Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, almost a fifth of Ukraine’s territory has been occupied by Russia. One of the challenges facing the Ukrainian state is the functioning of the parliament in a time of war.
This challenge is due to the record low number of MPs: the Ukrainian parliament has 401 MPs as of today. This number continues to decrease, as there were 403 MPs in the parliament last autumn.
One hundred eighty-six of these MPs were elected in single-member electoral districts. Some of these electoral district are currently occupied by Russian troops.
Who represents the interests of the voters of the occupied electoral districts in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine? Which factions do they belong to? And what do these MPs do while their electoral districts are occupied?
The Agency for Legislative Initiatives has investigated what percentage of the parliament of the 9th convocation represents temporarily occupied territories (TOT) after 2022 and how active MPs from the studied territories are.
It should be noted that the study did not include 26 electoral districts These constituencies were not included in the study, since elections have not been held for them since 2014 and they have not been represented in the parliament since the 9th convocation. , whose territories were occupied by Russian troops in 2014. After the full-scale Russian invasion began, 23 more electoral districts Taking into account the regions occupied in 2014, this is approximately 18% of the Ukrainian territory. located in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv oblasts became fully or partially occupied.
Twenty-three majority electoral districts that have been fully or partially occupied since 24 February 2022 are located in the following oblasts: 7 in Donetsk Oblast, 6 in Luhansk Oblast, 5 in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, 3 in Kherson Oblast and 2 in Kharkiv Oblast.
It should also be added that elections cannot be held in the four electoral districts We are talking about the 57th, 60th, 176th and 186th districts. that were the subject of the study; their MPs resigned for certain reasons. The Constitution and the relevant Ukrainian legislation prohibit holding elections under martial law (at the level of the law – all elections as such, at the level of the Constitution – parliamentary elections).
What do they do?
Despite the existing stereotype that MPs elected during the 2019 campaign from pro-Russian parties mostly promoted the interests of the aggressor state, the research showed that this is not entirely true.
This opinion was supported by the investigative cases against a number of MPs or the runaway of some parliamentarians from Ukraine during the full-scale Russian invasion, but the share of such cases is a minority of the electoral districts studied.
As a conditional indicator of a pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian position, we chose a draft law on the prohibition of religious organisations associated with Russia recently adopted in the second reading, better known as the law banning the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) in Ukraine. Among the 23 MPs studied, 19 of whom were performing their duties at the time of the vote, only 4 MPs opposed the draft law, while 9 supported it.
If MPs did not support the draft law, they usually did not vote or were absent from the parliament’s session hall on a particular day. Of course, on the other hand, it can be argued that some of the MPs on the list thus avoided clearly demonstrating their position on the activities of religious organisations associated with the Russians.
We also paid special attention to the activity of MPs outside the session hall. We are talking about interacting with and working with residents of their electoral districts, providing humanitarian aid and assistance to the Ukrainian military.
Most of the MPs included in the study sample did not publicly demonstrate such activities on their social media pages or simply avoided them but tried to cover the activities of the Verkhovna Rada. Also, a large number of MPs deleted their pages, stopped maintaining them, or continued to maintain them as personal profiles without any posts related to parliamentary work.
The activity of MPs included in the study is not uniform. In addition to collaborators or persons suspected of such activities or those who were absent from most parliamentary sessions, there are also active MPs whose voting activity during the full-scale invasion was 86% of all votes.
In general, 4 out of 23 MPs in the study have more than 80% of votes, and five more have more than 70%. Two MPs missed more than half of the parliamentary votes.
Methodology: The average number of votes taken from 24 February 2022 to 1 September 2024 was used to determine the number of votes at the Verkhovna Rada sessions for the MPs studied. Indicators from the 7th session of the 9th convocation of the parliament, which began shortly before the full-scale Russian invasion, to the 11th session, which ended on 23 August, were taken into account.
For example, to determine the data for the representative of the 52nd electoral district, we used the data from the MP’s personal card on the VRU website and the dates indicated in the relevant search box.
You can read more about the activities of the studied MPs in the texts of the Agency for Legislative Initiatives for each region studied.
For your convenience, the texts will follow in ascending order of the numbers of territorial electoral districts included in the sample. From the smallest to the largest, accordingly.
MPs from Temporarily Occupied Territories: Donetsk Oblast
MPs from Temporarily Occupied Territories: Zaporizhzhia Oblast
MPs from Temporarily Occupied Territories: Luhansk and Kharkiv Oblasts
MPs from Temporarily Occupied Territories: Kherson Oblast
