THE HONOR AND DIGNITY OF A MILITARY PERSONNEL AS THE OBJECT OF A CRIMINAL OFFENSE PROVIDED FOR BY ART. 435-1 OF THE CRIMINAL CODE OF UKRAINE
Authors: Khramtsov Oleksandr 
Published: November 2023

Abstract: The article deals with theoretical and practical issues of criminal legal protection of professional honor and dignity of military personnel. The armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, along with other measures, required proper criminal legal protection of the rights and interests of military personnel who protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of our country. The honor and dignity of servicemen needed such protection also.

The work analyzes the main philosophical, ethical and legal approaches to determining such categories as honor and dignity of a person. The author emphasizes that the honor and dignity of a military personnel is professional honor and dignity. Their definition should be based on generally accepted definitions of these concepts. It is noted that the honor and dignity of any person, including their professional component, needs criminal legal protection. Based on the study of the main approaches to the definition of these social values and subjective rights of the person, their author's definition as objects of criminal law protection is given.

Their unity is emphasized, but also stated that honor and dignity have certain differences. Based on the analysis of draft laws and laws that were adopted in the relevant field, it is noted that the criminal law protection of honor and dignity of a person should exist in our country. This corresponds to all the necessary principles of criminalization of socially dangerous acts.

The author supports the position regarding the recognition of social relations as the object of a criminal offense. Based on this, the professional honor and dignity of military personnel is defined as the object of a criminal offense provided for in Article 435-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

Based on the analysis of judicial practice, it is concluded that in most cases, together with dishonors, guilty persons make threats against military personnel, which confirms the correctness of the legislator's approach to include dishonors together with threats as an act in this offense. In most cases, these are threats of physical violence in various forms.

Attention is drawn to certain shortcomings of the legislator's actions on the supplementation of criminal liability for this offense. Namely, due to a legislator's mistake, it is not Chapter XX "Criminal offenses against peace, human security and international legal order" added with Article 435-1, but Chapter XIX of the Special Part of the Criminal Code "Criminal offenses against the established order of military service (military criminal offences)". The subject of all criminal offenses provided for in this chapter, without exception, is special. This is directly defined in Part 1 of Art. 401 of the Criminal Code ("The concept of a military criminal offense"). But the subject of this criminal offense is a general one, that is, a natural compos mentis person who has reached the age of 16. This shortcoming should be corrected.