Lobbying, PR, and a Russian trail: how Bar self-governance is selling the old system

This article was originally published in Ukrainian in ZN.UA.

Reform of the Bar has long been overdue, yet the system itself remains closed and oriented toward self-preservation. Today, when changes have become part of Ukraine’s European obligations, it is trying to hold on to its positions.

The Ukrainian National Bar Association (UNBA) has launched a large-scale PR campaign around a report on the state of the Ukrainian Bar, allegedly prepared by independent American experts. The document was presented as an international assessment and was even showcased in Brussels.

Sociology, foreign consultants, and the status of an “international study” were meant to create the impression of legitimacy and stability of the Bar self-governance system amid growing pressure for its reform as one of the conditions for Ukraine’s accession to the European Union.

However, analysis of this report shows that it is not an independent study, but an element of a targeted campaign to protect the status quo. Behind the “expertise” are lobbying contracts, questionable intermediaries, and attempts to influence how Ukraine’s Bar is perceived by international partners.

Who actually stands behind this report, how much it costs, and what role Russia-linked networks play in it are examined in detail below.

A report as a defence of the status quo

In early February 2026, the UNBA published a study on its website: “The Ukrainian National Bar Association in the Context of the Rule of Law and European Integration.”

According to the association itself, the study was initiated by the non-profit Armada Network. However, its content demonstrates otherwise: any criticism of the association is framed as an attempt to “nihilistically destroy” stability in the Bar, while the activities of its leadership are assessed exclusively positively — as “evolutionary improvement.”

This refers in particular to the head of the UNBA, Lidiya Izovitova, and her deputy Valentyn Hvozdiy, who have effectively controlled the Bar self-governance system for more than a decade.

Izovitova is a long-time associate of pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk. She has led the Bar since 2012, since the adoption of the current law on the Bar, prepared with the involvement of Andriy Portnov. Formally, her powers expired in 2022, but no new congress of attorneys has been convened, allowing her to retain control over the system. At the same time, the leadership of the Bar, according to numerous public testimonies and cases, ignores the problem of collaborator attorneys and uses disciplinary mechanisms as a tool of pressure against disloyal members of the profession.

In this context, the report does not look like an independent study, but like an instrument to legitimise the current governance model. Amid growing pressure for Bar reform, including as a condition of European integration, such an “international assessment” effectively works to preserve the status quo.

The faces behind the report

The DEJURE Foundation examined the authors of the study and the “independent experts.” Let us focus on three organisations and their roles.

• Harper & Bailey Governmental Solutions.

The founder of this company, Gregg Harper, is the public face of the presentation in Brussels, the main author of the material, and the moderator of discussions around the report. He previously served as a Republican congressman. The UNBA’s claims about his specialisation in the rule of law are not confirmed by open sources. On the contrary, in his career Harper focused on issues such as energy, trade, sexual harassment, and rare diseases.

After ending his political career in 2019, Harper became a lobbyist in Washington. He founded his company, Harper & Bailey Governmental Solutions, in 2024. He engages in promoting clients’ interests in government offices under contract, from pharmaceutical corporations to the government of Taiwan and, as we can see, the UNBA.

There are doubts that Harper himself wrote the study. The text contains many terms that American authors would never use: professional capitalisation tool, semi-factual material, accusation by associations — an overly literal translation from a Ukrainian or possibly Russian draft.

In other words, this is not a rule-of-law expert, but a professional lobbyist working to meet a client’s request.

• Armada Network and Dale Armstrong.

Armada Network is the initiator of the study. It is a religious association based at the Word of Faith Church in Pennsylvania. It is rather strange that after distributing humanitarian aid in the form of food and medicine, the association allegedly decided to spend significant funds on hiring lobbyists to write a report on the Ukrainian Bar. Most likely, the role of the religious organisation is to conceal the report’s sponsors. The U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) contains an exemption for non-profit and religious organisations regarding disclosure of funding sources. Its founder, Dale Armstrong, is an American pastor active in Ukraine.

