Legal Support after the Retaking of Hromadas in the South by Ukraine: Mechanisms, Challenges, and Solutions

Publication date: August 14, 2025

Author: Valentyna Chabanova-Babak, Content Manager, Link platform

In the context of the war, the humanitarian needs of people go far beyond the basic requirements for food and shelter. Along with physical assistance, a large number of legal requests arise from hromadas, local self-government bodies, and the people themselves who find themselves in difficult life circumstances. As practice shows, these requests often remain unmet and unanswered, creating additional challenges for organizations working in the field of humanitarian response.

On the far left: Executive Director of the Legal Development Network Olha Nastina

“We began working in southern Ukraine with humanitarian response and, in the process, realized that in addition to people’s basic humanitarian needs, a very large number of legal requests were emerging at the same time,” says Executive Director of the Legal Development Network Olha Nastina.

That is why an important step was the creation of the legal component of the Link local humanitarian response coordination mechanism. This mechanism has been implemented by the Legal Development Network in cooperation with the Czech Humanitarian Organization “People in Need”, funded by the Government of the United Kingdom since 2023 in 24 hromadas retaken by Ukraine in Mykolaivska and Khersonska Oblasts.

At the beginning of developing the legal component of humanitarian response, organizations faced ideological challenges, in particular in the context of establishing cooperation with partners. The main task was to explain that the Legal Development Network is not a service organization that directly provides legal aid, but performs unifying and analytical functions. Link serves as an intermediary between those who need assistance and those who can provide it, and given the growing number of challenges, the importance of this work has increased significantly.

“When we entered the hromadas directly, started communicating with local authorities and our partners, we indeed realized that legal aid would never be sufficient, as there would always remain people with unresolved legal problems,” says Director of Legal Services Development Daria Kovalchuk.

Legal Component of Link: Current Status and Prospects

The Legal Development Network is actively implementing technological solutions to improve access to legal assistance. Among the key tools is a CRM system for the prompt collection and verification of unmet and unsatisfied legal needs. Specialists of the team are already entering legal needs into the system and looking for opportunities to meet them. At the same time, the team is currently working on expanding the functionality to make the processing of legal requests more convenient. Specialists carefully record all information about people receiving assistance, which makes it possible to fully inform partners when referring cases.

“If we have the opportunity to refer this case, then on our part we must inform our partner as fully as possible about this person’s history, what the issue is, and what important aspects exist,” explains Daria Kovalchuk.

Work on the analytics module is also underway. This will make it possible to publicly demonstrate systemic legal problems at the level of particular hromadas and settlements, in order to attract the attention of partners and donors to their resolution.

“At the moment the CRM database is an internal system for recording identified legal needs. We want to create an analytics module so that it will be possible to see certain trends at the level of hromadas and settlements,” says Daria Kovalchuk.

This year the legal component of the Link mechanism will be expanded, since among residents of hromadas retaken by Ukraine the demand for legal services is growing.

“We will strengthen our legal component: at present we have the possibility to involve more lawyers in the team. They will conduct field visits to record and verify legal needs, and then seek opportunities to meet those needs through partner organizations,” explains Daria Kovalchuk.

A unique development within the Link system is a chatbot, which represents a fundamentally new approach to providing legal consultations.

Chatbot. It is powered by artificial intelligence, designed to recognize questions and provide the correct answer even if the request is formulated in plain language without legal terms. The knowledge base used by the chatbot is developed by the organization’s lawyers to ensure the quality and reliability of information. In the future, the chatbot is planned to be integrated with an online chat, which will make it possible to receive a consultation from a live lawyer.

Online chat. Here, answers to questions are provided by professional lawyers of the member organizations of the Legal Development Network. The provision of consultations is built flexibly: if a person has problems with connectivity or does not have access to the chat, lawyers are always ready to provide consultations by phone. A hotline is also planned to be launched in order to cover as many people as possible with consultations.

Current Challenges in Legal Response in Hromadas Retaken by Ukraine

One of the main factors that influenced humanitarian response and the provision of legal assistance was the cessation of funding from USAID. Because of this, programs were reduced and there is an outflow of staff from the sector. Representatives of humanitarian organizations note that there is also a tendency towards reduced funding from other donors. Therefore, it is likely that the trend of program reduction and redistribution of funding will continue in the coming years.

“In the humanitarian sector, funding has decreased. This affects not only legal assistance, it has a direct impact on all humanitarian support for people during the war,” notes Head of the Regional Team of the Charitable Fund “Right to Protection” Hanna Sytnik.

The limited resources have forced organizations to revise their approaches to geographic coverage. Hanna Sytnik explained that the priority is now the front line and the hromadas close to it, where assistance is needed immediately. At the same time, she pointed out practical limitations — not every organization has the capacity to operate in remote or dangerous locations due to resource and security constraints.

The introduction of four new humanitarian priorities for 2025 reflected this shift of focus to the front line and people who need help here and now.

Experts highlight the growing complexity of requests for assistance. Hanna Sytnik described a typical situation when a person comes with a legal issue but at the same time has unmet basic needs — food, security, medical assistance. Often, funds are needed for treatment, rehabilitation, recovery, which go beyond legal aid but are closely connected to it.

