They want to strengthen criminal liability and introduce life imprisonment for particularly serious crimes against children.
Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko addressed the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Law Enforcement with this proposal.
In his opinion, the fact that those guilty of murdering a child can now receive a maximum of 15 years in prison and even a chance for early release is unfair.
"The question is rhetorical: can any sentence be fair when a childʼs life — their right to grow up, to achieve something in life — was taken away?... The country has lost part of its future, and the criminal, having served a certain term, can return to normal life. Therefore, I believe, and this is why I appealed to the members of the committee, that the sentence for such crimes should be as fair as possible — life imprisonment without alternative," the Prosecutor General stated.
He believes that the prospect of never being released again should be a deterrent to those who plan a crime against a child.
Recently, prosecutors have already been able to defend life sentences in some high-profile cases. One of them is the murder of 16-year-old Maksym Materukhin at a Kyiv funicular station in 2024.
Also in Kharkiv, a 41-year-old man was recently found guilty of committing crimes against the sexual freedom of a minor child.
Two more such sentences were handed down in the Dnipropetrovsk region for a 44-year-old criminal who raped and molested three young children, and a man who killed a minor child and committed sexual violence.
The Prosecutor General also provided statistics on crimes against children over the past 19 months. 67 children were victims of intentional murders, 531 children suffered from sexual violence, 360 of them under the age of 14.
"Justice should be tough, and punishment should be commensurate with the crime. I ask the peopleʼs deputies to support the initiative of the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office and make amendments to the legislation of Ukraine. A murderer or rapist should no longer count on leniency or loopholes in the law," Kravchenko urged.
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