While 8,500 Mykolaiv residents wait, judges and prosecutors are privatizing official apartments

As of mid-summer 2026, more than 8,500 people were on the housing waiting list in Mykolaiv, while the first applicants have been waiting for housing for nearly half a century. Despite the shortage of municipal apartments, the consequences of the full-scale invasion, the occupation of part of the country and the destruction of housing stock, the city continues to transfer service housing into private ownership for judges, prosecutors, police officers and officials.

This was reported by NIKCENTER.

In an investigation dated August 30, 2026, Nikcenter compared privatization decisions with the asset declarations of the recipients. Many of them already had apartments, houses, substantial savings or incomes that would have allowed them to resolve their housing needs on their own. At the same time, privatization under the current rules does not in itself mean that the law was violated.

A three-room apartment for the head of the Central District Court

The Central District Court of Mykolaiv handles a significant share of criminal proceedings involving city council officials. During 2024–2026, at least 7 proceedings were opened involving city officials and heads of municipal enterprises, and 5 of them went to this court.

The same court also considered administrative protocols involving Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych. At the beginning of 2022, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention sent materials concerning a possible violation of conflict-of-interest prevention and settlement requirements. They concerned votes on appointing the city council secretary, the executive committee’s chief administrator, the head of the Inhulskyi District administration and an adviser to the mayor, as well as the signing of an order on bonuses for executive committee employees, including the mayor himself. The judge closed the case because the elements of an administrative offense were absent.

In March 2018, Judge Nataliia Cherenkova reinstated Oleksandr Sienkevych as mayor after the city council had terminated his powers.

Since 2015, the Central District Court of Mykolaiv has been headed by Halyna Podzihun. In 2025, in her tenth year as head of the court, she received permission to privatize a three-room service apartment that she had been using since 2009.

In the judge’s 2025 declaration, an apartment measuring 117 square meters appeared as jointly owned in shares by Halyna Podzihun and her younger daughter, Anastasiia Havrasiienko. In the 2024 declaration, the judge reported the use of an almost identical apartment measuring 118 square meters, which at that time still belonged to the Mykolaiv City Council.

Journalists did not find on the city council website an executive committee decision removing the apartment from the service-housing list and permitting its privatization. The response to their request suggested that the decision probably did not go through the executive committee under the usual procedure. Permission was issued by the Municipal Property Department on September 10, 2025, and about a week later, according to the real estate rights register, the apartment became the property of the judge and her daughter.

A house, apartments and the family’s multimillion savings

The law allows judges, court staff and employees of the State Judicial Administration and its territorial offices to receive service housing. However, investigators have repeatedly found cases in which people who already had real estate applied for such apartments.

• The husband of former Central District Court judge Svitlana Hrechana applied for a municipal apartment in central Mykolaiv. According to the journalists, the couple apparently lived in one of the city’s most expensive residential complexes, although that apartment was not listed in the declaration, while relatives of the family had built an expensive suburban property.
• Judge Olha Hudenko received a service apartment in the Korabelnyi District of Mykolaiv, although her family lived in a 300-square-meter house registered to the judge’s mother and her husband’s mother.
• Tetiana Davchenko, a judge of the Commercial Court of Mykolaiv Oblast, received a 105-square-meter apartment in a new building. At the same time, she had a house in “Tsarske Selo” declared as unfinished construction, where she actually lived. According to the journalists’ findings, tenants may have been living in the service apartment.

Back in 2020, Nikcenter examined the assets of the judicial couple Podzihun-Havrasiienko. The family lived in a private 180-square-meter house in Varvarivka. In the declaration, the house was listed as unfinished construction, but a journalist saw a habitable two-story home. Neighbors also said that the judges lived there. Under those circumstances, the service apartment on Sadova Street may have remained empty. Five years after that investigation, permission was granted to privatize it.

