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Citizen Infrastructure

Ukraine's First Citizens' Assemblies (2024)

TL;DR. In autumn 2024, Ukraine held its first-ever citizens’ assemblies — and, as far as the organisers know, the first conducted under wartime conditions — in two pilot communities, Zvyahel and Slavutych. Each drew 45 randomly-selected residents (by sortition from 4,000 mailed invitations) to deliberate one concrete local question — public spaces and recovery in Zvyahel, household waste in Slavutych — and hand recommendations to their city council. Supported by the Council of Europe, they showed that deliberative democracy can run even under martial law, and seeded a programme to extend the model to more communities in 2025–2026.

At a glance

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WhenOctober–November 2024 (three weekends each)
WhereZvyahel and Slavutych, Ukraine — under martial law
Who45 members per assembly + 12 substitutes, by civic lottery: 4,000 invitations mailed per community, stratified to mirror residents aged 18+ by age, gender, education, and district (2 seats reserved for internally displaced persons); drawn with the open-source tool Panelot
TopicsZvyahel — “creating urban spaces as public locations for social interaction and recovery”; Slavutych — “how can we improve the household waste management system?”
OrganisersZvyahel and Slavutych City Councils, with the Council of Europe project “Strengthening democratic resilience through civic participation… in Ukraine” (methodology by CoE expert Eva Bordos, who ran Hungary’s first assemblies; per Recommendation CM/Rec(2023)6)
OutcomeZvyahel’s council formally approved the recommendations (19 Dec 2024); participants formed eight initiative groups and a new civil-society organisation; Slavutych’s work spurred household waste-sorting; a Congress of Local and Regional Authorities programme backs three more assemblies in 2025–2026

What happened

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Ukraine’s first citizens’ assemblies grew out of a Council of Europe project — “Strengthening democratic resilience through civic participation during the war and in the post-war context in Ukraine,” part of the Council’s 2023–2026 Action Plan for the country. Two pilot communities, Zvyahel and Slavutych, signed memoranda of understanding in March 2024; each appointed a supervisory board and held a stakeholder forum to choose its assembly’s question.

Members were chosen by sortition. In each community, 4,000 invitation letters went to randomly-selected households, and a panel of 45 members plus 12 substitutes was drawn with the open-source tool Panelot to mirror residents aged 18 and over by age, gender, education, and district — with two seats reserved for internally displaced persons, a group the war had multiplied. The methodology came from Council of Europe expert Eva Bordos, who had designed Hungary’s first assemblies, and followed the Committee of Ministers’ Recommendation CM/Rec(2023)6 on deliberative democracy.

Over three weekends each (October–November 2024), members heard from experts and deliberated. Zvyahel’s assembly, on creating urban spaces for social interaction and recovery, prioritised four themes: a community parking system, involving young people in shaping rural public spaces, cleaning the riverbed and improving water quality, and creating spaces for psychological recovery and mental-health support. Slavutych’s tackled household waste — learning the legal framework, studying other Ukrainian and international practice, and developing recommendations to optimise collection.

The outcomes outran the usual advisory shrug. In Zvyahel, the City Council did not just receive the recommendations but formally approved them on 19 December 2024, at its 57th session, and participants carried the work onward themselves, launching eight citizen initiative groups and a new civil-society organisation to advocate for the improvements. In Slavutych, the deliberation spilled into behaviour: several participants began sorting their household waste at home and pledged to spread the habit to neighbours. The mayors — Mykola Borovets in Zvyahel, Yurii Fomichev in Slavutych — backed the processes, and the full recommendations are set out in the Council of Europe’s published reports, linked below.

Why it matters

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The striking thing is the context: this is, as far as the organisers know, the first time citizens’ assemblies have been run under wartime conditions. “Certain instruments of democracy do not work during the war,” Slavutych’s mayor noted, “so mechanisms of deliberative democracy… are extremely important today.” It is a pointed demonstration that sortition-based citizens’ assemblies are not a luxury of peacetime — that even under martial law a community can convene a representative cross-section of residents to make hard local choices together. And it was built as a seed, not a one-off: the Council of Europe’s Congress of Local and Regional Authorities went on to back three more Ukrainian assemblies in 2025–2026 — early steps toward institutionalising deliberation as part of the country’s recovery.

Sources

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