Oleksandr Chernykh, Vice President of the Ukrainian National Association of Lobbyists
On February 5, 2026, an event took place in the hall of the European Parliament that is likely to become a turning point in the history of Ukrainian legal reforms. The presentation of the report “The National Association of Lawyers of Ukraine in the Context of the Rule of Law and European Integration,” prepared by the American Armada Network, became the very cold shower that Kyiv, heated by the populism of “activists,” so needed.
The document, presented by former US Congressman Gregg Harper, did not simply analyze the state of affairs — it actually deconstructed the mythology on which an entire industry of “reformers,” grant organizations, and some officials had been built for years.
This is a phenomenon that has long gone beyond the boundaries of individual institutions. A closed ecosystem of “grant advocacy” has formed in Ukraine, where the result is not the goal. The goal is the process. And the longer the “crisis” lasts, the more stable the funding.
This is a system in which:
- one organization creates information noise;
- another uses it as “proof of the problem”;
- the third receives funding to “solve” it.
This is a classic “echo chamber” where reality is replaced by repetition.
And where the question “what will happen to the country” is given way to the question “will there be another grant?”
That is why the degree of tension is constantly increasing. That is why the impression of a permanent crisis is created. That is why any alternative position is automatically branded as “anti-European.”
The American audit was the first to systematically show the weakness of this model.
Armada experts directly pointed out the key problem: the so-called “shadow reports”, which for years formed an idea of the state of reforms, were often prepared without elementary analysis, without communication with the institutions being evaluated, and without comparison with real European practices.
In fact, we are talking about a situation when a diagnosis is made without an examination.
When convenient quotes are extracted from various legal systems, distorted and presented as a “European standard”.
When the position of several interested parties is presented as the position of the entire professional community.
And when 70 thousand specialists are left out of the dialogue, and decisions are made within a narrow circle of “experts by appointment”.
Against this background, another approach is fundamentally important – the approach of openness, transparency and responsibility.
The Ukrainian National Association of Lobbyists is built on this model.
Today, UNLA is the only professional association that:
- has a systemic anti-corruption component in its activities;
- provides institutional representation of Ukrainian interests in the European Union;
- works as an open platform, not as a closed influence group;
- forms positions based on expertise, not grant expediency.
This is a fundamental difference.
We do not create a “vision of honesty” – we work in a model where transparency is a basic condition, not a declaration.
And that is why the approach demonstrated by the international audit actually confirms:
the future lies with open institutions, not with closed parties.
Another important signal of the report is the criticism of attempts to manipulate the European integration rhetoric.
The so-called “road map” is presented as an imperative that is not subject to discussion.
In fact, as international experts have clearly noted, this is a framework policy document, not a legal obligation to destroy existing institutions.
In other words, Europe does not demand dismantling.
It demands quality.
The section devoted to digitalization deserves special attention. The ideas that are presented as progress in Ukraine are directly called risky in the report — especially in conditions of war.
Total digitalization without an appropriate level of protection is not an innovation, but a potential vulnerability.
And another fundamental point — lawfare.
Using law as a tool of pressure, public harassment, “blacklists,” identifying a lawyer with a client — all this has nothing to do with the rule of law. These are signs of the degradation of legal culture.
In conclusion, the Armada Network report did what should have happened a long time ago:
it destroyed the monopoly on the “correct position.”
It showed that there is a different reality — the reality of facts, not grant narratives.
For Ukraine, this means one thing.
The model in which reforms are a tool for the self-reproduction of individual groups has exhausted itself.
The model in which openness, professionalism, and responsibility are the basis is just beginning.
And it is this model that should become the basis for the formation of public policy.
Not through noise.
But through institutions.
Not through imitation.
But through content.
