Criminal Policy Challenges under Conditions of Hybrid War: Some Issues and Solutions from Ukraine

This article studies the specifics of national criminal policy implementation under the influence of extraordinary geopolitical factors on it. Such policy will be reviewed with Ukraine serving as an appropriate example. This country has been recently forced to adjust its own ways of implementation of the state policy against crime based on atypical modern challenges and threats. This refers to the special nature of a hybrid war, which has been actively fought on the territory of Ukraine since 2014. The author examines two key areas of criminal policy (definition of the limits of criminal behavior and establishing criminal law consequences of the committed offenses), implemented under the extraordinary circumstances of hybrid war. Symptomatic features of the hybrid form of foreign aggression are defined in the piece. At the same time, options of criminal law in combating and preventing such aggression are researched.

Special focus is placed on new acts that have been criminalized as well as those that might need further criminalization. Attention is paid to the issues of criminal law protection of national and historical memory, and to the concept of journalism related crimes. The importance of amnesty as an effective tool to resolve conflicts between individual and state is also emphasized in the article.