Procedural "football": how Sense lawyers found Yurii Butusov’s surveillance case after it disappeared from NABU’s radar
The Sense team continues its fight to secure victim status for journalist and serviceman Yurii Butusov.
The Sense team previously wrote about how the case into surveillance of Mr Butusov disappeared from NABU’s radar in the 26 February 2026 article "Procedural ‘football’ instead of an investigation: how the case into surveillance of Yurii Butusov disappeared from NABU’s radar", Censor.NET reports.
To briefly recap: the court ordered NABU to enter information into the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations under Articles 171 and 182 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine following Mr Butusov’s complaint, and this was done. However, Mr Butusov still did not receive victim status because of detectives’ unwillingness to recognise him as a victim, the swift change of investigative jurisdiction, and the transfer of the case materials to National Police bodies of Ukraine, where they disappeared for a certain period: NABU claimed the materials had been transferred according to investigative jurisdiction, while the Main Directorate of the National Police in Kyiv and the Solomianskyi District Directorate of the National Police in Kyiv continued to insist that they had not received the materials in Mr Butusov’s case from NABU.
This state of affairs made it necessary to file a motion with the Office of the Prosecutor General and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in order to establish the whereabouts of the case into surveillance of Yurii Butusov, since the lack of information about the location of that case makes it impossible to review its materials and to continue the fight to have Yurii Butusov recognised as a victim.
In a letter dated 30 March 2026, the Main Directorate of the National Police in Kyiv said that on 18 March 2026 the materials of the case into surveillance of Yurii Butusov had arrived at the Solomianskyi District Directorate of the National Police in Kyiv, and that on 30 March 2026 investigative jurisdiction over the case had been assigned to the Solomianskyi District Directorate of the National Police in Kyiv.
Fragment of the letter dated 30 March 2026, signed by Andrii Tsyrulnikov, Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of the National Police in Kyiv
Legal comment
"Establishing the whereabouts of the materials in the case into surveillance of Yurii Butusov is a positive step that will make it possible, finally, to review the case materials and compel authorised persons to recognise Yurii Butusov as a victim and initiate investigative actions to bring those responsible to justice," said Dmytro Kruhovyi, managing partner of SENSE.
In the near future, SENSE lawyers will file a motion to review the case materials and a renewed motion to recognise Yurii Butusov as a victim, this time with the Solomianskyi District Directorate of the National Police in Kyiv. SENSE continues to defend the rights and interests of Ukrainian servicemen and demands that the pre-trial investigation body properly investigate the collection of information about a journalist and serviceman in the interests of the aggressor state.
