Yushkov Mykhailo Mykhailovych: Repeated Trips to Occupied Crimea (2018–2020) and Mother-in-Law's Russian Passport Cited as Integrity Grounds

What Happened#

On 31 August 2026, the Public Integrity Council (PIC) approved, by 12 votes of 18 members, a negative conclusion on the integrity and professional ethics of Yushkov Mykhailo Mykhailovych, a candidate for a position as judge of a Court of Appeal. Under its second ground, the PIC found that Yushkov repeatedly travelled to the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea during 2018–2020, accompanied by his wife, and that those visits occurred without the critical or urgent, vitally necessary circumstances that the PIC requires to justify personal presence in occupied territory. Yushkov explained in written submissions that the trips were made to visit his parents, who periodically reside in Yalta, and in connection with medical indications. His father’s own statement, however, indicated that Yushkov periodically stayed with his parents in Yalta and transported them by car to the occupied territory. The PIC noted that his parents’ residence in occupied Crimea was a voluntary choice, observing that as of 12 February 2018 they were registered at an address in Dnipro and made repeated trips to occupied Crimea together with Yushkov. In a separate section of additional information addressed to the High Qualification Commission of Judges, the PIC recorded that Yushkov’s mother-in-law holds a passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation, series and number withheld, issued by the UFMS in Kaliningrad Oblast of the Russian Federation in 2014. The PIC described this fact as important to the assessment of the candidate, explicitly linking it to his repeated visits to the occupied territory and what the PIC characterised as his mother-in-law’s “likely ties to the aggressor state.” The PIC concluded that these combined circumstances raised justified doubts about Yushkov’s independence and impartiality. Under its ethics ground, the PIC characterised the systematic voluntary trips as evidence of an absence of a clear civic position on Russia’s occupation of part of Ukraine and as conduct incompatible with the professional ethics required of a judge. The negative conclusion carried on all three grounds — asset-origin concerns, the Crimea-related ethics finding, and declaration accuracy — and was approved by 12 of the 18 PIC members who participated in the electronic vote.

Artem Panchenko voted in favour of the conclusion, joining the eleven other members who treated Yushkov’s repeated 2018–2020 trips to occupied Crimea and his mother-in-law’s Russian Federation passport as compounding integrity risks justifying a negative finding.

The Crimea Connection#

The candidate for the position of judge visited the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine without urgent necessity — that is, in the absence of critical and/or urgent, vitally necessary circumstances that cannot be resolved in any other way than by personal presence in those territories — despite the threat to his own security, that of his close persons, and to Ukraine’s national security. […] According to information obtained from open sources, including data arrays containing information from Russian registries, it has been established that the candidate’s mother-in-law holds a passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation (series, number, issued by the UFMS in Kaliningrad Oblast of the RF in 2014). This information is important in the context of evaluating the candidate, also taking into account the facts of his repeated visits to the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine and the likely ties of his mother-in-law to the aggressor state.

By treating post-2014 travel to occupied Crimea as an ethics violation and by flagging a family member’s Russian passport as evidence of ties to the ‘aggressor state,’ the PIC implicitly treats Crimea as Russian-controlled territory subject to Russian jurisdiction — contradicting Ukraine’s constitutional position that Crimea is sovereign Ukrainian territory.