The Balance between Security and Rights in Wartime: How Ukraine manages Emergency Powers and Criminal Procedure during Martial Law

Abstract

The article is devoted to the complex socio-legal and political issue of how a democracy, while being at war, ensures the functioning of its criminal justice system within the framework of human rights legislation. It is noted that the situation in Ukraine is an exceptional case that is objectively difficult to compare with other known situations during wars, conflicts, threats and other challenges, mainly because the relevant situations did not simultaneously include factors similar to those in the Ukrainian context in their combination. The analysis traces the legal grounds for criminal prosecution under martial law and the specific procedural changes that have arisen as a result, namely the peculiarities of procedural time limits, rules concerning measures to ensure criminal proceedings, and the set of guarantees available to suspects. Judicial and international oversight and control are considered, in particular, in the context of compliance with the standards of the ECHR and the Geneva Conventions, not as parallel points, but as mechanisms that interact with each other. Comparative material consists of the experience of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France during wartime and states of emergency, which places Ukraine within the framework of a longer, uncomfortable and complex history of democracies under threat, most of which did not have the additional complications inherent in the situation in Ukraine and did not occur simultaneously with a full-scale invasion. The article also examines specific conditions such as digital surveillance, the position of civil society, and the form that the future transitional justice agenda may take. Based on the practice of the ECHR, Ukrainian legislation and theoretical works on states of emergency, the study concludes that the specific complexity of balancing security and rights is not something that Ukraine has resolved; it is something the country works with day by day.  Keywords: martial law, democratic institutions, human rights, criminal procedure, emergency powers, rule of law, national security, European Convention on Human Rights.