Court Orders Payment of 15 Million Hryvnia for a Soldier Who Died While on Leave

The Cherkasy District Administrative Court ruled that the Ministry of Defense’s refusal to grant a one-time cash benefit to the parents of a servicemember who died in a traffic accident was unlawful.

The Ministry of Defense had denied the parents’ request, claiming that they had missed the three-year deadline for filing a claim and that the traffic accident was allegedly the result of an administrative offense committed by the deceased. 

However, the court found that the plaintiffs had filed their claims on time; the delay was caused by the need to finalize documents during the administrative proceedings, and that the soldier’s commission of an offense had not been proven and was refuted by the closure of the criminal case and the Medical Examination Commission’s conclusions linking the injury to his military service.

This was reported by the Judicial and Legal Gazette.

Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets refuted reports that the family of Nazar Daletskyi, a soldier in the 24th Mechanized Brigade, is required to return 15 million hryvnias in “death” benefits to the state; this issue has not yet been resolved. The soldier, who had been officially declared dead since September 2022, returned home during a prisoner exchange on February 3, 2026. 

Earlier, Taras Podvirnyi, the Ombudsman’s representative in Lviv Oblast, noted during a session of the regional council that the soldier’s family is now required to return the “death” benefit to the state.