In Mykolaiv, after the plenary session of the city council on April 30, a public dispute erupted between city council deputy Tetyana Dombrovska and the mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych. The cause was an incident at the session when activists came to the city council to raise the issue of closing kindergartens, but they were not allowed to speak.
The trigger for the conflict was a post by Tetyana Dombrovska on Facebook. In it the deputy said she had commissioned an independent legal opinion on the procedure for citizens’ participation in the plenary sessions of the Mykolaiv City Council. According to her, the lawyers concluded that the regulations do not require a prior written application either for citizens’ presence at the session or for consideration of the question of their speech.
Tetyana Dombrovska said that during the session the mayor allegedly referred to a rule that is not in the regulations.
“So, when Oleksandr Sienkevych at the session told people that “to speak you must write an application”, that was not a provision of the Regulations. It was a rule invented by Sienkevych.”
The deputy also cited the conclusions of the law firm “Vasyl Kisil and Partners”. According to them, citizens have the right to be present at open sessions of the city council if there are available seats and an identity document.
Separately, Tetyana Dombrovska criticized the response of the city council secretary Dmytro Falk, who had earlier explained the need to submit an application to participate in a remote session via Zoom.
In the comments to the post the mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych stated that the deputy conflates two different concepts: the right to be present at a session and the right to speak at it.
The mayor of Mykolaiv explained his position by referring to the regulations.
“Part 13 of Article 30 of the Regulations clearly defines: the right to speak is granted to persons present in the manner determined by a procedural decision of the Council. That is, this is not an automatic right of a citizen — it is a decision of the deputies. The chair may grant the floor on his own only if none of the deputies objects. Your lawyers VK in paragraph 3 of their memo directly write: “if the chair does not wish to grant the floor to a certain citizen on his own, only a procedural decision by 18 or more deputies can force him to do so.””
After that Oleksandr Sienkevych separately responded to the accusation that he had allegedly deliberately failed to put a procedural decision on citizens’ speeches to a vote.
In his comment the mayor emphasized that, in his view, the regulations do not oblige the chair to put such a question to a vote.
“About the “obligation to put the issue to a vote”.”
You write that I “deliberately refused to put the procedural decision to a vote”. But the Regulations do not contain any obligation for the chair to put the question of a citizen’s speech to a vote. It is a right, not an obligation. And again — this is confirmed by your own lawyers, who directly state that the relevant provision “does not contain imperative instructions obliging the chair to adopt such a procedural decision”.
Also Oleksandr Sienkevych noted that the session on April 30 was held in a remote format under martial law, and some deputies were present in the city council building at their workplaces. He also reported the existence of a video recording of activists entering the mayor’s office building. According to the mayor, this recording is planned to be handed over to the commission on regulations and deputy ethics.
In response Tetyana Dombrovska accused the mayor of manipulating the regulations and attempting to limit citizens’ access to participation in the city council’s work.
The deputy stated that the mayor essentially confirmed the absence of a mandatory written application for citizens’ presence at an open session of the city council.
“Finally you confirmed the key point: a prior written application is not a condition for citizens’ presence at an open session of the city council.”
But the issue is different. On April 30 you publicly told people that “to speak at the session you only need one thing — to write an application”, and that without this you would not give the floor, because it is supposedly “stipulated in the regulations”.
This is a lie.
The Regulations do not contain a provision that obliges a citizen to submit a written application in advance for the council to consider the question of their speech. The Regulations provide for a procedural decision of the council on granting the floor to persons present. But it does not say that such a decision is possible only after a prior written application by the citizen.
The manipulation is precisely in your words. The city mayor substituted the real provision of the Regulations about a procedural decision with an invented requirement of a prior application.
The problem is that in your 11 years as mayor you have not learned to tell people “No”, and instead you constantly dodge. Couldn’t you simply have said, “I do not want to put this to a vote”? But you said something else — that people did not follow a procedure that does not exist in the Regulations.
Lawyers confirm exactly this: the right to speak is not automatic and is implemented through a procedural decision of the council or a chair’s decision in the absence of objections. But they also explicitly write that the Regulations do not require any prior written application or any prior disclosure of the content of the speech (as your secretary wrote).”
After this the deputy sharply reacted to the mayor’s words about the video recording of activists entering the council building and the possible transfer of materials to the commission.
Tetyana Dombrovska called such an emphasis on the “circumstances of entering” the mayor’s office incorrect, because, in her words, people came not to a private company but to the city council building.
“Sasha, are you the mayor of a half‑million city or a concierge at the entrance?”
Why so painfully emphasize the “circumstances of entering the council building”? Threatening with some check by the commission on deputy ethics?)))
People did not come to a private company, not to a closed back office. They came to the city council building. Since Independence, Mykolaiv has had eight mayors — you are not here forever, wake up. Is it really impossible after 11 years in office to accept a simple thing: you do not “allow” people to see you, the community has temporarily hired you to manage the city.
And if the first reaction to citizens who want to raise an inconvenient question is not to listen to them, not to put a procedural decision to a vote, but to start finding out how they “got into” the building, then the problem is not with the citizens.”
Also Tetyana Dombrovska said she intends to appeal to the Representation of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights in the Mykolaiv region. The reason is a possible violation of citizens’ rights to participate in local self-government.
The dispute itself arose against the backdrop of a sharp conflict over the closure of kindergartens in Mykolaiv. Earlier korabelov.info wrote that during the session on April 30, 2026 the possible closure of three kindergartens was discussed, two of which are located in the Korabelny district. Specifically mentioned were kindergarten No. 104 on Torgova Street and kindergarten No. 138 in Balabanivka. The official reason named was the lack of shelters and the impossibility of equipping them.
The site also reported that during the same session Oleksandr Sienkevych refused public activists Svitlana Fedorova and Anna Kurkurina the right to speak during the discussion of the closure of the three kindergartens. This situation became one of the key points in the subsequent discussion about citizens’ right to be heard at city council sessions.
Earlier we wrote:
- Balabanivka without a future: after the school, the kindergarten was also taken away
- “The most free spaces in shelters are in the Korabelny district”
- So far one of the three has been liquidated: another kindergarten closed in the Korabelny district
- Children have nowhere to go: kindergartens in the Korabelny district are being closed due to lack of shelters
- Minus three kindergartens: the city plans to close preschools, two of them in Korabelny
