Secretary of Chernihiv City Council Oleksandr Lomako: While authorities were engaged in political persecution, they literally slept through tonnes of "shit" from Russia
The confrontation between the central government and the local government of Chernihiv has been going on for two years. Despite the fact that the President’s Office succeeded in getting the mayor of Chernihiv, Vladyslav Atroshenko, dismissed, the presidential vertical has not gained full control of the city. And the confrontation continues to this day, harming the life of the city that defended Kyiv from the Russian invasion in March 2022.
Censor.NET's correspondent talked to the secretary of the Chernihiv City Council,Oleksandr Lomako, about the recent searches in the local authorities' offices, how the city is recovering, whether it is ready for winter, and what is happening to the Desna River .
- Last week, you were searched, as I understand it, in connection with the allocation of a land plot for a petrol station. Can you elaborate on the details of the charges against you?
- I am not charged with anything. Interestingly, this is a case from 2017. In 2017, the city council allocated a land plot for the construction of a petrol station at its session, and the executive committee gave permission to enter into an investment agreement for its construction. Then the entrepreneur who received the land paid one and a half million hryvnias in share payments for a few hundred hectares of land. That is, what the police claim in their news reports that the city council allocated the land for free is not true. There is a payment made at the 2017 exchange rate of about 56 thousand dollars. First of all.
Secondly, I was neither the secretary of the city council nor a deputy of the city council at that time, and I had nothing to do with this site at all. And the documents that they seized had neither my signature nor my approval on them.
They had a different goal. Ten minutes after they appeared in my office, a message appeared on the telegram channels administered by the Office that the acting mayor of Chernihiv was being searched for land fraud. There was no indication that it was 2017, no mention that there were any questions to me personally.
The city council searched two rooms - my office and the office where all the documents are kept. They heroically seized the decision of the executive committee, which is available on the city council website. And the list of approvals of this decision is a slider where the deputy mayors approve it. I repeat, there is no my signature there. They also seized the personal files of certain officials, including the late former first deputy mayor, and my mobile phone. The picture was the whole purpose of their visit.
Moreover, searches in our city council are already taking place on a regular basis.
- Which one is it?
- This is the 33rd visit of law enforcement officers in 25 different criminal cases during the martial law period alone. This is just the city council building; if you add structural units and utilities, it will be well over 100. But this was the first time that armed men with machine guns were accompanied by investigators and blocked the entrances and exits to the city council, and they tried to prevent me from moving around the building with force. They checked the bags of women and employees who were leaving the building, which was the first time in the history of these searches. And I think their goal is clear: to create a political image and intimidate, let's say, put pressure on me personally and intimidate ordinary employees.
- What is the point of such intimidation? There must be a goal, something to achieve, right?
- Their goal has not changed. Bankova's control over Chernihiv. They have not been able to achieve this for several years, so they are afraid.
After our Armed Forces of Ukraine lifted the Russian blockade of Chernihiv in early April 2022, Chernihiv has been under political blockade from the centre, from the Office of the President. Through this forceful pressure, intimidation, and various threats to members of the city council, some officials are trying to keep the city under political siege. Their goal is to gain full control over Chernihiv, which has a fairly independent local government.
They work systematically:
- This includes the suspension of the mayor, as the whole of Ukraine knows, when, for absolutely far-fetched reasons, the mayor of a city supported by 80% of people during the war was removed from his post by a decision of the Yavoriv court, and then dismissed by decisions of other courts.
- This includes the introduction of the military administration, which is being illegally endowed with local government powers.
Here, I will briefly focus on the legal framework. The law on the legal regime of martial law states that only the Verkhovna Rada can grant the head of the military administration the powers of local self-government. This has not happened in Chernihiv. We have a functioning and legitimate city council, executive committee, and all the bodies. And through pressure on judges, they are still trying to take these powers away from local government and give them to one official who was not elected, who is not supported by anyone in the city, but who was appointed by Bankova Street. What is this if not usurpation of power?
- This is also the constant pressure of the security forces on the team and me personally, as the acting mayor. This was my fourth search in the last year - twice at home and twice in my office. They intimidate employees, they intimidate my family: they come at 7 am, the children are getting ready for school, they break into the apartment... you can imagine. They came and took a mobile phone, left. They have already taken four phones.
- Who do you have such interesting conversations with?
