By the end of the year, more than a thousand new judges may appear in Ukraine. The competition for the vacant positions was announced by the High Qualification Commission of Judges, which has not worked since 2019 and only resumed its work this summer. Currently, the judicial system has a staff shortage of more than three thousand vacancies.

This is stated in the story of TSN correspondent Ihor Bondarenko.

The Pechersk District Court of Kyiv works with "Stakhanovite methods"

Now the largest building of the Pechersk Court is littered with stacks of criminal and administrative cases.

"We have thousands of cases here, but thousands more cases in the office, the same thousands in the archives," says Judge Maria Pylayeva.

The Pechersk Court is a leader not only in scandalous proceedings of top cases. The district court is confidently ahead in terms of the number of court materials considered.

"Judges have to consider an average of 320 cases a year. We have 21 judges with powers, and if we count, we get 2-2.5 thousand in wartime. And before that there were 4 thousand," says judge Maria Pylayeva.

Maria Pylaeva

80,21 sentences are announced annually by judges of the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv. With such a load, up to a hundred people in robes should work here. Instead, there are only <> of them, and they are supposedly already accustomed to such Stakhanovite norms.

Even before the full-scale Russian attack, every third judge's chair was empty. In some small district centers, courts did not work for several months due to the lack of judges. The war only increased the staff shortage.

Why was there a shortage of judges?

"The High Council of Justice approved the number of positions of judges 7976,4750, the actual number is <>,<>," said Maksym Pampura, acting head of the State Judicial Administration.

Heaps of cases in the Pechersk District Court

The shortage of judges began to accumulate in the last decade. The corrupt judiciary tried in every possible way to slow down the reforms or imitated them. The old judges, who were supposed to show their wealth, quickly resigned. New ones have not been recruited for four years, because the High Qualification Commission, which is responsible for the selection of judges, has not worked since 2019 and only this summer a new composition was elected.

Appellate Courts May Shut Down

"There is a possibility that a certain number of appellate courts will cease to administer justice. Because the Sumy court has 4 judges, the Rivne court has 8 judges, and the Ternopil court has 10 judges. That is, 3-4 judges, if he resigns, then the court actually ceases to function," says the secretary of the Second Chamber of the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine Serhiy Chumak.

The new commission will begin to eliminate the staff shortage this year. Competitions for more than a thousand vacancies in the courts of the first and appellate instances have already been announced. Testing, interviews, and integrity checks are promised to be transparent and impartial.

"We should develop common criteria for assessing integrity so that both society and the courts themselves, which are being evaluated, clearly understand what is the basis for a ban, in which case the commission will say goodbye to a person in the judiciary," said Ruslan Sydorovych, deputy chairman of the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine.

Why do we need "new faces" in the courts - expert opinion

Judicial reform is one of the requirements for Ukraine's accession to the EU. Despite the war, international and Ukrainian lawyers insist on continuing the reorganization of the judicial system. The new faces will help not only reduce staff shortages.

"We see this as an opportunity, not a problem. Now these two thousand vacancies, or how many there are, can come honest professionals, or brothers, godfathers, matchmakers, and so on can come again," says Mykhailo Zhernakhov, chairman of the board of the DEJURE Foundation.

Next year, UAH 20 billion will be allocated from the budget for the maintenance of the judicial system. This is three billion more than this year. The new estimate is ready to financially support 400 new judicial vacancies. Pensioners should also be replaced by young people. However, it is unlikely that there will be less work for judges. Hundreds of thousands of court cases are joined by Russian war crimes.

▶ On the TSN YouTube channel, you can watch the video at this link: ⚖️ Shortage of judges in Ukraine! As many as three thousand vacancies!

Recall that in Khmelnytskyi region, a banker robbed widows and children of fallen soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.