Lustration in Ukraine

In Ukraine, lustration (Ukrainian: люстрація, liustratsiia) refers to the removal from public office of civil servants who served under Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. This measure was initiated under president Petro Poroshenko, after Yanukovich was deposed in the Revolution of Dignity. This lustration also applies to civil servants who were active in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union prior to 1991. A 2019 proposal by the newly elected president Volodymyr Zelensky proposed to expand the lustration to the officials who served under Poroshenko, citing the dissatisfaction many Ukrainians felt with Ukraine’s largely ineffective bureaucracy by the time Poroshenko’s presidential term ended.^[1] The proposal attracted much more criticism, including international criticism, than the first round of lustration (2014), both because Poroshenko peacefully turned over power to Zelensky as well as the belief held amongst many Ukrainians that Poroshenko’s presidency was much less corrupt than Yanukovych’s.^[2] Nonetheless, the ECHR’s ruling has important implications for future such programs.^[3][4] A week after the proposal, a member of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party proposed to end the policy of lustration.^[5] By 2020, lustration had been argued to be relatively successful in purging much of Ukraine’s previous corrupt bureaucracy, as well as purging pro-Russian officials who served under President Yanukovych. However, it was also argued to be somewhat of a failure in that many representatives of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions remained with political influence, although as the political opposition in Ukraine, and instead now named the “Opposition Bloc”.^[6] Amidst the Russo-Ukrainian War, in 2022 the Opposition Bloc, along with other pro-Russian parties, were banned, resulting in lustration being completed after 8 years.

The name "lustration" alludes to similar purges of civil servants that took place in Eastern Europe following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The exclusion from service is set to a term of five to ten years.^[7]