Open meetings with Mykolaiv mayor promised to journalists were postponed until next year

Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych postponed the opening of staff meetings for journalists until 2026. Photo: archive NikVesti

The mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Sienkevych, has decided to postpone the opening of staff meetings for journalists until early next year.

He said this in a comment to NikVesti.

«We have considered the possibility of opening staff meetings for journalists, and we plan to do so from the new year. We will have an open staff meeting, which we hold once a month,» said Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych.

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In July 2025, the mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Sienkevych, promised to open the staff meetings he holds with his subordinates to journalists and even joked about the «Oscar for publicity».

«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 staff 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 have a working conversation. 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 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 this requires an additional factor, I will try to implement it as well,» said Oleksandr Sшenkevych.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, such meetings were open to the media once a month. In the summer of 2021, the mayor tried to resume this practice, but due to the full-scale invasion, this became impossible.

Currently, the staff meetings are closed due to the consideration of issues classified as «secret», and media representatives can obtain information through official requests to the city council.

What about access to Mykolaiv City Hall?

Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion, journalists have not had access to events and official meetings in the city council building for security reasons. However, access to the city hall was restricted in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the time, Andrii Volkov, the executive committee's chief of staff, explained that all visitors, including journalists, had to inform the city council in advance whom they were visiting and what they were visiting about, after which security checked the information and let the guest through. According to Andrii Volkov, the restriction is also due to the fact that everything said by officials during meetings is instantly reported in the news, which changes their behaviour at work.

The police opened a case against journalists, but it was closed less than a year later. At the time, the mayor's office said that access was restricted according to Cabinet of Ministers Resolution №939 «For official use only».

Since the beginning of the war, sessions of the city council, deputy commissions and executive committee have been held online. However, on 30 October 2025, for the first time since the full-scale invasion, the session was held offline.