There are significant differences in the status of a “specialized” prosecutor and a prosecutor in uniform.
This was emphasized by Pavlo Bogutsky, military prosecutor of the Western region of Ukraine (2011) and the Southern region of Ukraine (2014-2015), in an interview with Ukrinform, citing arguments for the effectiveness of military rather than specialized prosecutor’s offices.
“The peculiarity of military prosecutor’s offices is their staffing – prosecutors of military prosecutor’s offices have the status of military personnel. Such a difference from the status of a prosecutor, including a specialized prosecutor’s office, allows to effectively solve the problem of staffing military prosecutor’s offices, which is extremely important for martial law,” Bogutsky said.
He added that prosecutors who are military personnel of military prosecutor’s offices have no restrictions on the exercise of prosecutorial functions in the Defense Forces, and the effectiveness of procedural guidance in pre-trial investigations of military criminal offenses, especially in combat, is much higher.
“The staffing potential of military prosecutor’s offices allows for specialization in the application of military law, the level of military awareness and military training of military prosecutors, and provides the necessary qualitative impact on the application of legislation regulating military relations. The prosecutor of the military prosecutor’s office has the necessary level of professional legal culture that forms qualitative competencies for activities in the military sphere,” the expert emphasized.
Assessing the activities of specialized defense prosecutor’s offices, he emphasized the need to change the approach to staffing prosecutors, which is a necessary requirement in times of war.
“When it comes to the workload of prosecutors of specialized defense prosecutor’s offices, there are cases when the district level prosecutor’s office performs the amount of work performed by some regional prosecutor’s offices. The problem is not solved even with the increase in staffing, as the general approach to staffing, competition and selection procedures do not allow to eliminate the staff shortage,” he noted.
Another problem, according to the expert, is the unclear approach to the possibility of calling prosecutors to military service during mobilization. “The well-known legislative approach of reserving 50% of prosecutors is essentially wrong in relation to defense prosecutors. Despite the remarks on this issue, the legislator did not take into account the provisions related to ensuring the activities of the security and defense sector in general during the special period,” the lawyer added.
According to him, the current staff of about 500 prosecutors in specialized defense prosecutor’s offices is a small part of the total staff of the prosecutor’s office. This situation requires immediate intervention. “An effective solution is to establish military prosecutor’s offices, change the approach to staffing prosecutors, which is a necessary requirement in the context of the ongoing war,” Bogutsky said.
As Ukrinform reported, Supreme Court Chief Justice Stanislav Kravchenko shares the need to create a military justice system in Ukraine.
Source: Expert: Approach to booking 50% of prosecutors is essentially wrong
