Background
Oleksandr Mykhaylovych Kobylyanskyy, a Ukrainian national born in 1980, was subjected to criminal proceedings that commenced on 25 June 2012 and did not conclude until 9 May 2023 — a span of over ten years and ten months before a single level of jurisdiction. Throughout that entire period he was placed under an undertaking not to abscond, effectively restricting his freedom of movement for the same duration of more than a decade.
In August 2017, represented by lawyer Kateryna Chuyeva of Odesa, the applicant lodged an application with the European Court of Human Rights. He complained that the length of the criminal proceedings violated the “reasonable time” guarantee of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, that he had no effective domestic remedy for that complaint contrary to Article 13, and that the prolonged restriction on his freedom of movement breached Article 2 of Protocol No. 4.
The case was assigned to the Fifth Section and examined by a three-judge Committee. Ukraine was given notice of the application. The applicant was invited to submit just satisfaction claims but failed to do so in accordance with Rule 60 of the Rules of Court.
The Court’s Holding
The Court unanimously declared all three principal complaints admissible and found violations on each. Applying the established criteria for assessing the reasonableness of proceedings — complexity of the case, conduct of the parties and authorities, and what was at stake for the applicant — the Court found no fact or argument capable of justifying a criminal case lasting nearly eleven years at one level of jurisdiction. It held that the length of proceedings was excessive and failed to meet the “reasonable time” requirement of Article 6 § 1, and that the applicant lacked an effective domestic remedy for that grievance in breach of Article 13.
On the freedom-of-movement complaint, the Court relied on its well-established case-law, in particular Ivanov v. Ukraine (no. 15007/02, 7 December 2006) and Nikiforenko v. Ukraine (no. 14613/03, 18 February 2010), and concluded that an undertaking not to abscond lasting more than ten years and ten months disclosed a violation of Article 2 of Protocol No. 4. The leading domestic-length case applied was Nechay v. Ukraine (no. 15360/10, 1 July 2021).
The Court declined to examine separately the applicant’s Article 13 complaint concerning the lack of an effective remedy for the travel restriction, finding it had already dealt with the main legal questions raised. Because the applicant had not submitted just satisfaction claims in time, the Court made no pecuniary or non-pecuniary award under Article 41.
Key Takeaways
- Criminal proceedings lasting nearly eleven years at a single level of jurisdiction constitute a breach of the “reasonable time” guarantee under Article 6 § 1, with no award made because the applicant forfeited just satisfaction claims by failing to file them on time.
- An obligation not to abscond (travel ban) imposed as a pre-trial or investigative measure and maintained for more than ten years violates Article 2 of Protocol No. 4, which protects freedom of movement within a state’s territory.
- Ukraine’s failure to provide any effective domestic remedy for complaints about unreasonable criminal-proceedings length independently breaches Article 13, consistent with the Court’s repeated findings against Ukraine in similar cases.
Why It Matters
This judgment reinforces a long line of Committee decisions against Ukraine for systemic failures in the administration of criminal justice. The near-eleven-year span at one tier of courts — combined with a matching decade-long travel ban — illustrates how ancillary coercive measures can compound a Article 6 violation into a separate human-rights breach under Protocol No. 4, a combination that courts and practitioners should monitor whenever restrictive orders shadow prolonged proceedings.
For practitioners advising clients subject to Ukrainian criminal process, the decision underscores the importance of lodging just satisfaction claims within the Court’s prescribed deadlines: the applicant here obtained findings of three separate Convention violations yet received no monetary redress solely because he missed that procedural step.