In the same building on Sadova Street, the family owns other real estate as well. The judges’ middle daughter, Olha Havrasiienko, has owned a one-room 60-square-meter apartment there since 2021. Another apartment has been owned since 2022 by her former husband, Yan Afanasiev. That same year, a one-room apartment in the building was registered to the eldest daughter, Mariia Havrasiienko.

Mariia Havrasiienko also owns an apartment in a new residential building in Odesa. Comparable housing of the same size and with renovations in that complex was offered for $82,000.

In Halyna Podzihun’s declaration, in addition to the privatized apartment, there are an unfinished house and garage, the land plot beneath them, and a 93-square-meter apartment owned by her husband, Vadym Havrasiienko, since 2022. In the spring of 2025, the family purchased a 2022 Volkswagen ID.4 for UAH 800,000. The family’s cash savings amount to $213,000, or about UAH 10 million at the exchange rate at the time of publication, while more than UAH 83,000 was also held in bank accounts.

In July, a video appeared on the Instagram page of 24-year-old Olha Havrasiienko in which she appears to receive a Porsche Panamera 4 from her husband; such a car may cost around UAH 5.8 million. About six months earlier, she had shown another allegedly gifted Porsche, apparently a Cayenne, which may cost between UAH 6 million and UAH 10 million. In the summer of 2025, she also showed a new Mercedes-Benz resembling a CLE-Class and wrote that she had become the owner of the latest model. Such a car may cost up to $100,000.

Journalists contacted Halyna Podzihun with questions about the need for a municipal apartment and the ethics of its privatization given the family’s financial position. No response had been received by the time the investigation was published.

How the city distributes service apartments

As of July 2026, more than 8,500 people were on Mykolaiv’s housing waiting list. Around 2,000 had priority rights to housing, while roughly 500 were entitled to receive it out of turn.

Since 2022, 626 municipal apartments have been privatized in the city. Most of them are probably Soviet-era housing in which families had lived for decades. However, journalists also found many former service apartments among the properties transferred. Such housing is provided in connection with employment or public service, but once it is removed from the service-housing stock, it could be privatized free of charge.

In 2016, Nikcenter reported that law enforcement officers and judges were receiving service apartments quickly while other residents waited in line for years, and later privatized that housing. In 2018, apartments were provided to several judges at once, some of whom did not live there. Some also failed to list in their declarations expensive houses where they actually lived.

It is difficult to determine who receives municipal housing during the full-scale war. The city council website publishes executive committee decisions on granting service housing or removing apartments from the relevant housing stock. The final transfer into private ownership is formalized by orders of the Municipal Property Department, copies of which are not made publicly available.

In response to a request, journalists received a list of the new owners of former municipal housing. It included judges, prosecutors, police chiefs and local government employees. Holding such a position does not in itself make the privatization illegal: the current procedure does allow service apartments to be transferred into private ownership. At the same time, in many cases declarations show multimillion-hryvnia incomes, savings and other real estate.

Prosecutor privatized an apartment after moving to Vinnytsia Oblast

Prosecutor Vadym Borovskyi registered a service apartment in Mykolaiv as private property while already working in Vinnytsia Oblast. Until the end of 2022, he was first deputy head of the Pervomaisk Local Prosecutor’s Office, after which he transferred to the Zhmerinka District Prosecutor’s Office.

In the same 2022, his wife Olha Borovska became a co-owner of a dairy plant in Zhmerinka. For 2025, she declared UAH 6.6 million in business income.

While working about 370 kilometers from Mykolaiv, the prosecutor continued to declare use of the service apartment in the south. At his request, the apartment was removed from the service-housing stock in April 2023. Exactly two years later, the Municipal Property Department transferred to the family an apartment of almost 47 square meters on the outskirts of the city.

After moving, the couple lived in the prosecutor’s parents’ 282-square-meter summer house. His father, Rostyslav Borovskyi, heads the Zhmerinka Central District Hospital, while his mother, Mariia Borovska, also works as a doctor. In 2022, they lent their son and daughter-in-law almost UAH 2 million. The prosecutor and his wife separately declared savings of $90,000.

