Ukraine has spent most of 2026 sending mixed signals to its LGBTIQ+ citizens. This week brought one of the clearer ones.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed Decree No. 1038/2026, dated October 12, approving a new National Human Rights Strategy that runs to 2035. For the first time, protecting LGBTIQ+ people is written in as a priority of state policy, with its own operational goal (ZMINA; IBTimes UK).

The short version

  • What: A national human rights strategy to 2035, replacing the one approved in March 2021. The decree took effect on October 15.
  • The LGBTIQ+ part: LGBTIQ+ people are named as a group at heightened risk of rights violations, and operational goal No. 14 covers preventing discrimination, hate speech and hate crimes, and protecting LGBTIQ+ rights.
  • What’s missing: No same-sex marriage or civil partnerships, and no separate task on recognising same-sex couples.
  • What’s next: The Cabinet of Ministers has six months to approve an operational plan for 2027 to 2029.

What the strategy actually says

According to IBTimes UK, which cites the decree published on the president’s website, the strategy lists LGBTIQ+ people alongside children, people with disabilities, war veterans and their families, internally displaced people, residents of occupied territories, national minorities and Indigenous Peoples as groups that need particular attention.

The details matter more than the headline:

  • Clearer law. The strategy says sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics need clearer reflection in legislation, including criminal liability for bias-motivated offences and anti-discrimination mechanisms (ZMINA).
  • Beyond paper. Goal No. 14 calls for changes not only to laws but to policing, court practice and the support available to victims of discrimination and hate crimes.
  • Better reporting. IBTimes UK reports it also aims to improve access to legal aid and the way authorities record and respond to discrimination and hate crimes.
  • The full acronym. ZMINA, a Ukrainian human rights outlet, notes that this is the first time the full abbreviation LGBTIQ+ (ЛГБТІК+ in Ukrainian) appears in such a document. Intersex and queer people are in the text by name.

The bill that could make it real

A strategy doesn’t change what a police officer writes in a report. Laws do.

That’s why Ukraine’s LGBTI Consortium pointed straight to bill No. 13597, which it says is already the work the strategy describes. Registered in August 2025, the bill would amend the Code of Administrative Offences and the Criminal Code to fight discrimination, and as of October 2026 it was still being considered by a parliamentary committee, ZMINA reports.

It would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the characteristics protected in hate crime law, which currently covers only race, nationality and religion, Ligazakon reported when it was registered. Its author, MP Olena Shuliak, says hate-motivated attacks are mostly classed as “hooliganism” or minor administrative offences today, so attackers often get away with a fine. That’s a problem we’ve seen across Europe: just this week, Zagreb Pride said Croatia keeps missing the hate motive in attacks on queer people.

What it doesn’t do

Let’s be clear, because the internet won’t be. This is not marriage equality, and it’s not civil partnerships.

IBTimes UK stresses that the strategy is a policy framework and that any change to relationship rights would need separate legislation. ZMINA notes there’s no separate task on legal recognition of same-sex couples at all, even though it’s part of Ukraine’s international commitments and something the EU has pressed for as Ukraine moves toward membership.

That gap matters. As we’ve reported, Ukraine’s courts have recognised same-sex couples as family in individual cases while lawmakers have pulled the other way, and the mid-year picture was one of courtroom wins and a wall in parliament. This strategy doesn’t knock down the wall. It does put the state on record that LGBTIQ+ Ukrainians need protecting, which is exactly the commitment activists can now hold it to.

Why now, and why it stands out in the region

The timing fits Ukraine’s EU path. Accession talks put fundamental rights near the front of the queue, and anti-discrimination and hate crime law are standard asks.

It also stands out against Ukraine’s neighbours. IBTimes UK notes that Russia’s Supreme Court designated the so-called “international LGBT movement” as extremist in November 2023, and that Belarus’s parliament approved penalties this April for the alleged “promotion” of same-sex relationships and gender reassignment. A country at war deciding to write LGBTIQ+ protection into its long-term plans, while those next door criminalise visibility, is a real contrast.

What to watch

  • The 2027–2029 operational plan, due from the Cabinet within six months. Strategies live or die on their action plans: deadlines, budgets and named ministries.
  • Bill No. 13597 leaving committee.
  • The annual report the government must send the president by April 1 each year, which will show whether any of this is happening.

It’s a start, written down and signed. For a community that has so often been told to wait until after the war, a start with a deadline attached is worth noticing.

Sources: ZMINA (Oct 16, 2026, in Ukrainian); IBTimes UK (Oct 2026); Ligazakon (in Ukrainian). Photo: Lesia Sukhonos / Unsplash.