Ukraine’s Exclusive Jurisdiction: Where Your Choice-of-Court Clause Stops Working

A joint venture agreement is negotiated over months. Governing law: English. Disputes: the courts of England and Wales, exclusive. The Ukrainian side signs without argument, because the clause is standard and nobody argues with standard clauses.

Four years later the dispute turns out to be about who owns a warehouse outside Lviv. The English court has jurisdiction under the contract. It will hear the case and give judgment. And that judgment, brought to Ukraine, will not be enforced — because the subject matter belongs exclusively to the Ukrainian courts, and nothing the parties wrote could change that.

A choice-of-court agreement allocates a dispute between courts that are, in principle, each available. Exclusive jurisdiction is a prior question: the legislature has decided that certain categories of case are tied so closely to the domestic legal order that they belong to its own courts and nowhere else.

Ukraine’s Private International Law Act says this in as many words. Article 76 lists the situations in which Ukrainian courts may hear a case with a foreign element, and its very first item — the parties’ own agreement conferring jurisdiction on Ukrainian courts — carries the qualifier “save for the cases provided in Article 77”. Party choice is recognised, and then immediately fenced.

Article 77 is that fence. Where it applies, it is not one option among several.

Jurisdiction of the Ukrainian courts is exclusive in cases with a foreign element where:

1. Immovable property in dispute is located in Ukraine. With one carve-out: contracts concluded under public-private partnership arrangements, including concession agreements, where the immovable is the object of that partnership — provided the dispute does not concern the creation, termination or registration of rights in rem over the object.
2. The case concerns relations between children and parents, and both parties are domiciled in Ukraine. Nationality is irrelevant; residence of both sides is what counts.
3. In a succession case, the deceased was a citizen of Ukraine and was domiciled here. Both, together. One alone takes the case out of Article 77 and into the general rule, where Ukrainian courts have jurisdiction but not exclusively.
4. The dispute concerns the formalisation of an intellectual property right requiring registration or the grant of a certificate or patent in Ukraine. Narrower than it looks: disputes about the use or transfer of IP rights generally are not caught; disputes about registration are.
5. The dispute concerns registration or liquidation in Ukraine of foreign legal entities or individual entrepreneurs.
6. The dispute concerns the validity of entries in a Ukrainian state register or cadastre. A judgment cancelling an entry can only ever be executed here, by officials acting under Ukrainian procedure.
7. In insolvency, the debtor was incorporated under Ukrainian law. Note the divergence from the general rule in Article 76, which uses centre of main interests. Article 77 uses incorporation — so a Ukrainian-registered company whose real business sits abroad still belongs here for insolvency purposes.
8. The case concerns the issue or cancellation of securities issued in Ukraine. Confined to issue and cancellation, both of which involve Ukrainian state bodies. Disputes arising from transactions in securities follow the ordinary rules.
9. The case concerns adoption effected or being effected in Ukraine.
10. Other cases determined by the laws of Ukraine. The open end — worth remembering before treating the list as closed.

Rarely at the drafting stage. Almost always at enforcement, and by then nothing can be repaired.

When a foreign judgment is brought to Ukraine, leave to enforce is refused where the judgment was given in a case that falls within the exclusive competence of a Ukrainian court or other authorised body — Article 468(2) of the Civil Procedure Code. The same ground applies to recognition of judgments that do not require enforcement.

The trap is that nothing warns you earlier. A Ukrainian court will not refuse to serve documents or take evidence for the foreign proceedings merely because it considers the case its own: jurisdiction and mutual legal assistance are separate questions, and assistance is a treaty obligation. So the foreign case runs smoothly, with Ukrainian cooperation at every procedural step, and produces a judgment that cannot be enforced against Ukrainian assets.

Exclusive jurisdiction is one item on a longer list in the same article, and three of its neighbours catch people out just as often.

The Ukrainian case that was started first. Leave is refused if a Ukrainian court has already given a final judgment between the same parties on the same subject and grounds — or if proceedings between those parties are pending in Ukraine and were commenced before the foreign proceedings were opened. A defendant who files in Ukraine early is not merely being obstructive; they are building a defence to enforcement.

Subject matter that cannot be litigated at all. Leave is refused where, under Ukrainian law, the subject of the dispute is not amenable to judicial consideration.

The three-year clock. A foreign judgment must be presented for enforcement within three years of becoming final, with a special rule for periodic payments. Miss it, and the refusal is on the same list.

The exercise takes minutes at the drafting stage.

Ask what the dispute will actually be about if it happens — not what the contract is called. A shareholders’ agreement over a company holding Ukrainian real estate generates real-estate disputes. A licence may generate a registration dispute. A financing document may end in insolvency.

Then ask where the assets are. A judgment you will enforce in England against English assets tolerates a great deal. A judgment you will need to enforce in Ukraine does not.

Where the two answers collide, the options are familiar: arbitrate instead of litigating, where the subject matter permits it; carve the Ukrainian elements into a separate agreement with Ukrainian jurisdiction; or accept the clause and plan enforcement elsewhere. What does not work is a clause that ignores the problem.

Does an arbitration clause solve this?
Not automatically. Arbitrability is its own question, and Ukrainian law provides a matching ground for arbitral awards: recognition and enforcement are refused where the court finds that, given its subject matter, the dispute could not be referred to arbitration at all, or where enforcement would contravene Ukrainian public policy. Arbitration changes the route, not the underlying limit.

Our contract is governed by English law. Does that help?
Governing law and jurisdiction are different questions. Article 77 allocates the forum whatever law applies to the merits.

The property in Ukraine is only part of the dispute. Is the whole case caught?
Not necessarily — but the part concerning the immovable is, and a judgment dealing with it meets the same obstacle. Splitting the claim is sometimes the cleaner answer.

We already have a foreign judgment. Is there anything to do?
Sometimes. It depends which category is engaged, how the foreign court framed its findings, and what enforcement is actually needed here. Worth an opinion before an application, not after a refusal.

Does this work in reverse, for Ukrainian claimants?
Yes, in mirror image. A Ukrainian party who wins abroad on an Article 77 subject matter has the same problem coming home.

Is the list closed?
No. The tenth item leaves it open to other cases determined by the laws of Ukraine, so a specific sector statute can add to it.

Related: on getting the proceedings properly started, see serving proceedings on a Ukrainian defendant; on the evidence stage, taking evidence in Ukraine for a foreign court. On the recognition route itself, see the 2019 Hague Judgments Convention. Expert evidence on Ukrainian law is covered on our Expert Witness on Ukrainian Law page.

If you are drafting a jurisdiction clause that touches Ukrainian assets, or holding a judgment you now need to enforce here, send us the contract and the shape of the dispute. A partner responds within one business day.

Written by Gennadii Tsirat, Doctor of Laws, partner at JVS Law, author of International Civil Procedure. He has acted as a Ukrainian law expert before the High Court of Justice (London) and the courts of Austria.

Published 21 September 2026. Categories of exclusive jurisdiction are stated under Article 77 of the Private International Law Act, and the grounds for refusing enforcement under Article 468 of the Civil Procedure Code, each as in force. Both are amended from time to time — verify the current wording before acting in a specific matter.