- It is difficult for me to comment on what they are looking for, but every search ends with the seizure of a mobile phone. Apparently, they are very interested in something there.
- I understand that the courts are also involved in all these processes?
- Yes. In addition to the security forces, Bankova actively uses the courts against local governments. The latest decisions are simply amazing. The Constitution states in black and white that the adoption of the community budget is the exclusive authority of the city council session. Open Article 143. This position is confirmed by the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Justice clearly states this. This is confirmed by a detailed and very clear scientific and legal opinion of the Institute of Lawmaking and Legal Expertise of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Everyone says that no one can take away the powers of local self-government in the presence of existing local self-government. But despite these absolutely logical things, the President's Office receives opposite court decisions through telephone law. Under pressure, judges simply do not take into account all the arguments and make, to put it mildly, very dubious decisions against the Chernihiv community. And I know that this happens under pressure after calls, and everyone knows who is calling.
- Who?
- Let's just say that the person who "killed Chechens during the blockade of Kyiv" is personally in charge of these processes, both in terms of all decisions and coordination of the security forces.
- Well, this is a very recognisable description. But can anyone prove that these calls were made by Tatarov?
- I think that when the government changes in Ukraine, judges will be able to tell a lot about the pressure they were under to make absolutely illegal decisions that contradict the Constitution and are beyond belief. I'm talking about the dismissal of the mayors of Chernihiv and Rivne, the community budget, and many other things.
Based on the experience of Chernihiv, I will say clearly that the military administration is not about the security of the region or citizens. It is a purely political mechanism for Bankova to seize control of the community, resources and budget without elections. That's all. In our city council, out of 42 deputies, only 3 represent the "Servant of the People". Despite this will of the people, it is this political force that Bankova is trying to transfer control of the city to. We do not succumb to this pressure and continue to work. This is the main reason for everything that is happening in the relationship between Chernihiv and the central government.
I am convinced, and I really want the initiators of this blockade to know, that Chernihiv residents will never forgive this government for such disregard for the city, which has been holding back the enemy for more than a month and preventing it from reaching the capital at a very high cost. And such actions against the city are perceived by Chernihiv residents as a spit in the face of the entire community.
- As far as I understand, the government did not gain control over the majority of deputies in the council?
- Absolutely not. That is why they are constantly changing their pressure tactics. At first, they wanted to transfer all powers to the military administration and submitted a resolution to the Verkhovna Rada in February 2023. It was on the agenda. But the MPs did not even put this resolution to a vote, as the head of the "Servant of the People" faction explained on the sidelines to one of the Chernihiv MPs who came up to ask why we were not voting on the resolution on Chernihiv, he said: "I have no votes for this bullshit".
Their second attempt was to remove me from office by serving me with a suspicion, and they tried to do so in two cases. But in the Prosecutor General's Office, which approves the text of the suspicion prepared by the Security Service of Ukraine, there are people who are still friends with the law and do not sign all the documents. Although they had a plan to suspend me and continue to try to run Chernihiv manually.
Their third attempt has been going on for months - to reshape the composition of the Chernihiv City Council. Vladyslav Atroshenko's "Ridnyi Dim" party gained a majority in the Chernihiv City Council. It has 26 deputies out of 42.
And despite the systematic ignoring of the sessions by other political forces that work closely with the "servants", the city council meets and considers most issues. To change this, the security forces are actively working with the deputies. The local SSU manages this process, and the TCR is involved (at the last session, a deputy was taken away from the meeting, despite his reservation). But it doesn't work, because people elected deputies to work for the interests of the city, not to surrender it to those who keep Chernihiv under siege.
- And didn't you try to negotiate?
- There were some attempts by the head of the military administration, but it was blackmail, not dialogue. I had to explain that we would not work together in this way.
- Can you give us any specific examples of blackmail and pressure?
- When they issued a decree stating that no payment to the city could be made without the approval of the military administration, they made an offer: "Give land plots in Chernihiv to my advisers, developers from the 'Servant of the People' party, and only then will I sign the payment for public transport services. Otherwise, it will stop".
Unfortunately, public transport in our city stopped. It was decided by an official of the military administration - buses did not work in the city for two days.
"Give my person the position of head of the housing and communal services department or the capital construction department, and I will sign the documents for the restoration of school No. 19."
