Ukraine's judicial system faces financial crisis and excessive paperwork burden

While law enforcement structures receive stable state funding, investigating judges face a daily flow of dozens of complaints. This problem arises not so much from the complexity of investigations, but from the inaction and bureaucratic imitation of work by pre-trial investigation bodies.

A fundamental question is raised: if every criminal case must end with a verdict or a court ruling, why does the state leave the final link in the chain of justice without adequate resources?

Budgetary inequality: priority of investigation over verdict

Research into the budget process and the actual distribution of funds reveals a significant distortion of state priorities. The pre-trial investigation and prosecution stage is funded significantly better than the direct administration of justice.

The funding statistics for the agencies look as follows:

• Courts (DSA): need 38.219 billion UAH, allocated 22.705 billion UAH (59.4%), deficit 15.513 billion UAH.
• National Police (NPU): need 100.175 billion UAH, allocated 86.954 billion UAH (86.8%), deficit 13.221 billion UAH.
• Bureau of Economic Security (BEB): need 7.296 billion UAH, allocated 1.944 billion UAH (26.6%), deficit 5.352 billion UAH.
• NABU: need 2.883 billion UAH, allocated 2.547 billion UAH (88.3%), deficit 0.337 billion UAH.
• NAB: need 4.713 billion UAH, allocated 4.713 billion UAH (~100%), deficit ~0.
• Office of the Prosecutor General (OPG): funding 18.615 billion UAH, additional need over 1.109 billion UAH.

In terms of the absolute value of the deficit, the judicial system ranks first. The State Judicial Administration (DSA) is short by 15.513 billion UAH. Of this amount, over 10 billion UAH is allocated to wages and accruals, while capital expenditure is covered only by approximately 19%. Following changes to legislation regarding judicial remuneration, the judicial branch declared an additional need of 2.562 billion UAH.

For comparison: the State Bureau of Investigations (NAB) covers its stated need practically at 100% (4.713 billion UAH). The National Police is funded at 86.8% of the basic need, while NABU received 88.3% of the required resources. The Office of the Prosecutor General has approved funding of 18.615 billion UAH (with an additional fixed need of over 1.1 billion UAH). Among law enforcement agencies, only the Bureau of Economic Security (BEB) has a critical deficit, being funded at only 26.6% (deficit 5.352 billion UAH), which significantly undermines the agency's capacity to counter financial crimes and organised crime.

As a result, a systemic distortion arises: the coercive apparatus receives the lion's share of funds for procedural coercion, while the court, which must assess the legality of this coercion, is forced to survive on 59% of the necessary minimum.

Clerical routine instead of investigative actions

The cause of the excessive burden on courts lies not only in the number of crimes but also in the systemic replacement of real investigative actions with bureaucratic copy-paste.

• At the beginning of 2025, over 1.3 million criminal cases were under investigation by National Police investigators. Over the year, more than 451,000 offences were registered, but only over 55,000 cases were sent to court with an indictment — that is, about 12% of those registered in the year.
• NAB reporting mentions over 355,500 cases under investigation, which gives an average load of 800–1,000 cases per investigator (and in some units, such as the NAB Directorate in Kramatorsk — up to 4,827 cases per investigator).

Although some of these cases are suspended or "factual", this mass creates enormous clerical routine. Instead of conducting complex expert examinations, searching for organised crime assets, and field work with defendants, investigators are forced to generate procedural paperwork with an average load of 800–1,000 cases per investigator.

The scheme for creating "procedural spam" includes the following stages:

1. Ignoring Art. 214 of the CPC: Refusal to enter information into the ERDR upon a crime report.
2. Ignoring Art. 56 of the CPC: Failure to recognise a victim and failure to consider motions by the parties.
3. Formal refusals under Art. 220 of the CPC: Issuing rulings on refusal to perform procedural actions, which are often textual "copy-paste" of previous decisions.
4. Unjustified closure under Art. 284 of the CPC: Closing cases at early stages without conducting basic investigative actions in order to adjust "clearance rate" indicators.