As a result of the reduction in funding for humanitarian response, priorities have shifted — in conditions of significantly limited resources, assistance focuses on hromadas close to the front line. CCCM Cluster Specialist on Camp Coordination and Camp Management for Internally Displaced People Yaroslav Matiash, notes that due to the reprioritization caused by the funding decrease, it was necessary to postpone the strategic goal concerning Internally Displaced People that had been planned for 2025. 

“We expected that in 2025 there would be the capacity to merge small temporary accommodation facilities (TAFs), for example, in villages, with large ones in cities, so that people would have better access to aid, basic services, and so on. But during the reprioritization this strategic goal had to be postponed because operationally partners do not have enough resources to cover it,” explains Yaroslav Matiash.

At the end of 2025, the CCCM Cluster plans to transition responsibilities to local authorities and relevant ministries. This process provides for:

• Transfer of the maximum number of responsibilities to local self-government bodies
• Possible involvement of additional personnel in the Ministry for Communities and Territories Development
• In case the current capacities of authorities are insufficient, the CCCM Cluster will transfer sectoral issues to relevant humanitarian response clusters. Potentially, this is mostly the Shelter and Non-Food Items Cluster and the Protection Cluster
• Engagement of development partners to facilitate the transition.

Yaroslav Matiash explains the situation with legal needs, noting that in most temporary accommodation facilities secondary legal aid is in high demand among internally displaced people. In addition, heads of TAFs also require consultations on current decrees and regulations that govern their activities.

The reduction in funding has also caused the closure of both aid programs within organizations and the complete cessation of activities of some of them.

Project Manager of the Norwegian Refugee Council Viktoriia Muzyka notes that after USAID funding ended, the organization began receiving requests from partners who had lost funding to redirect their clients to them.

“Partners provided legal consultations, but preparing documents, going to court, and covering legal expenses without funding was no longer possible,” says Project Manager of the Norwegian Refugee Council Viktoriia Muzyka.

In addition, due to the deteriorating security situation in Khersonska Oblast, not all organizations can reach certain settlements if resolving the situation requires the physical presence of a lawyer in the hromada. In such a situation, networking — joint work with partners — becomes essential to provide assistance to people in areas retaken by Ukraine.

“Networking means jointly managing cases, transferring identified requests to the partner who can take them over and who is available in the geography where the person is located. A person from Stanislavska Hromada may call us, but we cannot go there due to the danger, while a local partner may be present there,” notes Hanna Sytnik.

Along with new challenges for organizations, the demand from residents of areas retaken by Ukraine for legal aid is growing. Several organizations noted that the number of requests is constantly increasing, while their capacity to process them is limited.

“The biggest challenge for us now is that our lawyers cannot keep up with the requests we receive. We managed in 2023–2024, but now the problem is that we have a limited number of organizations to which we can redirect our people receiving assistance,” says Head of the Legal Department of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Mykolaiv city Nataliia Hnatusha.

Legal Counsel of the International Rescue Committee Kostiantyn Dvortsov described in detail the financial constraints his organization faced. Having been left only with funds for case managers, lawyers lost the ability to pay court fees and technical documentation for clients. This creates a risk of disillusionment with humanitarian services and harms the overall image of the sector.

He also reported on the termination of multipurpose assistance programs in the South, which forces organizations to refuse people seeking help. Despite the difficulties, the organization’s leadership confirms its intention to continue its activities in Ukraine, although the format may change.In the conditions of a shortage of staff among non-governmental organizations providing legal aid to the residents of areas retaken by Ukraine, some requests can be covered by lawyers of state-run Free Secondary Legal Aid Centers. During the meeting, partners shared ideas on how cooperation between non-governmental organizations and Free Secondary Legal Aid Centers can become the key to increasing opportunities to provide legal aid to the population. Nadіia Matvieieva, lawyer of the “Polish Humanitarian Action Branch in Ukraine,” shared her ideas.

“How can we strengthen each other: at the very least, through joint visits to hromadas, since Free Secondary Legal Aid Centers do not have any vehicles. Staff travel at their own expense. Therefore, joint visits are one of the possible steps towards cooperation and building work in hromadas,” says Lawyer of the “Polish Humanitarian Action Branch in Ukraine” Nadiia Matvieieva.

Nadiia Matvieieva stressed the critical importance of the financial component in providing assistance, since processing documents has become extremely expensive, and most people do not have the necessary papers.Participants of the discussion, including representative of the Southern Interregional Free Legal Aid Centre Tetiana Briukhanova, noted that Free Secondary Legal Aid Centers face the same challenges as non-governmental organizations. For example, a shortage of specialists and limited funding.

“The Free Legal Aid system has undergone a significant reorganization — it has become much larger. Our center is now in Odesa, but departments operate in different cities, including Kherson. In addition, due to the reorganization, we lost a large number of highly qualified staff,” explains Head of the Mykolaiv Department of the Southern Interregional Centre for Free Legal Aid Tetiana Briukhanova.

