Over seven months since the weapons voluntary declaration law came into effect, more than 2,136 Kyiv residents turned to the city's police. They officially registered 2,237 units of firearms and over a million ammunition rounds — and received storage permits within hours. These figures represent a Kyiv snapshot of a much larger phenomenon.
A law that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world
On November 25, 2024, Ukraine's Law No. 3899-IX came into force, adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on August 20 of the same year. It introduced for the first time a mechanism for citizens to declare found or obtained firearms — during active warfare. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, similar programs in other countries were implemented exclusively after the end of hostilities. Ukraine did this in the middle of them.
The law exempts from criminal liability under Article 263 of the Criminal Code those who voluntarily report unregistered weapons to the state and allows them to legally store it until the end of martial law. The alternative is up to five years imprisonment for illegal storage of rifled weapons.
Scale: Kyiv accounts for less than 15% of the total
According to Vyacheslav Savchenko, head of the National Police's Weapons Circulation Control Department, since the beginning of 2025 alone, over 10,500 citizens have declared more than 11,000 units of weapons and over 5 million ammunition rounds. Total statistics from the beginning of the law — over 15,000 units and 7.7 million ammunition rounds across the country.
Most active are residents of regions near the front line. According to Savchenko, this is due to both security factors and heightened attention to legal weapons ownership issues in high-risk zones.
"Gives the right to civilians to declare available weapons and ammunition, which helps control and regulate weapons circulation during martial law"
Serhii Ionushas, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Law Enforcement Activities, during the law's presentation in parliament
What's behind this: weapons from the front and from basements
Not only hunting rifles that have been accumulating without documentation for years are being declared. Part of the declared weapons are trophy or found items, part ended up with civilians through the chaos of the first months of the full-scale invasion. The law covers both categories: weapons that the owner possesses and those that were found.
However, as noted by a weapons circulation expert commenting for Focus.ua, current regulations are determined by a subordinate act — the Ministry of Internal Affairs order No. 622, which is decades old — and "is often unclear to both lawyers and citizens." The question of what will happen to declared weapons after the end of martial law is not directly regulated by the law.
- Declared weapons are legally stored until the end of martial law
- After its end, the owner is obliged to either obtain a standard permit or surrender the weapons
- The procedure for obtaining a permit in peacetime is much more complicated and lengthy
This means that 15,000 units of weapons legalized now could end up in a gray zone again as soon as the war ends — if the state does not prepare a simplified transitional mechanism in advance.
Is the Ministry of Internal Affairs developing such a mechanism now — and will it have time before the moment it's needed?
