Current problems of the powers of military administrations during the martial law regime
Authors: Hovorov Valeriy 
Published: June 2024

Problem setting. On February 24, 2022, martial law was imposed on the entire territory of Ukraine. Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine led to drastic changes in state authorities. Such innovations led to the redistribution of powers of state authorities and local self-government bodies, and in the absence of a clear mechanism of activity and regulatory consolidation of the authorities’ powers and a clear demarcation of competences, many debatable issues and problems arose. There are also frequent discussions in the broader academic community on this issue, since no one had granted powers to military administrations before the full-scale invasion in 2022, nor had they studied or understood the mechanism of their implementation and actual functioning, and these issues of delegation of powers have become relevant and have gained practical importance. In the beginning of the martial law, the public authorities were faced with the issues of national security, ensuring the livelihoods of the population, and proper defense of the territories of our country, rather than the legitimacy of a particular action, and when the country has been operating under the legal regime of martial law for more than two years, the need to ensure the legitimacy of the functioning of public authorities is urgent. That is why the author conducts a detailed study of the provisions of the current legislation on the functioning of military administrations, the division of competencies with public authorities and the compliance of these mechanisms with the Constitution of Ukraine. Analysis of recent researches and publications. Some issues of military administrations belonging to state bodies as part of the security and defense sector of Ukraine were considered by V. V. Dulger in the work “Military administrations as temporary state bodies with elements of military management organization as part of the security and defense sector of Ukraine” (2018); the issue of the activity and status of state bodies during the introduction of the legal regime of martial law was studied by N. P. Kharchenko in the work “The structure of the legal regime: general theoretical characteristics” (2019) and V. Y. Shevchenko in the study “Administrative-legal statute of military-civilian administrations» (2019) analyzed the administrative and legal status of military-civilian administrations based on the analysis of the activities of local executive bodies and local self-government of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the process of resisting the military occupation of the russian federation. At the same time, under the conditions of the introduced legal regime of martial law, the study of the problems of the powers of military administrations had not been carried out before. Purpose of the research is to highlight the individual results of the study of the actual problems of the functioning and powers of military administrations in the conditions of modern challenges of martial law, as well as the possible further updating of the legislation regulating the institution of military administrations. To achieve the specified goal, the following tasks were defined: to carry out an analysis of legislative acts and scientific research materials that had an impact on the development of the institute of military administrations under martial law in comparison with local self-government bodies; the possibility of the simultaneous existence of military administrations and local self-government bodies, the distribution of their powers; the expediency of limiting the powers of the head of military administrations was investigated; to provide a substantiated proposal regarding further directions of development of the Institute of Military Administrations and amendments to legislative acts Article’s main body. The introduction of martial law in Ukraine has created new challenges and issues for both local governments and military administrations. The military operations themselves have led to the prompt resolution of urgent needs without proper legislative regulation, to a situation where local governments are forced to look for gaps in the legislation to cooperate with military administrations, to ensure national resilience of citizens, and to strengthen democracy and civil society at the local level. At the same time, the introduction of martial law has complicated the process of decentralization of governance, created an additional burden on local authorities due to the need to adjust from peaceful local self-government to the discipline of military administrations, and has created shortcomings in the institutional support of military administrations. However, the Law of Ukraine “On the Legal Regime of Martial Law” itself is not consistent with the provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine, as analyzed in detail in the article itself. The problems of simultaneous functioning of regional state administrations and military administrations have already been the subject of consideration by the Administrative Court of Cassation, and it has concluded that it is possible for state administrations and military administrations to function simultaneously, and the issue of delimitation of competencies of these bodies requires additional scientific research. Conclusions and prospects for the development. Based on the results of the scientific research, the author concludes that in order to improve the legislative consolidation of military administrations under martial law, it is proposed to: 1) to analyze and amend the current legislation regulating the activities of military administrations, taking into account the provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine in accordance with the specifics of martial law and the needs of territorial communities; 2) to harmonize the institutional and legal framework for regulating the activities of amalgamated territorial communities in the context of individual ministries and agencies, as well as the principles of military administrations, in order to avoid duplication and conflicts of authority; 3) to eliminate institutional dysfunctions, change the development of public sector administration in order to increase the efficiency and transparency of both local self-government and military administrations; 4) to analyze other aspects and factors of institutional development of military administrations under the legal regime of martial law, to provide a more in-depth analysis of the problems related to regional and local peculiarities of military administrations