Ukraine's new judges aim to build rule of law

Judge Olha Vdovychenko speaks during an interview with Reuters in a court hearing room, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine August 13, 2024. /Ivan Lyubysh-Kirdey

KYIV/ZAPORIZHZHIA - Ukraine's newly minted judges have waited years to be hired and know they must create trust in the courts for the country's European aspirations to be realised.

"Morally, you need always to be thinking about the fact that you are a judge," said Olha Vdovychenko, 37, a native of eastern Ukraine who began working in the capital long after qualifying for the job she always wanted.

"People always come to court with problems," she said. "So you need to be relatable and person-centric."

Vdovychenko's recent appointment alongside nearly 250 other judges is aimed at helping Ukraine firmly establish the rule of law and finally dismantle a Soviet legacy of corruption and impunity.

In Zaporizhzhia, near the front line in the southeast, district appointee Ievgen Zavgorodnii, 44, is a former anti-corruption investigator who joined the bench after fighting for Ukraine in Russia's 2022 invasion.

He served in the defence of Kyiv and on the eastern front, climbed the ranks to a battalion chief of staff in the 72nd Mechanised Brigade and misses his comrades-in-arms.

The transition has been challenging, he says, but he welcomes the new vocation he first applied for in 2017.

"My task right now is to professionally, impartially and independently administer justice," he said.

Their appointments - long stalled by political tussles even before the war - follow an overhaul of judicial governance sought by the European Union, which Kyiv aims to join to cement its shift from Moscow's orbit.

The war-weary population has less and less tolerance for official impunity. Some 70% of Ukrainians distrust the judicial system, according to a March survey by the Razumkov Centre think tank in Kyiv, their cynicism fuelled by years of corruption that authorities are trying to show they are now stamping out.

A former head of the Supreme Court is awaiting trial for accepting a $2.7 million bribe, a charge that he denies. A judge charged with being drunk when he crashed his Lexus into, and killed, a national guardsman at a checkpoint, is now being tried. He denied being drunk when he was arrested at the scene, saying he had not seen the soldier in the dark.

Zavgorodnii, sworn in last month in the first wave of hires to begin filling more than 2,000 vacancies in the judiciary, said corruption in the sector is no more widespread than in other state institutions, but that judges are more visible.

"For better or for worse, because judges are objects of intense scrutiny from society, their mistakes ... are more noticeable," he said.

Vdovychenko, whose grandfather was also a judge, said her behaviour outside the court will be as important as that within it.

"I think we need also to show that judges are regular people ... that they truly want to work in the interests of the people," she said.