Lviv court cancels a Jehovah's Witness deacon's call-up because he was already on trial for evading mobilisation, without ruling on his religious objection

The Lviv District Administrative Court on 28 October 2026 cancelled the order that had called a Jehovah's Witness deacon up for military service on 14 May. At the time of his call-up he was already on trial in Zaporizhzhia for evading mobilisation. The court based its ruling on a Cabinet rule on calling up people facing certain criminal charges, and linked the recruitment centre's failure to ask the police about criminal proceedings to the unlawful order. It did not rule on his religious objection to military service.^[1][2]

The decision, by Judge Zinovii Havdyk, declares unlawful and quashes — that is, wipes out — call-up order No. 1012 of 14 May 2026. It also orders the recruitment centre to repay him 1,331.20 hryvnias, the court fee he paid to bring the case, out of its budget.^[1]

The claimant is not named here because the record does not name him. Ukraine's Unified State Register of Court Decisions, the free public database where the judgment is published, replaces him with a placeholder and also masks the recruitment centre, the military unit and the other official bodies the decision mentions.^[1]

(English renderings of Ukrainian court text in this article are ours.)

The terms the case turns on

Ukraine has been under martial law — an emergency legal regime under which certain rights may be restricted — since 24 February 2022, and the decision records that it was still in force while the case was heard. Mobilisation is the wartime call-up of men already on the military register, during what the law calls the special period.^[1]

Call-ups are run locally by a territorial recruitment and social support centre, known by its Ukrainian initials ТЦК. It keeps the register, sends men to a military medical commission — a board of doctors that rates a man's fitness to serve — and its head signs the call-up orders. It is called the recruitment centre below.^[1]

The rules for mobilisation call-ups are set by a Cabinet of Ministers resolution of 16 May 2024, No. 560 — a government regulation made under the mobilisation laws. Article 336 of the Criminal Code makes it a crime to evade a call-up during mobilisation.^[1]

A deacon, in the Witness sense used here, is a ministerial servant: an appointed man who helps run a congregation. The decision describes the certificate he relied on as saying he holds the post of священнослужитель (диякон) збору — minister, or deacon, of the congregation. The judge heard the case under the simplified procedure, a lighter track for administrative cases, opened on 25 May 2026.^[1]

14 May 2026

On his account, at about 13:30 on 14 May 2026 staff of the recruitment centre detained him at Lviv's main railway station and took him, against his will, to be examined by a military medical commission. The court itself established that the centre's staff brought him for the commission that day. He says he told them repeatedly that he was a clergyman and baptised, that his religious beliefs and conscience did not allow him to do military service or take part in anything connected with it, and that he was ready to do civilian service instead under Article 35 of the Constitution.^[1][2]

He also says he told them that he was already on trial: criminal case No. 334/6980/25, under Article 336, was before the Dniprovskyi District Court of Zaporizhzhia, with the next hearing set for 1 June 2026. He says he handed over the indictment — the prosecutor's formal statement of the charge sent to trial — in criminal proceedings registered on 2 August 2024, together with a certificate, as the decision describes it, that he belongs to the Jehovah's Witnesses religious organisation and serves as a deacon of his congregation. The charge is an accusation, not a conviction.^[1][2]

The commission, attached to a body the register masks, found him fit that day for service in, among others, support units, recruitment centres, military schools, training centres, medical units, and logistics, signals and guard units. He was mobilised the same day under order No. 1012.^[1][2]

The two sides' arguments

His claim asked the court to declare order No. 1012 unlawful and quash it. It argued that paragraph 4 of the Cabinet procedure bars calling up people suspected or accused of offences including those under Article 336 until their trial is over. Sending an accused man to a military unit, it added, would stop him attending his own trial and working with his lawyer, in breach of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to a fair trial.^[1]

The recruitment centre contested the claim. It said he had been on the military register since 12 July 2024, and had no valid deferment (a formal postponement of call-up) and no other ground for exemption from call-up. Being told one is suspected under Article 336, it argued, is no legal bar to mobilisation: suspicion changes a man's status in the criminal case, not his military duty. Only measures such as custody or round-the-clock house arrest, it said, could stand in the way.^[1]

