Draft Law #15573 of August 28, 2026

Initiator: the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.

Who is affected: service members; direct commanders (superiors) and officials who consider reports; the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP); the authorized anti-corruption units of the Ministry of Defense and the Military Law Enforcement Service.

Summary:

  • introduces into the Disciplinary Statute of the Armed Forces of Ukraine a separate category of “whistleblower from among service members” and extends to it the rights and guarantees of protection provided for by the Law “On the Prevention of Corruption”;
  • the right to submit applications, complaints, or reports of violations is supplemented by a separate procedure for reporting facts of corruption with a direct application to the NACP;
  • reporting corruption is no longer considered to be an action that causes harm to the Armed Forces of Ukraine — that is, reporting corruption can no longer be classified as an action harmful to the Armed Forces;
  • a service member chooses for themselves the channel through which to report corruption (internal, regular, or external):
    • internal — reports to the head or to the authorized unit (person) of the body where the whistleblower serves. In military formations, such recipients may be the commander or the authorized person (unit) responsible for the prevention and detection of corruption;
    • regular — reports directly to the NACP, NABU, the police, the prosecutor’s office, or a pre-trial investigation body — that is, to the specialized state entities within whose competence such matters fall;
    • external — via natural or legal persons: the media, journalists, civil society associations, trade unions, and the like.

What is right:

  • The draft law closes the gap where the Disciplinary Statute contained no special provisions on whistleblower status, the procedure for reporting corruption, or interaction with the NACP.
  • The distinction between complaints regarding harm to the interests of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and reports of corruption minimizes the risk that a report of a corruption offense will be mistakenly treated as an action harmful to the interests of the Armed Forces.
  • The multi-channel nature of corruption reporting is a necessary element of protection for whistleblowers in the military sphere, since a service member cannot always effectively use the internal reporting channel if the potential offender is their direct superior.