Mykolaiv mayor wants to win «Oscar for publicity» and promised to open for journalists his meetings with subordinates

Mayor of Mykolaiv Oleksandr Sienkevych promised to open staff meetings to the media, photo by NikVesti

The mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Sienkevych, has admitted that he wants to win «Oscar for publicity» and promised to open the so-called staff meetings he holds with his subordinates to journalists.

He said this during his press conference, answering a question from NikVesti correspondent Kateryna Sereda.

It should be noted that before the COVID-19 epidemic, that is, before 2020, such meetings, usually held either by the mayor or his first deputy with the participation of representatives of district administrations and heads of key departments, were open to media representatives once a month. In the summer of 2021, Oleksandr Sienkevych decided to resume this practice, but due to the full-scale invasion, it became impossible again.

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The mayor explained that the staff meetings are currently considering issues that, among other things, fall under the «secret». That is why, he clarified, the meetings are closed to media representatives.

«Hardware meetings with a large number of people take place once a month. We don't have weekly staff meetings now. And during these discussions, various issues are raised, including those that are classified as official, so to speak. I cannot control the course of events at the hardware meeting so that this data does not go public later,» said Oleksandr Sienkevych.

The mayor believes that journalists can publish information in local media that should not become public in wartime, calling it «the pursuit of hot news».

«Knowing the pursuit of hot facts and news by our journalistic community — and this is normal — I am worried that information that should not become public will become public at such meetings. That is, it will be released to the media. We provide everything we can, any information. Why attend such meetings? I don't know what the purpose is. I don't see any point in holding technical meetings in the public domain today,» the mayor added.

At the same time, the mayor added that media representatives can send an official information request to the city council and receive a response. He assured that the city authorities do not hide any information from journalists.

«Any information you want to get, you can get. We do not hide any information: money, people, salaries, business trips. You can find out everything you need to know. Send us a request, we will officially answer — we will try. But I will personally determine and decide whether meetings with the mayor and his deputies, their time and place, will be held until the end of martial law, and whether they should be broadcast or attended by journalists. I will also be publicly responsible for this. Before the martial law, we had public meetings, you could easily come in. We held them every week, and once a month we invited people. Now we don't hold such meetings once a week, there is no point in them, we hold them once a month,» explained Sienkevych.

Editor-in-Chief Kateryna Sereda asked the mayor why, under such circumstances, members of the public attend the meetings of the staff.

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The mayor said that they are present only at the first part of the meeting, which concerns the work of public councils, after which they are asked to leave the room.

«We do not invite civic activists, but members of the public council. They speak at the beginning, we thank them and ask them to leave the room. That is, they are present for the part that relates to their work — public councils. Since they are representatives of the community and they were elected by representatives of NGOs, we invite them and they convey the opinions of citizens to the officials present. We listen to them, write them down, monitor the issues, their implementation, and so on. We thank them for their work and let them go. And then we start a working meeting on water, electricity and so on. That is, those things that, unfortunately, we cannot publish today. I have a lot of respect for all our Mykolaiv journalists because they stayed, worked, covered the activities and so on. But there may be some information that seems interesting, and it may be closed. Or tomorrow a rocket will hit there, not on purpose, but they will say that they wrote it and there is the result... There is no intent, it's just security. And if you wanted to listen to what the representatives of the public council say, I can... but it's not very interesting. It's about half an hour to listen to various issues, such as the sewage system in the Staryi Vodopii neighbourhood, or blinds for yachtsmen, participation in the green economy programme. There is nothing there that would stir up the information space in Mykolaiv,» explained the mayor.

However, during the conversation, Oleksandr Sienkevych first promised that after the war is over, every such meeting will be open to journalists, and then said that once a month, such meetings will be public.

«I will give you a promise in front of everyone and on the online broadcast that as soon as martial law ends, we will involve journalists in all the hardware meetings that will be held. And secondly, I will think about how to make sure that during this martial law, we can have a meeting so that you can meet all these people who are present at the meeting and communicate in a working mode. Perhaps once a month we will hold some kind of open staff meeting, where we will simply not include issues that can be interpreted in any way. I want the city of Mykolaiv to be number one in terms of openness in Ukraine. I want us to be there so that I can get this statuette and put it in my karma «number one in transparency». I want us to do this. And if we need to do something else to make it happen, I will try to implement this factor as well,» added Oleksandr Sienkevych.

The day before, the mayor of Mykolaiv came up with an initiative to introduce mandatory income declaration for journalists working for registered Ukrainian media.

What about access to Mykolaiv City Hall?

As you know, 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, Andriy Volkov, the executive committee's chief of staff, said that such restrictions were being tested, in particular because of the SBU's requirement 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.

The Mykolaiv police opened a case in this regard, but less than a year later, they dropped the criminal proceedings that had been initiated after journalists were not allowed to enter the city council building.

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 №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.

As a reminder, in 2023, the Mykolaiv Regional Council, contrary to the regulations, refused to allow NikVesti to attend the session, which was scheduled to be held remotely.

Roman Holovenko, a lawyer at the Institute of Mass Information, said that the Mykolaiv Regional Council had no right to deny journalists access to the regional council meeting, but should only warn them of the security risks.