It cited a Supreme Court ruling of 26 May 2026 in case No. 537/2092/24. On the centre's reading, that ruling holds that criminal liability under Article 336 depends on the call-up procedure itself being lawful, but does not link whether a man can be mobilised to his status as a suspect or accused.^[1]

On religion, the centre argued that the freedom to practise a religion is not absolute under the Constitution, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention, and that religious beliefs are not in themselves a ground for release from service during mobilisation, because the law does not provide alternative service in that situation.^[1]

What the court held

The judge set out the duties that the law places on each side of the check. Investigators must tell the relevant recruitment centre within seven days when a man on the register is notified that he is suspected of a crime, and courts must tell it about conscripts whose criminal cases they are hearing. Recruitment centres, for their part, are charged by a 2022 Cabinet regulation with asking the National Police for information on whether men are being prosecuted or have a criminal record.^[1]

The court recorded that the centre did not, in substance, dispute that he had told its staff about the pending trial. It noted that on 28 September 2026 his representative had given the court a reply from a body the register masks, stating that no notice of suspicion in the official form, Annex 22, had reached it.^[1]

The court then linked the centre's failure to ask the National Police about criminal proceedings to the unlawful call-up order. In its words, translated literally, that failure "is a consequence of the adoption of an unlawful order calling up the claimant."^[1]

The legal basis it gave was paragraph 4 of the Cabinet procedure. As quoted in the decision, that paragraph lists the categories of people who may be called up during mobilisation. Among them are people previously convicted, and two groups of people suspected or accused in criminal cases: those held in custody during the investigation or trial, and those subject to some other preventive measure — a restriction a court places on a suspect while the case is pending — where an investigating judge, the judge who supervises the investigation stage, has issued a ruling cancelling that measure so they can do military service. Both groups carry an exception for people suspected of crimes against the foundations of national security and of crimes under a list of articles that includes Articles 335 to 337 of the Criminal Code. The court's conclusion reads:

— "…suspected or accused persons may be called up for military service during mobilisation, for the special period, except those suspected of crimes against the foundations of Ukraine's national security, and also of crimes provided for by, among others, Article 336 of the Criminal Code."^[1]

On that basis the claim was allowed in full.^[1]

What it left undecided

The decision says expressly that the parties' other arguments were not taken into account, because they did not bear on the substance of the dispute — the unlawful mobilisation on the grounds the court had identified. It does not rule on his religious objection, does not address his fair-trial argument, and does not discuss the Supreme Court ruling the recruitment centre cited.^[1]

The decision states that it enters into force under Article 255 of the Code of Administrative Procedure and may be appealed under Articles 295 to 297.^[1] The Lviv outlet lviv.media reported the ruling on 2 November 2026.^[2]

Other Witness cases in Ukraine's courts

Ukrainian administrative courts have reached mixed results on mobilised Witnesses. On 3 September 2026 the Eighth Appellate Administrative Court in Lviv upheld the call-up of a ministerial servant from the Rivne region, and on 19 August 2026 it upheld another Witness's call-up on appeal from Ivano-Frankivsk.^[3][4]

Two earlier appellate rulings went the other way. On 25 May 2026 a different panel of the same Lviv court cancelled a recruitment centre's order of 14 June 2024 in the part that called a Witness up and sent him to a unit. On 23 April 2026 the Sixth Appellate Administrative Court in Kyiv ruled for a Witness seeking civilian service, holding that Ukrainian law does not clearly confine that service to peacetime conscription.^[4]

In the criminal courts, trial courts have handed down a cluster of verdicts against Witnesses over military service.^[5] On 19 August 2026 the Supreme Court left a deacon's Article 336 conviction and three-year term standing, but released him from serving it on two years' probation and ordered him freed that day. In doing so it applied its precedent that religious belief is no defence to refusing mobilisation.^[6]

In the Lviv case, the recruitment centre did not dispute in substance that the claimant had told its staff about his Zaporizhzhia trial. The court quashed the order on paragraph 4 of the Cabinet procedure and the centre's failure to ask the police; it did not rule on his religious objection.^[1]