And so it is in everything. In other words, in addition to pressure from the President's Office, there are also local tsars appointed by the Office who take advantage of this opportunity to enrich themselves at the expense of the community or to solve personal vested interests.
- Did you go to the law enforcement agencies with this?
- I went to the police and described everything in detail. And during the interrogation, I explained to the investigator for several hours how it all happened. With witnesses, when the head of the military administration said that he would not sign the funds for the transport until his advisor had registered three land plots that he had allocated by his order. The city council refused to do so, and the next day the transport was stopped. It happened in front of witnesses, and I showed this to the police during interrogation. But the security forces have a list of officials, they simply cannot be touched. And I am often approached by ordinary executives, decent security officers, of whom there are quite a few in the Security Service of Ukraine and the National Police. They are ashamed, they apologise, they say: "We can't touch them. This is the team".
In this regard, I remember the story of 2004, the story of dumplings and trotyl. On 18 October 2004, I was still a 3rd year student and an active member of youth movements opposed to the Kuchma-Yanukovych regime. I came home from class, put the dumplings on the stove to cook, and 5 minutes later, security forces broke into my apartment, put me on the floor, started searching my apartment, and in the oven where the dumplings were cooked, they "found" 500 grams of trotyl with a detonator attached, which could have exploded at any time and blown up half the entrance. And I spent 11 days in a temporary detention centre.
Later, after the Orange Revolution and the change of power, the new police leadership publicly apologised for political repression.
So, I have a question about what today's security forces will say when the government changes in the country. And this will definitely happen. Will they apologise again, like in 2004, or will they run away, like in 2014?
- Yes, and what about the proceedings that were initiated against you last year?
- At the time, they dreamed of imposing suspicion on me for not dismissing Atroshenko from the post of mayor. The court suspended him for a year, but that was not enough for them. They took this opportunity to suspend me, allegedly for not complying with the court's decision. But they deceived themselves, because they took two paths at once. They registered a proceeding under which they planned to issue me a suspicion. They have already taken the case to Kyiv to go to the Shevchenkivskyi court. But at the same time, the head of the military administration went to court to oblige me to dismiss Atroshenko from his post. And the Chernihiv Administrative Court upheld this claim. After Vladyslav Atroshenko was dismissed from his post, the case against me fell apart. The investigator looked very unhappy during the interrogation.
- In this case of the petrol station, what is the rent there now? Because at least in the local telegram channels, they wrote that the rent was very low.
- The maximum rate there is 12% of the normative monetary value, which is the same for all petrol stations in the city. This is UAH 280 thousand a year.
- Your opponents also say that you are still doing Atroshenko's bidding and making decisions in his interests. How does Atroshenko influence you? How often do you communicate with him?
- Vladyslav Atroshenko has not left Chernihiv. I believe that, at least since independence, he is the most effective mayor who has changed the city dramatically. And most citizens recognise this. Now he is not involved in the management of the city, does not hold any meetings, etc. for obvious reasons, namely absurd court decisions. But, of course, we communicate. We have known each other for a long time, I am a member of his political team in Chernihiv. And if, given his experience and authority, I can ask him for some advice on the city's economic issues, I think it's a great advantage.
- Let's talk about other important issues for the city. I know that most of the fortifications are funded by the regional state administration. Chernihiv lacks funds, and you asked Kyiv for them. Kyiv was not allowed to give you money, according to the statement of the Secretary of the Kyiv City Council, Bondarenko, this process was blocked. What is the situation now? Who is funding this and what is the situation with the fortifications?
- We have several lines of fortification in the Chernihiv region. Some of them are being built by the RMA at the expense of the state. And there is a line right next to the city. Back in 2022, Mayor Atroshenko went to the Zaluzhnyi Commander-in-Chief with this issue, so that we could be allowed to build the fortification closest to Chernihiv as a city.
Then Zaluzhnyi agreed on it, and in 2022-2023 we allocated UAH 110 million from the Chernihiv city budget for the construction of the fortification line. Already in 2024, I received a request from OC "North" about the need to install 23 concrete fire structures, which are needed on this line.
