Blackouts Did Not Justify Missing the Deadline in the Case of Monetary Allowance Payment: The Supreme Court Denied the Military Unit

The practice of restoring procedural deadlines during martial law remains one of the most relevant issues for government bodies, military units, and other participants in judicial proceedings.

The Supreme Court, as part of the Administrative Cassation Court, in its ruling dated June 25, 2026, in case No. 120/13414/25, considered the issue of restoring the deadline for appealing a court decision due to references to a technical failure in the “Electronic Court,” martial law, power outages, and communication interruptions.

Case Circumstances

A serviceman filed a lawsuit against a military unit seeking recognition of unlawful inaction regarding the non-accrual and non-payment of monetary allowance, as well as an obligation to recalculate it applying the provisions of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine Resolution No. 704.

The Vinnytsia District Administrative Court partially satisfied the claim, recognized the military unit's inaction regarding the failure to recalculate the monetary allowance as unlawful, and obliged it to make the corresponding payments.

The military unit filed an appeal after the statutory thirty-day deadline had passed. Explaining the reasons for the delay, it stated that the appeal was created and signed in the “Electronic Court” subsystem, but due to a technical error, it was not sent to the court. The defendant also referred to prolonged power and internet outages caused by massive strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure during martial law.

The Seventh Administrative Court of Appeal found these reasons unsubstantiated, refused to restore the deadline, and did not open appellate proceedings.

Disagreeing with this decision, the military unit filed a cassation appeal to the Supreme Court.

Position of the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court indicated that the Code of Administrative Procedure of Ukraine provides for the possibility of restoring a missed procedural deadline only if it was missed for valid reasons. The court restores or extends a procedural deadline if it recognizes the reason for missing it as valid.

The court reminded that the legal institution of deadlines for appealing to an administrative court for protection of violated rights does not contain an exhaustive, detailed list of reasons or criteria for their determination.

Instead, the law introduces evaluative, qualitative parameters for determining such reasons—they must be valid, real, or insurmountable and objectively impossible to overcome at the time the deadlines for appealing to the court run.

The court noted that the mere indication of a technical error does not confirm the existence of an objective obstacle.

The Supreme Court stated that neither the application for restoration of the appeal deadline nor the cassation appeal revealed the essence of the error which, according to the defendant's arguments, objectively prevented timely appealing the first-instance court decision.

After analyzing the operation of the “Electronic Court” subsystem, the Supreme Court noted that the document's status confirms the fact of its submission.

The Supreme Court pointed out that proper confirmation that the respective application, including the appeal, was submitted to the relevant court is the change of its status from “Draft” to “Sent,” and ultimately to “Registered,” which indicates registration of such an application in the court's document management information system with assignment of an individual incoming number.

Therefore, the court established that the appeal remained in a status indicating it was not submitted, and the defendant did not verify whether it was actually sent to the court.

The Supreme Court indicated that the defendant could not have been unaware that it was not submitted/delivered to the appellate court. The defendant also did not provide objective reasons that would have prevented him from ensuring that the status of the application (appeal) changed after signing and sending it.

Regarding arguments about martial law, power outages, and communication interruptions

The court emphasized that the introduction of martial law in Ukraine does not suspend the running of procedural deadlines in court cases; this circumstance alone, without proper justification through the prism of the impossibility of situational (under specific conditions) exercise of procedural rights and obligations of a party to the case, and without confirmation by proper and admissible evidence, cannot serve as grounds for restoring a missed procedural deadline.

The mere fact of martial law introduction in Ukraine cannot serve as an unconditional and sufficient basis for recognizing valid reasons for missing a procedural deadline for a government body (an authority), in the absence of relevant justifications and evidence of how exactly the martial law affected the work of this government body.

The Supreme Court also reminded that when assessing the validity of reasons for missing a deadline, it is necessary to consider a combination of specific circumstances, including the party's location, presence of hostilities, the length of the missed deadline, the participant's behavior, and the reasonable measures taken to timely apply to the court.

Evaluating the behavior of the military unit in this case, the court agreed with the appellate court's conclusions and noted that the reasons for which the defendant missed the appeal deadline were organizational in nature and did not constitute objective obstacles to applying to the court.

Thus, the Supreme Court left the military unit's cassation appeal unsatisfied and the appellate court's ruling unchanged.

The court confirmed that technical errors in the “Electronic Court,” power outages, or general references to martial law without proper evidence are not grounds for restoring the appeal deadline. It is necessary to prove the existence of real and objective obstacles that made timely court appeal impossible.

Additionally, read about another Supreme Court ruling in which the court considered whether a lawyer's vacation is a valid reason for missing a court appearance.

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