Ukraine

Ukraine decriminalised homosexuality in December 1991, weeks after independence and before any other post-Soviet state. Thirty-five years later it still offers same-sex couples nothing in law: no marriage, no partnership, no adoption, and no criminal-law protection against hate crimes. The distance between those two facts is the story, and two forces are pulling at it — a war that has made LGBTQ soldiers visible in a way peacetime never did, and an EU accession process that has put the missing laws on a written timetable.

Here is the historical overview of the legalisation of homosexuality and gay rights in Ukraine.

Phase I: Soviet Criminalisation (1934–1991)
Sexual acts between men were a crime across the Soviet Union from 1934, and the Ukrainian SSR applied the same sodomy provision as the rest of the union. Prosecutions continued until the end of the Soviet period.

1991: Ukraine repeals the provision in December, weeks after the independence referendum, and becomes the first of the former Soviet republics to do so.

Phase II: Independence and the Constitutional Wall (1996–2013)
Legal but unrecognised describes the next two decades. The state stopped punishing gay people and did nothing further.

1996: The new Constitution is adopted. Article 51 defines marriage as a voluntary union between a man and a woman — the provision every partnership proposal since has had to work around, and one that cannot be amended while martial law is in force.

2013: The District Administrative Court of Kyiv bans a planned LGBTQ rights event at the request of the city administration. Twelve years later, in January 2025, the European Court of Human Rights rules in Sverdlova and Shevchenko v. Ukraine that the organisers were left with no effective way to appeal that ban.

Phase III: Euromaidan, Europe and the First Real Protection (2014–2022)
The turn towards Europe produced Ukraine's only binding LGBTQ protection — and it arrived as a condition of visa-free travel rather than as a domestic decision.

2014: Russia annexes Crimea and the war in Donbas begins. Russian law arrives with the occupation, and LGBTQ people in the occupied territories go quiet or leave.

2015: On 12 November parliament amends the Labour Code to ban discrimination in employment on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity, one of the last conditions for Schengen visa liberalisation. It remains, to this day, the only place those grounds appear in binding Ukrainian law.

2016: The Ministry of Health drops the requirements of surgery, forced sterilisation, psychiatric hospitalisation and approval by a commission for changing gender on documents. A medical diagnosis is still required — Ukraine has no self-determination model — but the procedure becomes one of the more accessible in the region, which is why the country scores far higher on legal gender recognition than on anything else in the Rainbow Map.

2022: In February, weeks before the invasion, the Ministry of Health ends the blanket ban on blood donation by men who have sex with men.

Phase IV: The Full-Scale War (2022–2024)
Martial law closed the constitutional route and opened a political one. Public support for equal rights rose in every year of the war.

2022: The full-scale invasion begins on 24 February. KyivPride cancels its march and turns to humanitarian work. A public petition for marriage equality passes the threshold that obliges a presidential answer; President Zelensky replies that the Constitution cannot be changed under martial law and asks the government to examine registered partnerships instead. In June, Ukraine is granted EU candidate status. In December, a new media law bans hate speech based on sexual orientation and gender identity in broadcasting.

2023: MP Inna Sovsun registers Bill 9103 on registered civil partnerships, open to couples of any sex. The European Court of Human Rights rules in Maymulakhin and Markiv v. Ukraine that the complete absence of legal recognition for same-sex couples breaches the Convention.

2024: The parliamentary health committee recommends Bill 9103 for a first reading. The legal policy committee, which has to clear it first, does not take it up. Asked in November whether he supports registered partnerships, Zelensky answers yes.

Phase V: A Written EU Timetable, and a Parliament That Will Not Move (2025–2026)
2025: The Cabinet adopts the Roadmap on the rule of law for EU accession. Its Section 3.11, "Discrimination against LGBTIQ people", commits Ukraine to a hate-crime law, to recording hate crimes, to free legal aid for their victims and to a law on registered partnership, with deadlines in 2025 and 2026; the bills are given "European integration related" status. Parliament passes none of them. The government's hate-crime Bill 5488 lapses in July when the Cabinet resigns, and 32 MPs register the near-identical Bill 13597 in August. On 15 September the Prosecutor General orders police to record a possible motive of intolerance including sexual orientation and gender identity — but the Criminal Code still lists only race, ethnicity and religion, so nothing can actually be registered under it.

2026: In February the Supreme Court upholds the rulings in favour of Zoryan Kis and Tymur Levchuk and recognises a same-sex couple as a family for the first time at the highest level. It is a precedent for lower courts, not a registry: each couple must still win its own case, and hospital access, inheritance and next-of-kin rights do not follow automatically. In April a new Civil Code passes its first reading with no recognition of same-sex couples in it. Bill 9103 is three years old and has never reached the floor of parliament.