Who led Ukraine's Supreme Court after the October 2021 vote?
A look back at the election of a new head of the Supreme Court, reported in the days before 25 October 2021.
What did the choice of a new head of the Supreme Court mean for Ukraine's judiciary as of 25 October 2021? The question stood open that Monday, three days after the court's leadership was decided.
On 22 October 2021, Vsevolod Kniaziev was elected Head of the Supreme Court of Ukraine. The vote settled who would lead the country's highest court, and it placed the court's leadership at the centre of the debate over judicial institutions in Kyiv.
The reports from those days say nothing further about the terms of the vote, the margin or the reaction to it. What can be stated with confidence is the outcome: the court had a newly elected head by 25 October 2021.
Abroad, the news cycle was occupied by a separate matter. On 19 October 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that it had raided the Washington, D.C. house of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch and ally of Vladimir Putin who had been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2018. The two developments were unconnected, but both involved institutions exercising authority over powerful figures and offices.
For readers of Ukrainian governance, the lesson of that week is narrow but clear: leadership of the Supreme Court had been decided, and what the new head did with it would be judged afterwards.
