Politics of Ukraine

The politics of Ukraine take place in a framework of a semi-presidential republic and a multi-party system. A Cabinet of Ministers exercises executive power (jointly with the president until 1996). Legislative power is vested in Ukraine's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian: Верховна Рада, lit. 'Supreme Council').

As part of the Soviet Union as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic until 1991, the political system featured a single-party socialist-republic framework characterized by the superior role of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU), the sole-governing party then permitted by the Ukrainian SSR's constitution. In 1996, the current constitution replaced the previous constitution that was introduced in 1978.

The condemned Russian annexations of Crimea in 2014 and of Donetsk and Luhansk in 2022 have complicated the de facto political situation associated with those areas.

Shortly after becoming independent in 1991, Ukraine named a parliamentary commission to prepare a new constitution, adopted a multi-party system, and adopted legislative guarantees of civil and political rights for national minorities. A new, democratic constitution was adopted on 28 June 1996, which mandates a pluralistic political system with protection of basic human rights and liberties, and a semi-presidential form of government.

The Constitution was amended in December 2004 to ease the resolution of the 2004 presidential election crisis. The consociationalist agreement transformed the form of government in a semi-presidentialism in which the president of Ukraine had to cohabit with a powerful prime minister. The Constitutional Amendments took force between January and May 2006.

The Constitutional Court of Ukraine in October 2010 overturned the 2004 amendments, considering them unconstitutional. On 18 November 2010, The Venice Commission published its report titled The Opinion of the Constitutional Situation in Ukraine in Review of the Judgement of Ukraine's Constitutional Court, in which it stated "It also considers highly unusual that far-reaching constitutional amendments, including the change of the political system of the country - from a parliamentary system to a parliamentary presidential one - are declared unconstitutional by a decision of the Constitutional Court after a period of 6 years. ... As Constitutional Courts are bound by the Constitution and do not stand above it, such decisions raise important questions of democratic legitimacy and the rule of law".

On 21 February 2014, the parliament passed a law that reinstated the 8 December 2004 amendments of the constitution. This was passed under simplified procedure without any decision of the relevant committee and was passed in the first and the second reading in one voting by 386 deputies. The law was approved by 140 MPs of the Party of Regions, 89 MPs of Batkivshchyna, 40 MPs of UDAR, 32 of the Communist Party, and 50 independent lawmakers. According to Radio Free Europe, however, the measure was not signed by the then-president Viktor Yanukovych, who was subsequently removed from office.

On 3 September 2019, new amendments to the Constitution were passed which abolished the parliamentary immunity for the deputies of the Verkhovna Rada, with the exception that they were immune for the results of voting or their statements in the parliament, but they are liable for insult or defamation. New revision came into force on 1 January 2020.