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The article is devoted to the development of a criminological model of firearms trafficking control in the context of transitional justice for Ukraine. It is established that illicit firearms trafficking lays down long-term trends of deterioration of the criminogenic situation, including in the post-war period, and in the future threatens to strengthen the functionality of organised criminal groups and a surge in violent criminal activity. The article proposes a criminological model for establishing control over firearms circulation which provides for: 1) preservation of the existing legal regime of firearms circulation for civilians until the end of the armed conflict and the legal regime of martial law; after the lifting of martial law, a balanced legalisation of civilian (short-barreled) weapons with strict control, verification and constant monitoring is required; 2) for military personnel (including those discharged from service): a) a special type of exemption from criminal liability under Articles 263 and 410 (regarding misappropriation of firearms, ammunition, explosives or other munitions) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, subject to presentation for inspection, registration and issuance of a permit (de lege ferenda); b) obtaining a permit (de lege ferenda) for storage of firearms (in the amount of no more than one unit per person) and ammunition (in the amount of no more than 60 pieces); 3) criminal liability for violation of the conditions of the permit to keep and carry firearms. It is concluded that the enhancement of criminal liability for the illegal acquisition, transfer or sale of firearms, ammunition, explosives or explosive devices under martial law or a state of emergency is an example of excessive criminalisation of socially dangerous acts. Law enforcement agencies, by complying with the requirements on the general principles of sentencing (Article 65, paragraph 11, part 1, Article 67 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine), have sufficiently effective tools to assess and take into account the degree of social danger of various manifestations of illegal handling of weapons. The proposal is to supplement the disposition of Part 1 of Art. 263 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine with an indication of such an object of a criminal offence as a constructive part of a firearm, setting it out in the following wording: “Carrying, storing, purchasing, transferring or selling firearms or their constructive parts (except for smooth-bore hunting rifles and their constructive parts), ammunition, explosives or explosive devices without a permit provided for by law – …”.

The article is devoted to the characteristics of crimes against humanity as a category of international criminal law and in the context of the armed conflict in Ukraine. It has been stated that corpus delicti of crimes against humanity reveal many features which have a common meaning with the features of war crimes, and this creates difficulties in legal application. A table of the norms relevance and their drafts on crimes against humanity and war crimes under the Rome Statute of the ICC and the draft UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Humanity has been compiled. The criteria for distinction between these corpus delicti has been proposed. It has been established that the Criminal Code of Ukraine does not contain special corpus delicti of crimes against humanity. The conceptual direction of national criminal legislation improvement has been determined.

The article is devoted to the characteristics of the main qualification problems of criminal offenses related to the war in the context of the de-occupation movement. Based on the analysis and synthesis of the experience of investigators from the National Police, the Security Service of Ukraine, as well as prosecutors on the de-occupied territories of Ukraine, four basic problematic subject areas with the corresponding typical situations of the law on criminal liability application have been identified: criminal legal qualification of artillery shelling, mining, causing death to a person, and other actions of physically detained representatives of the aggressor state. For each zone and situation, the main approaches to the qualification of documented criminal offenses and other events used in law enforcement practice have been identified. A critical analysis of these approaches has been carried out, shortcomings are identified, and ways to eliminate them are proposed.

The article is devoted to the characteristics of the main challenges of the war for the development of Ukrainian society and the state and responses to them in the field of criminal law policy formation and implementation. The purpose of the article is to provide a systemic characterization of the changes that have taken place in the Criminal Code of Ukraine since February 24, 2022 and are aimed at responding to challenges related to martial law, as well as determining their necessity, sufficiency, and adequacy. The empirical basis of the study is made up of the materials of 225 court verdicts for the commission of criminal offenses provided for by Articles 111, 111-1, 111-2, 114-2, 436-2, 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, as well as the results of expert assessments and surveys of 92 employees of pre-trial investigation bodies of the National of the police, 35 employees of the prosecutor’s office, 30 investigators of the Security Service of Ukraine in Kharkiv, Odesa and Zaporizhzhia regions. The analysis of these sources made it possible to identify and describe the existing problems of criminal law regulation of social relations in a number of spheres, which have been exposed to the greatest negative influence since the beginning of the full-scale war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. A description and explanation of the main and indirect threats associated with the full-scale armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine is provided. The changes in the law on criminal liability, which occurred as a reaction to the specified threats in the form of criminalization of socially dangerous acts, as well as in the practice of applying criminal law norms on collaborationism, aiding the aggressor state, justification, denial of armed aggression against Ukraine, war crimes, etc., are analyzed. Their shortcomings and defects are identified, proposals are formulated for their elimination through improvement both at the law-making and law-enforcement levels. The need for Ukraine to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the Kampala annexes to it is emphasized. Equally significant is the improvement of domestic legislation and the practice of its application in relation to countering collaborationism, aiding the aggressor state, as well as war crimes, crimes of aggression, and crimes against humanity. The inadequacy of the application of norms on war crimes in those cases in which terrorism takes place has been established at the level of a separate scientific and law-enforcement problem. The possibility of the coexistence of the phenomena of terrorism and aggressive war, the presence of signs of war crimes and terrorist acts in the actions of combatants has been proven. The key factor in distinguishing these phenomena should not be the international legal status of the guilty person as a combatant, but the content of the subjective side of the composition of the criminal offense with a significant coincidence of the signs of the objective side of war crimes and terrorist acts.

The subject matter of the research is theoretical and applied problems of criminal and legal qualification of domestic violence. Its purpose is to form propositions for solving these problems. The latter include the difficulties of unambiguous interpretation and legal assessment of the features of a socially dangerous act provided by the Art. 126-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, and the features of “systematic”, establishing socially dangerous consequences and causal relation and distinguishing domestic violence from related corpus delicti of criminal offenses. The author has revealed the “interdiction” of socially dangerous results (as features of an action) and consequences, which leads to incompleteness and incorrect qualification. The solution of this problem is directly related to: a) the separation of psychological violence from those forms of psychological influence on a person that cannot be considered violence; b) separation of domestic violence as an administrative tort from a criminal offense. The author has suggested a two-dimensional model of the consequences of psychological violence, where the first (closer) level consists of those consequences defined in the Law of Ukraine “On Preventing and Counteracting Domestic Violence”, and the second (remote) level – in the Art. 126-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. When there are sufficient grounds to believe that domestic violence is systematic, the use of prior administrative response procedures should be avoided after the first report or personal detection by the police officer. Special attention has been paid to the criteria for distinguishing between the legal components of domestic violence and criminal offenses against life and health, sexual freedom and sexual integrity, as well as those provided by the Articles 164 and 165 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

У процесі кримінологічному аналізу положень проекту закону України «Про пенітенціарну систему» виявлено дві групи його недоліків – концептуального і техніко-юридичного характеру, надано їх опис та обґрунтування. Визначено шляхи вдосконалення законопроекту через усунення виявлених недоліків. Запропоновано закріпити в цьому законопроекті поняття пенітенціарної системи, під якою можливо розуміти цілісну, керовану систему державних органів та установ, що забезпечують формування і реалізацію державної політики у сфері виконання покарань, здійснення пробації.