Privatized, sold and received another apartment

The head of the Mykolaiv District Prosecutor’s Office, Hryhorii Zinych, and his wife, prosecutor Rehina Zinych, had used a one-room service apartment since 2014. At the end of 2022, the city council allowed the apartment to be removed from the service-housing stock, and two years later the family privatized it.

On August 20, 2024, the couple sold the apartment for UAH 564,000. On the same day, the prosecutors received another apartment as a gift, probably from Rehina Zinych’s father, former prosecutor Vasyl Kiriienko. He had previously appeared in a Nikcenter investigation into the destruction of a pine woodland for cottages for officials.

The gifted apartment measures 96 square meters and is located in a residential complex on Mala Morska Street. Similar housing there may cost around $100,000, although the couple’s declarations state the apartment’s value as UAH 500,000. According to the register, Vasyl Kiriienko has owned a parking space in the same building since 2016. In the journalists’ view, this may indicate that the apartment could have been purchased at that time.

In 2025, the combined salary of the Zinych couple amounted to almost UAH 2 million.

Journalists had previously described a similar case involving Vitalii Shepel, head of the criminal investigation department of the Main Directorate of the National Police. He did not live in the service apartment, but about a year later privatized and sold it, then exactly one month later purchased new housing. The law enforcement officer explained his intention this way:

“Just to buy a two-room apartment.”

Apartments for judges, court employees and police officers

In the list of privatized housing, investigators also found apartments transferred to other representatives of the judiciary and police.

• Judge Svitlana Skrypchenko of the Central District Court of Mykolaiv privatized a 98-square-meter apartment near the 8th Pier in 2026. She had used it as service housing since 2016. The family officially declares no other real estate in Mykolaiv, but the judge owns 2 apartments in occupied Luhansk and Alchevsk. Her income for 2025 was about UAH 1.5 million. The judge held $15,000 in cash, and her husband another $20,000. Svitlana Skrypchenko’s mother, who also received a share in the privatized apartment, invested in housing in Mykolaiv’s “Grandbud” residential complex.
• Head of staff of the Zavodskyi District Court Natalia Nikolaieva first gifted her old apartment to her daughter and later privatized and sold the municipal one. Her family received the service apartment in 2023. Two years later, the 48-square-meter apartment became the property of the official and her daughter. In July 2026, Natalia Nikolaieva declared UAH 680,000 in income from its sale.
• The family of Yevhenii Palii, deputy head of the anti-corruption department of the Internal Security Department of the National Police, privatized a service apartment of almost 56 square meters. The officer received it in 2015 and had declared it as joint property with his wife and son since 2020, although the property register and the response from the Municipal Property Department indicate that privatization took place only in 2026. In 2023, the official’s wife purchased a four-room 62-square-meter apartment in Mykolaiv.
• Maksym Lebediev, head of the duty service department of the Patrol Police Department, together with his wife and children privatized a 51.5-square-meter apartment in October 2025. By then, his wife already owned another apartment in Mykolaiv measuring 82 square meters, purchased a year earlier for a declared value of more than UAH 2.5 million.

Who will be able to privatize service housing after the reform

The new law “On the Basic Principles of Housing Policy” will enter into force one year after the end of martial law. After that, only 4 categories will be able to privatize state service housing free of charge:

• law enforcement officers;
• military personnel;
• rescue workers;
• orphans and children deprived of parental care.

Such housing is planned to be distributed not directly through city councils but through relevant state bodies — the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Defence, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine or guardianship authorities.

A person’s position or the existence of savings does not remove their right to use the current rules. However, the declarations cited show a contrast between the financial position of many recipients and the situation of thousands of residents who remain on the housing waiting list for years.

Previously, we reported:

• Million-hryvnia incomes and service housing: whom Mykolaiv’s executive committee recognized as being in need
• Thousands of non-privatized apartments in Mykolaiv will become municipal property: housing department urges privatization
• Rear-area law enforcement: how prosecutors and police receive free apartments in Mykolaiv instead of military personnel