President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine has suggested that violations of legislative and legal norms protecting people with disabilities, including those in architecture, should receive harsher punishments.

"We have developed two extremely important bills (they are timely and up-to-date,) which are aimed at removing the obstacles in architectural landscape for people with disabilities, and not only just that but also are aimed at introducing harsher punishments for violating legislative and legal norms that are meant to protect people with disabilities," Poroshenko said at a meeting in Kyiv on December 3 that looked into creating an obstacle-free architectural landscape for disabled people.

The Ukrainian head of state said it is necessary to develop a model, which will help solve the issue of obstacle-free access by disabled people to the buildings constructed in older times.

Poroshenko mentioned that there are some 2.63 million people with disabilities in Ukraine. "We are talking about protecting three million people," he said.

The president also said that Valeriy Sushkevych, the leader of the All-Ukrainian Organization of Disabled People and the president's commissioner for the rights of people with disabilities, has repeatedly spoken at various international events that the Russian aggression against Ukraine has brought along a number of blatant violations of the rights of disabled people. At the same time, he said that the Russian aggression is not an excuse for not providing for the rights of such people across the entire territory of Ukraine.

Iryna Lutsenko, the Representative of the President of Ukraine to the Verkhovna Rada, has said that the two bills mentioned above will soon be submitted to the parliament.