GENERAL THEORETICAL ASPECTS AND CLASSIFICATION OF COLLABORATION ACTIVITIES AS A CRIMINAL PHENOMENON

Abstract

The paper examines the general theoretical concept of collaboration and its genesis, namely its appearance and development during the Second World War and the modern Ukrainian state. The main features of this phenomenon are analyzed: the presence of subjects of collaboration activities and the clearly expressed nature of harming state sovereignty and territorial integrity through various forms of collaboration. Certain types of collaboration activities are also classified and highlighted. Thus, depending on the desires and beliefs that citizens pursue, the most common among scientists is the division of collaboration into forced, voluntary, and ideological. This criminal law phenomenon is considered separately in the context of the recently introduced amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine regarding establishing criminal liability for collaboration activities. The paper also found that collaboration as a phenomenon of criminal law is immediately seen as a complex of variations of actions that a “collaborator” or “a group of collaborators” could engage in – the population that, for one reason or another, cooperates with the occupation authorities and the military. In addition, the paper pays considerable attention to the phenomenon of collaboration in the current conditions of armed aggression of the Russian Federation. It defines the composition of a criminal offense for committing collaboration activities. In particular, the amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine, namely Article 111-1 “Collaboration Activity,” which contains the concept of collaboration activity, its various forms, and penalties for committing actions that would fall under the specified norm, are analyzed. The paper describes the composition of the specified criminal offense, identifies its subjective and objective features, and possible problems with distinguishing it from related criminal offenses.