In this study, the main attention is paid to Ukraine’s reaction to propaganda in wartime conditions, with an emphasis on the criminalization of certain expressions. The article examines the issue of which statements in social networks during an armed conflict are a criminal offense using the example of propaganda for changing the constitutional order or the state border. The author analyzes judicial practice and demonstrates under what circumstances a person can be punished or acquitted.

Social networks and the Internet, on the one hand, are important tools for protecting the right to freedom of speech and expression, which means that a person has the right to spread any ideas, thoughts or opinions and receive any information. But on the other hand, international treaties and conventions prohibit the propaganda of war, terrorism and discrimination, as well as the propaganda of national, racial or religious enmity. In addition, a military conflict in a state can also legitimately limit freedom of speech. Under such conditions, human rights turn into their opposite. Our rights end where the rights of others begin, and the court tries to balance the various rights by weighing them. There are rights that are very difficult to limit because they are not easy to compare in terms of level of interference and level of fundamentality.

In the era of the Internet, many new questions have appeared, to which the European Court of Human Rights has not yet developed principled answers. Combined with interference with free speech, this can have a cooling effect where users become afraid to speak their mind at all. And this can lead to the destruction of the fundamental rights of democracy.

Bibliography

Authored books

 1. Saeed A, Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam (Liturgy, Worship and Society Series) (Routledge 2017).

2. Walker J, Hate Speech and Freedom of Expression: Legal Boundaries in Canada (Library of Parliament 2018).

Journal articles

3. Adil M A M, ‘Law of Apostasy and Freedom of Religion in Malaysia’ (2007) 2 Asian Journal of Comparative Law 1.

4. Fisch W B, ‘Hate Speech in the Constitutional Law of the United States’ (2002) 50 Am. J. Comp. L. Supp. 463.

5. Ghasiya P, Sasahara K, ‘Messaging strategies of Ukraine and Russia on Telegram during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine’ [2023] 28 (8) First Monday.

6. Mazepa S, ‘Criminal Law Provisions Countering Propaganda on Social Media in Connection with the Russo-Ukrainian War’ [2023] 68 (4) OER Osteuropa Recht 443–56.

 7. Weaver R L, Delpierre N, Boissier L, ‘Holocaust Denial and Governmentally Declared “Truth”: French and American Perspectives’ [2008–2009] 41 Tex. Tech L. Rev. 495.

8. Mazepa S, ‘Pro kryminalizatsiiu propahandy v umovakh rosiisko-ukrainskoi viiny: vitchyznianyi ta mizhnarodnyi dosvid’ (2023) 3 Aktualni problemy pravoznavstva 176–82.

Websites

9. Kremlin Communication Strategy for Russian Audiences Before and After the Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine (NATO StratCom COE) <https://stratcomcoe.org/pdfjs/?file=/ publications/download/Kremlin_Communication_Strategy_DIGITAL.pdf?zoom=page-fit> (accessed: 19.12.2023).

10. Public Opinion Survey: Residents of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts <https://www.iri.org/wpcontent/ uploads/2021/01/iri_donbas_gca_for_public_release.pdf> (accessed: 19.12.2023).