Twelve civic organizations were admitted to the assembly that formed the fourth composition of the Public Integrity Council in July 2025. Between them they submitted 41 nominations — covering only 24 distinct people, for 20 seats. Fourteen of the eighteen members ultimately elected were nominated by two organizations at once. One organization, the DEJURE Foundation, nominated nine of the 24 candidates and saw six of them seated: a third of the Council.
These figures are taken from the candidate table published by the High Qualification Commission of Judges alongside its decision admitting the organizations. They are not an allegation. They are arithmetic.
Why This Matters for Crimea#
The Public Integrity Council applies Indicators of Integrity to judges and judicial candidates. Paragraph 1.5 of those Indicators identifies as a marker of support for aggression conduct by a judge who
without urgent need visited the Russian Federation after the start of the armed aggression, temporarily occupied territories
Occupied Ukrainian territory and the territory of the aggressor state appear in a single enumeration. Ukraine’s Constitution defines Crimea as an integral part of Ukraine (Articles 2, 73, 133–134); the Law on the Temporarily Occupied Territory (No. 1207-VII, 2014) establishes for the peninsula a legal regime deliberately distinct from that of a foreign state.
The standard defence of that provision is representational: it is said to reflect the considered position of Ukrainian civil society, adopted by a body drawn from a broad range of profile organizations. The Council’s own description speaks of “nine profile civic organizations.”
That defence rests on an empirical claim about how the Council is assembled. This post examines that claim against the published record.
The 2025 Assembly, Counted#
| Organization | Nominated | Elected | Shares nominees with |
|---|---|---|---|
| DEJURE Foundation | 9 | 6 | ILI, MIHR, Nova Kraina, Sich, ZMINA |
| Institute of Legislative Ideas | 5 | 4 | DEJURE, ZMINA, CES, AntAC |
| Media Initiative for Human Rights | 5 | 2 | DEJURE, ZMINA |
| ZMINA Human Rights Centre | 5 | 4 | ILI, DEJURE, MIHR |
| Nova Kraina Civic Platform | 4 | 4 | DEJURE, Sich, CES, Chesno |
| Sich Human Rights Group | 3 | 3 | DEJURE, Nova Kraina |
| Centre for Economic Strategy | 3 | 3 | ILI, Nova Kraina, AntAC |
| Ukrainian Bar Association | 2 | 2 | — |
| Anti-Corruption Action Center | 2 | 2 | ILI, CES |
| Transparency International Ukraine | 1 | 1 | — |
| Chesno Movement | 1 | 1 | Nova Kraina |
| Public Control Platform | 1 | 0 | — |
Nine of the twelve organizations share nominees with at least one other. Only three — the Ukrainian Bar Association, Transparency International Ukraine and the Public Control Platform — nominated alone, and the last of those seated nobody.
Six candidates were not elected: Oleksandr Voloshyn, Tetiana Katrychenko, Sofiia Sapihura, Kostiantyn Smolov, Hanna Sokolova-Stekh and Serhii Fesenko. With 24 candidates for 20 seats, the assembly chose from a field 1.33 times the size of the body it was filling.
Ten Years Earlier#
The same exercise can be run on the assembly that formed the Council’s first composition in 2016, whose candidate table the Commission also published.
| 2016, first composition | 2025, fourth composition | |
|---|---|---|
| Organizations admitted | 9 | 12 |
| Nominations submitted | 30 | 41 |
| Distinct candidates | 24 | 24 |
| Seats | 20 | 20 |
| Candidates per seat | 1.20 | 1.33 |
| Elected members nominated by two or more organizations | 6 of 20 (30%) | 14 of 18 (78%) |
| Largest single nominator | CPLR — 7 candidates, 7 seated | DEJURE — 9 candidates, 6 seated |
The number of participating organizations rose by a third. The number of people they put forward did not change at all. What changed is the overlap: cross-nomination went from a minority practice to the norm.
In 2016, most members entered the Council on the nomination of one organization. In 2025, most entered on the nomination of two.
What the Registry Adds#
The founding registry published alongside this post records 23 organizations across four compositions. Three findings from compiling it bear on the same question.
Two entries in the registry are the same organizations under different names. The Human Rights Information Centre named in the Commission’s decisions is ZMINA — one legal entity, EDRPOU 38405259. Centre UA in the 2016 rosters is the Centre of United Actions, EDRPOU 36633761. A registry of 23 names describes fewer than 23 independent actors.
Some participating organizations have no current public presence. TOM 14 — the legal entity headed by Denys Bihus — has no website, no published contact address and no social media of its own; its public work appears under the Bihus.Info name. The Public Lustration Committee, which seated a member through the December 2020 vote, is reachable today only through a web archive capture of its site from 2015. European Dimension in Sumy has a registration code and a telephone number and nothing else.
None of that is misconduct, and this site does not present it as such. A dormant organization is not a fictitious one; a legal vehicle operating under a different public brand is a normal arrangement; a small regional NGO without a website is unremarkable, particularly during a war. What these facts establish is narrower and sufficient: the pool from which the Council is constituted is smaller, more overlapping and less publicly visible than the phrase “nine profile civic organizations” conveys.
The Parliamentary Investigation#
In November and December 2025 a Temporary Investigative Commission of the Verkhovna Rada examined the DEJURE Foundation’s relationship with the Public Integrity Council, including allegations of pre-formed candidate lists and influence over which people were selected for its compositions. Mykhailo Zhernakov, DEJURE’s founder, initially declined to appear and characterised the investigation as an attack on independent institutions.
CrimeaWatch takes no position on the Commission’s allegations, which are not established findings. They are recorded here because they concern the same subject as the figures above, and because a reader is entitled to know they exist. The arithmetic in this post does not depend on them and does not corroborate them.
What This Post Does Not Claim#
It does not claim that any organization named here made a statement recognizing Crimea as Russian territory. None did.
It does not claim that cross-nomination is unlawful. It is not. The procedure permits an organization to nominate any eligible person, and permits several organizations to nominate the same person.
It does not claim that DEJURE, or any other organization, controlled the outcome. Nomination is not election; the assembly votes, and six nominees were not seated.
What it claims is this. Paragraph 1.5 treats travel to occupied Ukrainian territory on the same footing as travel to the Russian Federation. The authority of that provision rests on the representativeness of the body that adopted and applies it. On the published record, that body is assembled from 24 people put forward by a set of organizations that overlap heavily, that in three cases have no public presence, and that in two cases are the same legal person under two names. The breadth of representation on which the provision’s legitimacy rests is not documented.
Sources#
- High Qualification Commission of Judges, candidate table and composition, August 2025
- High Qualification Commission of Judges, decision No. 138/zp-25 of 21 July 2025
- High Qualification Commission of Judges archive, documents submitted by civic associations, first composition
- Public Integrity Council, first composition and fourth composition
- Public Integrity Council, Indicators of Integrity
The figures in this post are counted from candidate tables published by the High Qualification Commission of Judges and from the Public Integrity Council’s own composition rosters. Every organization named links to its profile on this site, where the underlying documents are cited individually. Organizations are contacted for comment before their profile is treated as final, and any statement shown to be inaccurate is corrected on the record.