Senkevych spoke about the authorities without him: “Today it’s me, tomorrow it’ll be another mayor”

Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych said he was trying to delegate to the city council any powers he could transfer. He spoke about this approach and changes to the management of municipal enterprises on September 29, 2026, at a forum organized by the EU Anti-Corruption Initiative (EUACI) in Kyiv.

However, after the forum, at the October 2 session, council members did not support amendments to the charter of Mykolaivelektrotrans or the proposed membership of its supervisory board.

“Whatever I can transfer from my office to the city council, I try to do, because today it’s me, and tomorrow it’ll be another mayor. Yes, the role of an individual in history should not be overstated, but, in principle, everything needs to be geared toward making the system work,” Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych explained.

For municipal enterprises, the proposed approach involves setting up supervisory boards that would take on some oversight of their operations. The mayor wants to delegate this oversight to people who are independent of one another and say they intend to improve the enterprises’ performance.

At the forum, he outlined the following sequence of changes:

• Mykolaivelektrotrans — the mayor hoped the city council would adopt the relevant decision at its next session.
• Mykolaivoblteploenergo — similar changes are planned for a later date.

Sienkevych explained that these enterprises were selected for integrity assessments because they receive substantial amounts of funding from the city budget.

“Do I believe this, so to speak, eliminates all corruption risks at these enterprises? No. But at the very least, it will allow us to diversify decision-making away from the mayor. Today it’s me, and tomorrow it’ll be someone else,” Oleksandr Sienkevych said.

At the same forum, the mayor recalled his standoff with the city council during his first term:

“For the first five years, I fought with a city council where 26 of the 54 members were from the Opposition Bloc, and they even impeached me for six months. And, by the way, our Ukrainian courts reinstated me,” Oleksandr Sienkevych said.

The issue of council members’ powers and their influence over city decisions has also come up in other specific instances:

• In December 2018, Oleksandr Sienkevych vetoed a provision in a budget decision that allowed the budget commission to approve a list of projects for funding.
• In August 2025, Olena Kiseliova proposed restoring council members’ influence over the allocation of the budget to meet voters’ needs.
• At the September 24, 2026 session, five days before the forum, during a discussion about changing the membership of the water utility’s supervisory board, Sienkevych reproached council members for dragging out the consideration of issues. He recalled that in 2022, he said, he had been delegated the power to make decisions in place of the council. The mayor then said he saw no point in continuing the sessions and called them a waste of time.

We previously reported:

• Sienkevych reports on Mykolaiv’s anti-corruption reforms in Kyiv
• City council fails to dismiss Montavon: what happened around the Mykolaivvodokanal supervisory board
• Five to oversee Mykolaivelektrotrans: who is vying for seats on the supervisory board
• Millions under oversight? Mykolaivvodokanal supervisory board approved, with foreign nationals and lawyers
• Supervisory boards: will tariffs rise after “Sienkevych’s reforms” at municipal enterprises?