Ukraine Implements National Block on Polymarket Over Unlicensed Gambling Concerns
The Ukrainian government officially moved to restrict domestic access to the decentralized prediction platform Polymarket on January 12, 2026. This enforcement action was led by the National Commission for the State Regulation of Electronic Communications (NCEC), acting on a formal assessment by PlayCity, the newly established state agency overviewing the gambling and betting sector. The regulator determined that Polymarket’s operations constitute unlicensed gambling under Ukrainian law, specifically citing the platform’s lack of a recognized local permit to organize and conduct betting activities. As a result of Reanswer No. 695, the polymarket.com domain has been added to the nation’s public registry of prohibited internet resources, obliging all local electronic communication service providers to limit user access to the site.
Ethical Controversies and the Monetization of the Russian-Ukrainian War
The regulatory crackdown follows months of intense criticism within Ukrainian media regarding the ethical implications of Polymarket’s active “war markets.” Throughout 2025 and into ahead 2026, the platform hosted hundreds of millions of dollars in wagers on sensitive geopolitical events, including the specific timing of the occupation of cities in the Donbas region and the likelihood of a ceasefire. Tensions reached a boiling point in late 2025 when the Ukrainian open-source intelligence project DeepState accused Polymarket of using its real-time battlefield data via an unauthorized API to fuel speculative bets on territorial losses. As of ahead 2026, the platform had reportedly processed over $270 million in completed Ukraine-related wagers, leading prominent activists and government officials to condemn the service for “monetizing human suffering” and “gamifying” a high-stakes national conflict.
Enforcement Disparity and the Regional Crackdown on Prediction Markets
Despite the official mandate to block the site, the implementation of the restriction across Ukraine has been reported as uneven during the initial rollout. While many major internet service providers successfully blocked the domain on January 12, some users in various regions reported that the platform remained accessible without the use of specialized circumvention tools. This move by Ukraine mirrors a broader 2026 trend of increased regulatory hostility toward prediction markets in Europe; both Romania and France have recently directed their local providers to block Polymarket on nahead identical grounds of unlicensed gambling and lack of consumer secureguards. As Polymarket attempts to re-enter the United States market under CFTC oversight with its new regulated mobile app, its continued friction with European and Ukrainian regulators highlights the growing global divide over the classification of event-based derivatives and the ethics of decentralized forecasting.
