327,5 thousand: allegedly the companies that passed into his ownership do not count as repayment of the loan, and therefore it remains unpaid and the borrower must pay the rest (except $200 thousand) plus interest, a financial sanction for overdue payment, and indexing.

While the court process continued, the plaintiff managed to sell 5 real estate objects that previously belonged to his debtor. Their value fully covered the “debt” the lender continued to insist on. He himself confirmed this fact when answering questions at a hearing on 11 May 2026 in a parallel case heard by the Commercial Court of Kyiv. One would think this admission is ironclad evidence for the defendant’s side and the dispute would be decisively resolved in his favor. However, Judge Vitaliy Ukraynets thought otherwise.

The officer of Themis blatantly ignored a key piece of evidence — the protocol and video recording of the hearing on 11 May in which the plaintiff “confessed.” At the hearing on 9 September 2026, when the court was examining evidence, Judge Vitaliy Ukraynets reviewed only part of the materials and then… immediately moved to final debate. At the request of the defendant’s representative to examine the remaining evidence, he refused. During the case the judge deliberately concealed and distorted important facts. As a result: predictably he issued a ruling in favor of the plaintiff, deciding that the debtor must pay the lender again $237 117 and 83 577 euros. The text of the decision contains no mention of the key evidence — the video of the entrepreneur’s admission of the actual repayment of the debt. Nor is there an explanation why the judge decided to ignore this argument entirely.

Such actions are a direct violation of the Civil Procedure Code (in particular, arts. 213 and 229), which obliges a judge to examine all evidence directly during the court hearing. Will he bear responsibility for such arbitrariness? The answer must be given by the High Council of Justice.

Maidan and the “backpacks”: a story of impunity

According to data on the HCJ website, at least two disciplinary proceedings have previously been brought against Vitaliy Ukraynets — in 2018 and 2019. In both cases everything ended with the High Council of Justice refusing to hold the judge accountable. In the second case the HQCJ demanded punishment for the judge — for lying in an integrity declaration for 2016, where Ukraynets concealed his involvement in the persecution of participants in the Revolution of Dignity. Thus, on 13 February 2014 the judge of the Solomianskyi District Court of Kyiv (Ukraynets has served in this position since 2007) fined citizen Oleksandr Yakymenko, whom the militia accused of “moving in a column with Euromaidan symbols” during an action near the presidential residence Mezhyhirya on 29 December 2013. According to the Public Integrity Council’s conclusions, such decisions at the time were made on direct instructions from the Yanukovych Presidential Administration. As the “Maidan judge,” Vitaliy Ukraynets should have fallen under the law “On Purification of Power” (better known as the lustration law), but he walked away unscathed — first he hid this fact in his judicial declaration, and then he received leniency from the HCJ, and in 2019 he was re-attested by the High Qualification Commission of Judges.

A few years earlier the judge of the Solomianskyi District Court became nationally notorious by releasing the son of then Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, Oleksandr, whom NABU suspected of embezzling 14 million hryvnias in purchases of backpacks for the National Guard. On 1 November 2017 it was Vitaliy Ukraynets who refused to remand Avakov Jr. in custody, as the prosecution demanded, instead choosing personal recognizance with an electronic bracelet and surrender of his foreign passport as the preventive measure. Two months later the judge “quietly” did not extend even those restrictions for Avakov Jr.