Over the past year, Ukraine has made no progress in adopting legislation to protect the rights of LGBT+ people, according to a shadow report by civil society organizations on Ukraine’s implementation of the European Commission’s recommendations. This was reported report by the human rights organization ZMINA, which took part in preparing the report.
The monitoring was conducted from September 2025 to August 2026.
In 2025, the monitoring network of the LGBT Center "Our World" recorded 60 cases related to homophobia or transphobia, discrimination, and other human rights violations. 23 cases showed signs of hate crimes, and 15 were hate incidents. In 2024, human rights defenders recorded 75 such cases.
At the same time, Ukraine still does not have a clear legal definition of hate crimes, in particular on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), the report authors note.
In August 2025, draft law No. 13597 was registered in the Verkhovna Rada, proposing amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine. It expands the list of protected characteristics, in particular by including sexual orientation and gender identity.
However, the proposals need further work; in particular, the motive of bias must be taken into account in a number of criminal offenses, including causing minor bodily harm and hooliganism.
In addition, notes according to the Ukrainian publication NV.UA, the Rada has still not considered draft laws No. 9103 and No. 12252 on civil partnerships. Due to the lack of a legal recognition mechanism for same-sex couples, partners do not have adequate legal protection for family relationships.
Nevertheless, there has been significant progress in case law: in February 2026, the Supreme Court upheld a ruling recognizing a same-sex couple’s de facto marital relationship. This became the first such decision in Ukrainian case law.
However, this progress can be reduced to nothing by the bill of the Civil Code, which the Verkhovna Rada adopted in its first reading. In it, lawmakers made an attempt to restrict the rights of same-sex couples and LGBT± people.
The bill provides for a comprehensive overhaul of family and civil legislation, but does not take into account obligations to create mechanisms for registering same-sex families. The document defines "de facto family unions" exclusively as the cohabitation of persons of different sexes.
"Such an approach effectively makes it impossible for the courts to recognize same-sex couples as families, thereby eliminating the currently existing — albeit limited, but established — legal protection and reducing to nothing the progress achieved in the judicial sphere," human rights defenders emphasize.
In addition, the draft code automatically invalidates marriages concluded by people who have legally changed sex, which, according to the authors of the document, constitutes an interference with "the right to respect for private and family life".
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