The President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, signed the new Code of Criminal Procedure of Ukraine that had been adopted by the Parliament on April 13, 2012. Newly adopted legislative act will substitute the previous Code of Criminal Procedure of 1960 (as amended up to date) and will enter into force in six months (on November 20, 2012). The new Code is aimed at improvement of the criminal procedural rules and effective protection of the rights of the participants in criminal proceedings, in particular by introducing the adversarial principal already to the pre-trial stage of such proceedings. It means that both the prosecution and the defence shall have equal rights in standing their legal positions and in exercising of their procedural rights. In general, the new Code brings many changes to the recent procedural rules and provides for a number of innovations. Among other things, the new Code introduces: (1) cancellation of such procedural stage as commencement of the criminal matter and remodelling of the pre-trial phase; (2) jury trial; (3) new preventive measure such as a house arrest; (4) new procedural deadlines; (5) conduct of the interrogation and identification through videoconference, etc. The Code also introduces such notion as “criminal offenses” (in addition to “crimes”) and a possibility for simplified procedure of their consideration (where the court may render a decision without participation of the parties). In addition, the Code adopts the possibility to execute a criminal reconciliation (settlement) agreement between a victim and a suspect or an accused and also an agreement on pleading guilty with the prosecution. It shall be also noted that adoption of the new Code resulted in introduction of the respective changes to numerous legislative acts, most of which will come into effect along with the new Code.