Ukraine to advance with ban on gambling for military 

Ukraine will also introduce new advertising rules and other measures.

Ukraine.- President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has enacted National Security and Defense Council (RNBO) measures to ban gambling among members of the military. There will also be a ban on using military iconography in gambling advertising. 

The measures were inspired by a petition launched by Pavlo Petrychenko, a commander in the 59th separate motorised infantry brigade. The RNBO has now instructed the Cabinet of Ministers to develop procedures to prohibit gambling advertising that uses the symbols of armed forces. It also wants a ban on registering multiple accounts for a single player and a weekly time limit for gambling.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) will start inspections of gambling operators’ activities within two months. The National Bank of Ukraine will have to approve recommendations for banks to block payments. 

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Digital Transformation will speak with Apple and Google with the aim to remove unlicensed gambling applications in their app stores. In another development, the Ministry of Health has been given three months to develop a clinical protocol for treating gambling addiction.

Ukraine re-regulated gambling in July 2020. Last month, the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine (ESBU) said it had seized UAH700m (€17.3m) from an account belonging to a gambling operator due to alleged tax evasion. It did not name the company involved, describing it only as a leading operator in the Ukrainian market.

Meanwhile, the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries (KRAIL) has reported granting 152 gambling licences in the first quarter of the year. They comprise 138 gaming machine licences, three gambling service provider licences, nine table game licences, one online casino licence and one licence for a roulette wheel. The regulator had received 194 licence applications. It said two failed owing to insufficient information on documents, while one was directly rejected.