Ukrainian Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko has positively assessed the first two years of the operation of a system of free legal aid in the country, which was launched on September 1, 2016.

"The system of free legal aid is probably one of the most successful projects of the Ukrainian government. On September 1, 2016, post-Soviet district justice departments, almost 500 throughout the country, became a thing of the past, and we made a decision, which was supported by the government, to create a branched system of bureaus and legal aid centers throughout the country," he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Monday.

Petrenko believes that thousands of Ukrainian lawyers have shown that anyone in any region of the country can get protection in Ukraine.

"The system of free legal aid is developing, and we currently have one of the most successful and effective systems of free legal aid in Europe and the world," he said.

Director of the Coordination Center for the Provision of Legal Aid Oleksiy Boniuk noted that over the past two years the Legal Aid Bureau had already recorded 53,000 cases of representation of clients' interests in Ukrainian courts and contracts with more than 3,000 lawyers have been concluded.