Zelenskyy restricts online casinos to curb troop gambling addictions

KYIV — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ordered new restrictions on online casinos in Ukraine, including advertising limits and banning soldiers from gambling during wartime.

The new regulations, laid out in a decree by Ukraine's State Security and Defense Council, came after prominent activist and Ukrainian army serviceman Pavlo Petrychenko launched a campaign highlighting gambling addictions among soldiers and called on Zelenskyy to impose stricter controls on online casinos. Petrychenko died in combat April 15.

“Military personnel have been away from their families for the third year, in stressful conditions and without the possibility of full rest, so they are especially psychologically vulnerable," Petrychenko said in his petition text. "For many, gambling becomes the only way to cope with stress, and therefore quickly causes dopamine addiction and weakens their self-control."

“There are cases when game-addicted servicemen spend all their money on games and take out microloans, thus putting themselves and their families in debt,” Petrychenko said.

The new rules will force gambling operators to limit the duration of gaming sessions, the number of accounts a user can register, as well as the sum an individual can gamble each day.

The new restrictions are to take effect in a month's time. Some experts have argued they are long overdue, however, and should have been implemented when Ukraine's government legalized online gambling in 2020 after a decade-long ban.

Mykyta Bondariev, strategic communications advisor at the MSL State Lottery Operator, said that at the time the government had prioritized budget revenues over limiting the exploitation of gambling addictions and reducing gambling-related crime and fraud.

"Legalize what you want — but you have to think about people first. Therefore, legalize in those volumes that you, as the state, are able to effectively control and regulate," Bondariev said.

"But when [the] first licenses were issued before the government even formed the market strategy, before the online monitoring system has started working, what did you expect?" he added.

In 2023 the number of people on the state's register of gambling addicts, which forbids them access to online casinos, grew from 450 to 3,700 according to the Ukraine Commission for Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries. The list likely under-represents the real figure, however, as it includes only those who voluntarily add their names or are ordered to do so by a court.

Ukraine Army Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskiy will be charged with banning gambling by military personnel during the country's current war with invading Russian troops.

However, Maksym Skubenko, CEO of the VoxUkraine NGO and a junior sergeant in the 5th Separate Assault Brigade of Kyiv, now fighting near Bakhmut, told POLITICO that a ban won’t work.

“The ban may even worsen the situation," he said, highlighting that illegal casinos already exist. A better solution, he argued, would be to increase the financial literacy of military personnel.

While Skubenko himself never took an interest in online casinos, he recalled that when he served in the Territorial Defense Forces in Kyiv region, several people in his unit played often. “Though no one played during active hostilities. There was simply no time at all,” he said.

“There must be a person in every unit who knows what is happening to the servicemen, their psychological state, what they read, and what they play in their spare time," Skubenko told POLITICO. "The command should also identify fighters who can be called opinion leaders in the army and cooperate with them. Because other soldiers listen to their words.”

Monthly salaries for Ukrainian soldiers range from UAH 30,000 to UAH 100,000 (€700 to €2,350), depending on military rank and сombat performance. The minimum wage in Ukraine, by contrast, is UAH 8000 (€190).

The Ukrainian government allocated more than UAH 862 billion (€20 billion) in state funding in 2024 to military salaries — the largest portion of the country's defense spending Kyiv must cover without foreign aid.