Mykolaiv’s budget lacks the funds for «Safe City»: expenditure will be spread over three years

Mykolaiv. Archive photo by ‘NikVesti’

Due to a shortage of funds in Mykolaiv’s budget for the ‘Safe City’ programme, its implementation has been extended until 2028, and it has been decided to spread the funding over three years.

The relevant decision to amend the city’s Digital Transformation Programme for 2026–2028 was endorsed by the city council’s executive committee today, 22 July, according to NikVesti.

«At present, we do not have the full amount of funding required for our major ‘Safe City’ project. We are therefore forced to spread the funding plan out over several years. These changes stem from the fact that we are spreading the remaining amount required to fully complete this project over three years.

We are currently unable to predict how much funding will be allocated in each of those years. We are therefore setting aside a reserve so that, even if only a certain amount of funding becomes available, we can use it in the amount approved by the city council,» said Andrii Volkov, Chief of Staff of the Executive Committee.

According to the amendments to the programme, the total funding for the project amounts to 98.05 million hryvnias. Of this, 38.5 million hryvnias are planned to be allocated in 2026, 32 million hryvnias in 2027, and 27.5 million hryvnias in 2028.

At the same time, 9.5 million hryvnias have been earmarked specifically for the construction of the «Safe City» CCTV system, as follows:

• 2026 – 5.5 million hryvnias (plans are in place to install 24 CCTV cameras);
• 2027 – 2 million hryvnias (8 CCTV cameras);
• 2028 — 2 million hryvnias (8 CCTV cameras).

It should be noted that in Mykolaiv, 60.7 million hryvnias were spent over five years on the construction of the «Safe City» information and telecommunications system for video surveillance and video analytics. As of December 2025, the project was 95 per cent complete.

It is also worth noting that the city recently purchased software, at a cost of 4.6 million hryvnias, which will automatically process traffic data recorded by the cameras.

According to police figures, in 2024 the «Safe City Mykolaiv» CCTV cameras helped solve 94 crimes, and in 2025 the figure had risen to 135.