On 8 October, during the ceremonial reception marking the Opening of the Legal Year, the winners of the UBA Best Young Lawyer Award 2025 were officially recognised. This award honours young legal professionals who have already demonstrated exceptional potential and a meaningful contribution to the legal field and society.

The honour of presenting the awards to the laureates belonged to Andrii Romanchuk — a serviceman of the 13th Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine “Khartia”, Head of the Legal and Organisational Work Division of the 2nd Khartia Corps, and founder of the law firm MORIS — who himself was awarded the UBA Honorary Distinction “For Honour and Professional Integrity” earlier this year.

Based on the results of the vote, the winners of the UBA Best Young Lawyer Award 2025 are:

• Daryna Artymovets — litigation lawyer at the law firm AVER LEX, legal volunteer at the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War

• Vladyslav Ihnatko — attorney, postgraduate student and lecturer at the Law Faculty of Uzhhorod National University

• Anastasiia Pozhar — lawyer at Asters, assistant attorney

During the award ceremony, Daryna Artymovets shared her reflections: “It is a great honour for me to be among the winners and among those shaping the face of the modern legal community. This is more than just a competition — it is the trust of my peers, which I deeply value and take pride in. For me, this is a powerful motivation to keep moving forward.”

In his remarks, Vladyslav Ihnatko shared the following: "It is very gratifying that today we are speaking so much about justice. To be honest, these are not just words for me. I remember being a first-year law student, attending lectures on the theory of state and law, where we were taught about the principles of law — at the time, I didn’t fully grasp their practical significance. But later, as a postgraduate student and lecturer, I won several cases not based on statutes or regulations, but precisely on legal principles.

My professor, Vasyl Vasylovych Lemak, who now serves as a judge of the Constitutional Court, used to say: morality came first — and only within its bounds did the principles of law evolve. Justice is that first principle we intuitively grasp even before the law is written. Religion, in a certain sense, ‘armed’ people with these initial norms before the emergence of states and rulers.

I sincerely thank the Ukrainian Bar Association for upholding these values…”

Anastasiia Pozhar expressed heartfelt gratitude for the recognition and support she has received along her professional journey. She thanked her family, who embraced her work as a new part of her life; the professors at the Institute of International Relations of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, where she first learned about the rule of law; and her firm — Asters — where she advanced from an intern to a practicing lawyer.

She extended special thanks to her mentor, Oleksandr Vozniuk, Partner at Asters: “He is the person who taught me that one should live not by the letter of the law, but by the spirit of the law.”

We warmly congratulate our young colleagues on this well-deserved recognition and wish them continued success and even greater accomplishments in their legal careers!