His affiliated law firm, Armstrong & Associates, LLC, had an official lobbying contract with Member of Parliament Andriy Artemenko. This is the same politician who, in 2017, became involved in the story of the so-called peace plan involving concessions to Russia, in particular leasing Crimea for 50–100 years. The prosecutor’s office opened a criminal case against him for treason. It is important that Armstrong agreed to work with Artemenko after he had already been suspected of working for Russia.Over three months of work, Armstrong’s company received $90,000.

In this chain, the religious organisation appears not as a source of expertise, but as a convenient cover for opaque financing and toxic connections.

Back in 2018, Dale Armstrong appealed to then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, demanding the recall of the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, allegedly on behalf of 39 Ukrainian Christian organisations. Among them was also “Vsі Razom!” led by Ruslan Kuharchuk, who spreads narratives about “external governance” and cooperated with individuals who were later exposed as open traitors and criminals. Recently, Kuharchuk recorded a video with Rostyslav Kravets, one of the public voices of the UNBA, about “how foreigners control justice in Ukraine.”

In parallel, the campaign to discredit Marie Yovanovitch was also carried out by MP Andriy Derkach, whom the U.S. Treasury in 2020 directly called “an active Russian agent” with long-standing ties to Russian intelligence services. In Ukraine, Derkach was charged with treason for working for Russia’s GRU, and after fleeing to Russia in 2024, he became a senator there.

• Wooden Horse Strategies.

Another link intended to add legitimacy to the study was a sociological survey conducted by Wooden Horse Strategies. This is a company that has long been engaged in PR in Kyiv, lobbying within government, opinion polling, political risk analysis, reputation management, and related activities.

Without going into detail on the methodology of the survey, it is worth noting that among its stated goals was to “form a balanced but positive analytical picture of the activities of the Bar and the Ukrainian National Bar Association,” while the survey of attorneys was conducted “via electronic mailing through the UNBA.” Judges and prosecutors were surveyed through “closed professional lists,” and the report explicitly states that this is a non-representative sample. In other words, the sociology is tailored to the client, but openly acknowledges it.

The founder of Wooden Horse Strategies, Brian Mefford, is a well-known American political consultant in Ukraine. At a conference co-organised by the UNBA in The Hague in 2021, Lidiya Izovitova delivered a keynote speech, while Brian Mefford was among the moderators. There, he publicly praised the Ukrainian Bar and its supposed “institutional transformations.” After that event, Mefford, together with Valentyn Gvozdiy, deputy head of the UNBA, appeared on the Global Europe Unpacked podcast, where he also promoted the Ukrainian Bar. In 2022, Gvozdiy’s law firm GoLaw was a “partner” of the Help Ukraine Operation Palyanytsya foundation led by Brian Mefford. Both companies are members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, where their partnership likely began.

During the presentation of the document in Brussels, Chris Holzen from Wooden Horse Strategies was present. He spoke not as an independent expert, but as a contractor who received a fee. Holzen urged Europeans not to trust reports by Ukrainian anti-corruption civil society organisations, effectively reproducing narratives of pro-Russian actors and other opponents of reform, calling them a “closed grant ecosystem.” He also claimed that these organisations have conflicts of interest, while he himself had a financial interest in the outcome of the presentation.

In this scheme, sociology and public appearances serve not to clarify the real state of the Bar, but to create the picture desired by the client.

The host side in the European Parliament was a pro-Ukrainian MEP. Most likely, the event was presented to him as one related to supporting the rule of law in Ukraine. It appears that the UNBA’s lobbyists effectively used a person with a clean reputation and sincere support for Ukraine to legitimise a questionable report within the walls of the European Parliament.

The price of PR for the Bar leadership

The services of elite lobbyists and political consultants are not cheap. Although the actual costs are hidden by non-disclosure agreements, and the campaign itself is masked through a religious organisation, the approximate market value of such services is not difficult to determine. According to our estimates, between $75,000 and $150,000 was spent on this PR campaign.