Given the difficulties with the city's budget, especially given the withdrawal of personal income tax, I turned to the city of Kyiv to build these facilities 50/50. I did this with a very simple logic. Chernihiv protects not only itself, but also the capital. I am grateful to Klitschko personally and to all the members of the Kyiv City Council who supported this decision. But, unfortunately, I saw a very strange picture when, relatively speaking, on Monday the Ministry of Finance approves the allocation of these funds, and a week later it withdraws its previous letter of approval. And this issue is still blocked.
For now, we will finance 100% of the project at the expense of the community. We have already held all the tenders and are currently working on the project.
- It is clear that we are facing a very difficult winter in terms of energy. What is the situation in the city? How prepared are you? Have you bought any additional cogeneration units?
- We understand that the winter will be very difficult. It is not the first difficult one for us, because our Chernihiv CHPP was severely damaged in 2022. And in fact, in a very short period between the lifting of the blockade of the city in April 2022 and the start of the 2022-2023 heating season, we managed to launch it, including by purchasing a transformer, for which the deputy who signed the documents is still on trial. And we went through the first heating season after the blockade, supplying heat to 99% of apartments.
Energy infrastructure facilities are being regularly shelled across the country, including in Chernihiv region. We are preparing for different scenarios.
In general, the state of preparation for the heating season is now over 80%. We have already completed all the technical work, hydraulic testing, network preparation and everything else we need to do for this period.
In preparation for a scenario where there is a shortage of electricity, we are currently installing five cogeneration units. One has already been installed and four are in operation.
We are grateful for the four USAID units that were donated to the city free of charge. And now we are negotiating, and I think they will end positively, and also help with financing, because it is quite a lot of money.
In addition, all our infrastructure facilities are equipped with generators of various capacities.
- So the townspeople don't have to worry?
- This depends on where and how many missiles will be flying in, and this, in turn, depends on how timely our partners fulfil their air defence commitments.
- Probably, the most discussed topic in recent weeks is the situation with the pollution of the Desna River and the water situation. To what extent does this affect Chernihiv? Because, as I understand it, the city does not receive water from the river.
- In the Kursk region, several facilities were blown up - a sugar factory, sewage treatment plants near this factory. Gradually, this spot, and there are several spots, moved from the Kursk region to Chernihiv region, then to the Desna river, and now the spot is moving smoothly towards Kyiv. It reached Chernihiv last Monday.
These days, there is a very pungent smell near the river, dark-coloured water, and a very large number of dead fish. We have already taken out more than seven tonnes of dead fish for disposal these days. In fact, this environmental disaster is very significant, as are the consequences for the Desna. It is worth noting that Chernihiv residents do not consume water from the Desna. We don't have a water intake - we use wells. Therefore, this does not pose a threat to the safety and life of the city.
- But while it's warm, people are still swimming...
- No, a week ago I banned access to the rivers, we installed fencing tapes, municipal guard patrols that prohibit people from swimming, put up the necessary signs, this is the first thing. We also have a lot of sports infrastructure on the city beach, and now access to it is restricted.
But for Kyiv, objectively, this could be a big problem, because if the water reaches the capital in the same condition as it was near Chernihiv, there will be big problems with drinking water for several days or more. I hope that the necessary measures will be taken and that the safety of Kyiv residents will not be threatened.
And it is very strange to me to observe the almost complete inaction of government agencies. This situation is an environmental disaster at the national level. It affects three regions plus the capital. The sewage that is now floating from the Kursk region towards Kyiv could have been stopped before Chernihiv. At the very least, the consequences could have been minimised to a great extent. Aeration stations could help with this. We have installed one in Chernihiv on our own initiative and we see that it is working. If the water had been saturated with oxygen when the threat became known - and for at least two weeks this water from the Kursk region was going to the city of Chernihiv, through many settlements in the Chernihiv region - the situation could have been improved.
No action was taken at all during this period. Why? Because the regional authorities and the head of the regional administration personally were always engaged in other tasks: fulfilling political instructions to block the local government of Chernihiv. They actively disrupted the city council session that we had just two weeks ago and, unfortunately, simply slept through this situation and allowed an environmental disaster to occur. They reported to Kyiv on the "heroic successes" of the fight against the city, rather than shouting about the need to respond urgently. Well done, they played politics, and now this is a national problem and a threat to millions of Kyiv residents. While the authorities were engaged in political persecution, they literally slept through tonnes of "shit" from Russia. This is a very illustrative example. It makes you worry about the country.
Tetiana Nikolaienko, Censor.NET
