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<\/p>\nUkraine\u2019s Supreme Court ruled that citizens cannot refuse military service during wartime based on religious beliefs, emphasizing that the obligation to defend the nation applies to all Ukrainians during Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion, the court’s press office said on May 1.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The ruling comes from a case involving a member of the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, a religious group whose doctrine forbids any form of military service. Lower courts had convicted a man for failing to report to a military recruitment office after receiving a summons. He was sentenced to three years in prison under Article 336 of Ukraine\u2019s Criminal Code for evading conscription during mobilization.<\/p>\n
The man\u2019s defense argued that his refusal was grounded in deeply held religious convictions and that criminal prosecution should not apply in such a case. However, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction, citing the state of martial law and the urgent need for national defense.<\/p>\n
\u201cUkraine has introduced alternatives to (mandatory) military service in peacetime, and Ukrainian citizens can freely use them,\u201d the court said in a statement. \u201cHowever, in wartime, during mobilization and defensive war, the duty to defend Ukraine, which has been aggressively attacked by the Russian Federation, is imposed on all citizens of Ukraine, regardless of their religion.\u201d<\/p>\n
The court added that Ukraine’s current state of defensive war against a far larger and more heavily resourced Russia constitutes an \u201cexceptional public need,\u201d which justifies limitations on certain freedoms, including religious exemptions from military service.<\/p>\n
Citing previous European Court of Human Rights rulings, the Supreme Court acknowledged the importance of balancing freedom of religion with state obligations. It noted that no ECHR decision has addressed a comparable case involving such a large-scale war and national threat.<\/p>\n
The ruling comes amid Ukraine\u2019s broader struggle to address personnel shortages on the front lines. On Feb. 11, the government introduced a one-year voluntary service contract for citizens aged 18\u201324, offering Hr 1 million ($24,000) in one-time aid and monthly payments of up to Hr 120,000 ($3,000). Volunteers also receive housing and travel benefits upon completion of service.<\/p>\n
The initiative aims to attract younger recruits without lowering the draft age from 25 to 18, a move urged by the U.S. but resisted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who argued it could harm Ukraine’s long-term future.<\/p>\n
Still, the plan has drawn criticism from current service members, who say they receive fewer benefits than new volunteers. \u201cWhy are those who enlisted earlier in a worse position?\u201d asked Alina Mykhailova, a Ukrainian paramedic and soldier in a Facebook post in February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ukraine\u2019s Supreme Court ruled that citizens cannot refuse military service during wartime based on religious beliefs, emphasizing that the obligation to defend the nation applies to all Ukrainians during Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion, the court’s press…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10078,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10079,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10077\/revisions\/10079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}