The contract with Dale Armstrong (Armada Network) alone costs $30,000 per month. Gregg Harper’s company, Harper & Bailey Governmental Solutions, is an elite “boutique” political lobbying firm. The standard fee from one client for promoting interests ranges from $60,000 to $180,000 per year. The participation of the president of such a company in drafting a report for the UNBA and his trip to Brussels were hardly acts of volunteerism. You will not find any news that Gregg Harper provides such services pro bono.

A separate expense was the sociological study by Wooden Horse Strategies. A standard nationwide survey costs between 500,000 and 1.5 million UAH, while the preparation of expert interviews and an English-language report involving foreign consultants clearly goes far beyond the basic market range. Even by minimal estimates, such work costs at least $20,000.

Another approximately $2,000 was spent on translating the study into Ukrainian.

No one in Washington hires former congressmen or commissions surveys in Kyiv out of charitable motives.

Despite this, the analysis by Armada Network is presented as almost a charitable initiative of a civil society organisation. However, the set of tools and contractors involved indicates that this is a commercial campaign.

This raises a key question: who is paying for it? If it is funded by attorneys, this would mean the use of their mandatory contributions to protect the interests of the current leadership, rather than the entire profession. If the funding came from outside, then without public reporting, it is impossible to assess its sources and conditions.

In the absence of financial transparency, these questions are not rhetorical. This is especially relevant given the ties of the head of the UNBA with Viktor Medvedchuk, who appears to retain an interest in the Ukrainian Bar. Recent journalistic investigations also point to systematic funding from the Kremlin of a network of Ukrainian attornyes working on issues of travel abroad, deferments, and avoidance of mobilisation. One of the curators of this network is said to be Yevhen Baklanov, a person from Medvedchuk’s orbit.

Financial reporting of the Bar self-governance bodies is effectively closed. As long as it remains so, it is impossible to answer questions about the sources of funding for such campaigns. The only way to verify this is an independent financial audit.

Expertise without evidence

The document accuses “grant-funded” activists and their shadow reports of bias and circular reasoning. At the same time, the authors provide no references, evidence, or concrete examples to support their claims.

It is telling that in a report that is formally not connected to the Bar leadership, the same rhetoric is reproduced as in UNBA communications: activists are called “self-proclaimed representatives of the Bar,” an “alternative Bar,” or pseudo-experts. This calls into question the independence of the document.

Beyond the UNBA itself, the report is actively disseminated mainly by pro-Russian information networks, including MP Antonina Slavytska from OPZZh. She is known as a former assistant to Serhii Kivalov and a figure in a National Anti-Corruption Bureau investigation concerning the head of the now-liquidated District Administrative Court of Kyiv, Pavlo Vovk.

As a result, we have a document that claims expertise but fails to meet basic standards of evidence, while reproducing politically biased rhetoric and being spread in environments that are interested in preserving the status quo.

A reform that can no longer be avoided

More than a month has passed since the publication of the questionable study, yet the communication campaign around it continues. Money of unknown origin continues to work in favour of American lobbyists. All of this constitutes clear “red flags” indicating that Bar reform can no longer be postponed. This is not only a domestic demand, but also a direct requirement on Ukraine’s path to the EU. The European Commission has been emphasising its necessity for three consecutive years.

It is evident that the current leadership of the UNBA will use all available tools to retain control over the system and delay real change. At the same time, denying the problems themselves only confirms the unwillingness to resolve them.

A key element of the reform should be the reset of the Bar self-governance bodies with the participation of international experts. This concerns not only changing personnel, but also integrity checks and the creation of safeguards against a return to practices of dependence, opacity, and political influence. This will determine whether the Bar can restore trust or will remain an instrument of a narrow group of individuals.

The longer the system spends resources on self-defence and international lobbying, the more obvious the main point becomes: without a deep reset of its self-governance, it will not reform itself — it will have to be reformed from the outside.

Read more about the necessary steps for transforming the Bar in the analytical brief and the “Bar Reform Roadmap” prepared by a coalition of civil society organisations together with attorneys.