Journalists will be given access to Mykolaiv city council building with individual cards, — Sienkevych

The mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Sienkevych, has said that journalists will be given access to the city council building. Entrance will be possible with a personal card.

He said this in a comment to the correspondent of NikVesti.

Officials are currently preparing a special regulation on access to the administrative building.

«It will be implemented in the near future. There will be a Regulation on access to the building. We must not forget that we are working in a time of war. There are a lot of people in this building. There are rules for the operation of such institutions, and we have to bring them to a logical and legal state,» said Oleksandr Sienkevych.

Journalists will be able to enter the city council with individual cards. The mayor stressed that the city authorities should be able to check the identity of everyone who enters the building.

In addition, starting from the new year, Mykolaiv journalists will be invited to staff meetings, which the media have not had access to since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

«As promised, starting from the new year we will invite the media to the staff meetings that we hold once a month. They require pre-registration so that journalists can come and listen to how the city lives,» he added.

What about access to Mykolaiv City Hall?

Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, journalists have not had access to events or official meetings held in the city council building for security reasons. However, the practice of restricting journalists' access to the Mykolaiv City Council was introduced in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At that time, Andrii Volkov, the executive committee's chief of staff, said that such restrictions were being implemented in a test mode, in particular because of the SBU's requirements to control all visitors to Mykolaiv City Hall. That is, before entering the city hall, visitors, including journalists, have to say who they want to address and what issue they want to address. After that, the guards write down this information, call the representative of the city hall to whom the visitor came, who goes down to the checkpoint and picks up his guest.

However, the official also voiced another version of why access to the city council building was restricted for journalists. According to Andrii Volkov, officials feel uncomfortable with the fact that everything they say becomes news, which changes their behaviour at working meetings in the presence of the media. At the time, Mykolaiv City Hall also said that access to the city council building was restricted in accordance with the resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine No. 939 «For official use only».

It should be noted that all meetings of the sessions of the Mykolaiv City Council, as well as deputy commissions and meetings of the executive committee, have been held online for the third year since the beginning of the full-scale war. Mykolaiv city mayor's staff meetings with officials are also closed to the media. Unlike the Mykolaiv City Council, in May 2024, journalists were granted access to the sidelines of the Verkhovna Rada to cover the work of the parliament during plenary sessions in the same way as during the covid pandemic.

In June 2024, the Mykolaiv City Council introduced new access rules for media representatives. Journalists could enter the building only at the invitation of officials. Already in July, Mykolaiv police opened a criminal investigation into the denial of access to the city council building to journalists of the online media outlet NikVesti.

However, as it became known in March 2025, law enforcement closed the case because they found no grounds for further investigation.