Each such decision by an investigator or prosecutor gives rise to a complaint to the court. In other words, an investigator, issuing an unlawful or formal ruling, simply "transfers" the problem and procedural responsibility to the investigating judge.

Investigating judge standards versus reality

Ukrainian laws do not establish a fixed "plan" for the number of cases for a judge. However, the High Council of Justice (HCJ) and the Council of Judges of Ukraine (CJU) have developed standards for model workload, based on the assumption that hearing one motion or complaint takes from 1.5 to 3.5 hours (reviewing materials, hearing, drafting a ruling).

With a standard annual working time of 1,570–1,600 hours, the calculation model assumes:

• Per day: model standard 2–4 materials, actual state in courts 10–25+ materials.
• Per week: model standard 10–20 materials, actual state 50–100+ materials.
• Per month: model standard 50–80 materials, actual state 150–300+ materials.

In conditions of acute staff shortages, in some city courts an investigating judge on duty or during automated distribution may be assigned up to 70 materials per day. Meanwhile, the CPC of Ukraine requires hearing motions for detention, searches, preventive measures, and complaints about inaction within strict deadlines — from a few hours to 24–72 hours.

The physical impossibility of devoting sufficient time to each case leads to the court becoming a "stamping workshop", forced to clear the paper avalanche instead of conducting a deep analysis of evidence.

Solomianskyi Court precedent: when money runs out

Underfunding of courts is not an abstract figure in a table. It periodically leads to the collapse of basic functions of the judiciary.

A vivid example of this crisis was the situation at the Solomianskyi District Court of Kyiv (one of the most heavily loaded courts in the country, which hears motions in many high-profile cases).

Due to the lack of funding for purchasing postage stamps, envelopes, and paying for communication services, as well as the exhaustion of limits on paper and consumables, the court repeatedly found itself on the verge of stopping the sending of procedural documents, summonses, and rulings to the parties. The court was forced to officially appeal to participants in the proceedings to specify electronic addresses, collect procedural documents themselves, or cover the costs of postal dispatch at their own expense.

Similar cases are not isolated. In many regional courts, the absence of funding for clerical expenses led to the cessation of postal correspondence, which disrupted procedural deadlines and provided grounds for the cancellation of decisions in higher instances.

Ways to solve the problem

Only a court can terminate a criminal case and issue a final decision in the name of Ukraine. No coercive agency has the authority to establish the guilt of a person. However, when the judicial system is disabled by underfunding, the process of justice is blocked.

A systemic solution to this problem lies in several areas:

1. Redistribution of budgetary priorities: Funding of the judicial branch of power must be equated to funding for defence and security. It is impossible to build a rule-of-law state when prosecution is funded at 87–100%, while the court that controls this prosecution is funded at 59%.
2. Legislative elimination of procedural spam: Amendments to the CPC of Ukraine regarding the introduction of stricter liability for investigators for systematic failure to take actions, issuing knowingly unjustified rulings, and copy-paste.
3. Full digitalisation (ESITS): Full transition to electronic document flow and electronic cabinet, which will remove courts' dependence on paper media and postal costs.
4. Filling the staff shortage: Finalisation of HCJ and VKKS competitions to fill over 2,000 vacant judge positions, which will allow reducing the load from 70 to the standard 2–4 cases per day.

Change in budgetary approach

The current situation creates a dangerous paradox for the state. The court, overloaded with the clerical inaction of the police and NAB and deprived of over 40% of the necessary funding, loses the capacity to administer justice qualitatively based on real evidence.

The state spends hundreds of billions of hryvnias on maintaining a huge coercive apparatus, which instead of investigating complex organised crime schemes mass-produces paper refusals, and then drowns the underfunded court in complaints about its own copy-paste.

If the state does not change its budgetary approach and ensure adequate funding for the judicial system, justice risks ultimately turning into the formal servicing of procedural imitations by coercive agencies.