CHALLENGES TO VITAL SECURITY IN TERRITORIES EXPOSED TO WAR-RELATED RISK

Abstract

Abstract

The ongoing full-scale war remains the principal challenge to Ukraine’s national security. Territories in which hostilities are ongoing or which remain under temporary occupation encompass communities in 13 regions and cover a total area of approximately 116,700 km², or about 19.3% of the country’s territory. As of 2026, an estimated 5–6 million people reside in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. This figure is approximate, as accurate population records are difficult to maintain because of the intensity of hostilities and the limited access of state authorities to the regions concerned.

Under martial law, state institutions operate under differing organisational, infrastructural and security conditions, which directly affect the population’s access to justice, healthcare, social services, administrative procedures and other mechanisms for exercising fundamental rights. In these circumstances, the relationship between legally established human-rights guarantees and the state’s actual capacity to ensure their implementation in territories exposed to different levels of war-related risk becomes particularly significant.

The aim of the study is to provide a scholarly analysis of the specific conditions governing the protection of human rights and freedoms under martial law, taking into consideration the territorial differentiation of war-related danger. The methodological framework combines constitutional and legal analysis with contemporary security-oriented and interdisciplinary approaches to assessing the conditions necessary to sustain the population in crisis settings.

The article substantiates the use of vital vulnerability as an analytical criterion and evaluative indicator for assessing the extent to which human rights are effectively safeguarded in territories exposed to different levels of war-related risk. It advances the conceptual proposition that, under such conditions, population security is determined not so much by the state’s general capacity to protect the rights and freedoms of individuals and citizens—given that the effective performance of the state’s human-rights protection function is constrained in war-risk environments—as by the capacity of military administrations operating under special legal regimes to perform a life-sustaining function that determines the levels of personal security, population viability and societal resilience.

The scientific novelty of the study lies in formulating the authors’ approach to vital vulnerability as a derivative category of legal and security analysis that reflects the degree to which human rights are practically realisable within a specific spatial environment. The study develops a conceptual model for differentiating the state’s positive obligations according to the level of territorial vital vulnerability, together with a micro-level classification of human rights within the vital dimension. The practical significance of the findings lies in the potential application of the proposed conceptual framework to national-security policymaking, the activities of military administrations, the drafting of legislation and other regulatory instruments, and the planning of measures to safeguard human rights under martial law.