The Most Common Requests for Legal Assistance from Residents of Areas Retaken by Ukraine
An important part of the meeting was the joint discussion of the requests that residents of the South most often address to lawyers with. The most common requests are: resolving issues related to property rights, inheritance, and compensation for damaged property.

Property Rights and Compensation for Damaged Property

Head of the Council on Issues of Internally Displaced People of Mykolaiv City Svitlana Sitnik described the catastrophic situation in Khersonska Oblast. The occupation led to the destruction of archival data — some were taken away, some were burned, and some were washed away by the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant. People cannot restore property rights, which is complicated by outdated regulations and bureaucratic barriers.
New categories of problems are emerging, related to the return of people from abroad. Svitlana Sitnik told about a case when a woman with a child born abroad faced a refusal in obtaining assistance due to bureaucratic obstacles with the translation of documents.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been working on internal displacement issues since 2015–2016, but after 2022 the problems have significantly increased in scale. The country faced a whole range of new challenges that had not existed before, supplementing the already existing ones that emerged after the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Donetska and Luhanska Oblasts in 2014.
“Property rights issues confidently occupy first place among the appeals to lawyers at the moment,” says Protection Specialist of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Odesa Field Office Bohdan Koptsiukh.
After housing issues, the second most pressing are problems of social protection, especially for vulnerable groups of people, and pension provision.
He emphasized the fundamental importance of the human factor: “If we are talking about recovery, first and foremost we must be talking about people… If there are no people in these territories, in these hromadas, we cannot talk about any recovery.”

The specialist draws attention to systemic problems in the field of social and pension provision. Ukrainian legislation in these areas is changing very quickly, trying to respond to the realities of life, but this creates additional challenges. Both the quality of regulatory acts and their implementation suffer.
A significant problem is the low awareness of both people and government officials about existing programs and ways to use them. Separately highlighted are problems with the accessibility of services for vulnerable groups of people.
An example is the situation of elderly people who do not have smartphones to apply for recovery programs electronically. Such people need to travel to administrative service centers, but in some hromadas, such as Velykooleksandrivska and Beryslavska Hromadas of Khersonska Oblast, such centers are absent. This forces people to travel to other settlements to obtain necessary services.
The organization notes a large number of cases where the rights of people to assistance for internally displaced people are violated, especially in the field of pension provision. A separate category is citizens who move from Donetska and Luhanska Oblasts, many of whom worked in mines under difficult working conditions according to labor legislation lists one and two.

“A private house was built outside the settlement. It has an address of the third kilometer of the settlement. The person has registration in the passport. The house is destroyed, not entered in the register. There are old documents, there is a technical passport. And then — a dead end. How can it be entered into the register and how can this property be legalized at all?” — says lawyer of the Non-Profit “Organization Bilozerka Centre for Regional Development” Antonina Tyshchenko.

Participants reported systemic problems with the Bureau of Technical Inventory, which demands payment even for lawful lawyers’ requests. At the same time, the information is not provided in full, and for additional information, repeated payment is required.

Inheritance Registration and Acceptance Issues
Many requests to lawyers are related to inheritance matters. People come with both simple requests (to explain the procedure of inheritance registration) and much more complex ones. For example, in the city of Beryslav, Khersonska Oblast, an inheritance case was opened even before the full-scale invasion, but with the onset of the war, the notary who was handling the case went abroad without terminating her activities and without transferring the case to the archive. The heirs still cannot settle all the legal issues.

“The heirs cannot obtain ownership rights to a land share. Accordingly, they cannot acquire the rights of a lessor under an existing lease agreement and receive the funds they are entitled to for the use of this land plot,” says Natalia Yurchenko.

Problems also arise when inheritance cases are opened in temporarily occupied areas.

Practitioners note an increase in cases when heirs are in Russia, Belarus, or other countries. This particularly complicates the procedures of restoration and obtaining compensation for damaged property, since the consent of all owners is required.

The systemic problem of access to notarial services is especially acute in areas retaken by Ukraine, where there is a shortage and high workload of notaries. For example, in the Snihurivska Hromada, Mykolaivska Oblast, a notary is now scheduling clients for a first consultation in 2026. The situation with queues has reached an absurd point: people stand in line at three in the morning just to get a few minutes of communication with a notary. And residents of remote settlements practically do not have access to notarial services, because due to the lack of transport connections, they cannot reach the place where the notary receives clients.

During the discussion, partners repeatedly drew attention to the need for joint advocacy of complex issues.

“I call on everyone for joint advocacy. If there are issues that are stalled, and some of the partners have cases that can show that amending a regulatory act will lead to the solution of problems, I ask you to get involved. We need to approach national state bodies to speed up these processes,” insists Head of the Internally Displaced People Council of Mykolaiv city Svitlana Sitnik.

It is beyond the power of even a large civil society organization to change something alone. Joint efforts are the key to solving systemic problems and reducing people’s legal vulnerability.The material was prepared by the Legal Development Network in cooperation with the Czech Humanitarian Organization “People in Need” and with the financial support of the Government of the United Kingdom.
The conclusions, interpretations of the collected information, etc., presented in the material are solely the position of the authors and do not reflect the views of the project’s donors and partners.

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