The Kyiv City Council has adopted new Rules for preparing and making decisions on the acquisition and termination of rights to municipal land in Kyiv. The document, submitted by deputies Viktoriya Ptashnyk and Dmytro Bilotserkovets, aims to make land processes more transparent — to introduce a priority for considering applications, control over tenants, a public register, and a ban on suddenly introducing land issues "by voice."
Among the key innovations are a moratorium on the sale of municipal buildings until the plots under them are formed, and an instruction to the Kyiv City State Administration to immediately contact the courts and law enforcement agencies in cases of self-encroachment. The draft also establishes that when considering decisions on the assignment or termination of land rights, the conclusions of the Kyiv City State Administration departments (in particular, cultural heritage protection and architectural control) and the legal support department of the Kyiv City Council must be taken into account, and in the case of open criminal proceedings, information about this must be announced at a plenary session.
The rules prohibit submitting land issues for consideration "by voice vote", except for urgent needs - the placement of state institutions, military facilities or termination of lease agreements due to non-fulfillment of obligations by the tenant. The document also details the minimum sizes of plots for various types of development and provides that the transfer of plots without bidding is possible only in cases expressly provided for by the Land Code.
The new regulations introduce a mechanism for controlling tenants: the Department of Land Resources of the Kyiv City State Administration must inspect the plots transferred from July 16, 2020, no later than three months before the expiration of the lease term, and if abuses are detected, prepare a submission to refuse to renew the contract. In addition, a queue for considering applications by date and time of their registration is introduced, as well as an obligation to create a public register for online monitoring of the status of consideration of land applications.
However, the resolution raises questions of practical implementation. First, the new Rules do not repeal the current 2017 Procedure, so legal conflicts and ambiguities in the application of procedures are possible. Second, a number of important provisions were removed during the revision — for example, the norm on a rent of no less than 12% for those who used plots of land without registration — which raises doubts about the completeness of anti-corruption protection.
During the vote at the session on October 9, 2025, the decision was supported by 63 deputies (the system showed 61 votes) - while Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko and deputy Mykhailo Prysiazhnyuk stated that their votes were not taken into account. Discussions in the session hall reflected both support (Ptashnyk called the document a transparency tool) and reservations: in particular, deputy Mykola Konopelko pointed out the risks of ambiguous interpretation of certain norms and demanded to consider his own amendments.
The context of the adoption is a wave of scandals surrounding the capital's land and a series of investigations, which were called "Clean City" (NABU/SAP). It was against the background of criminal proceedings and public complaints about land allocation practices that the Kyiv City Council prepared these Rules. However, as critics note, the rules are worthless without impartial implementation: fixing the norms on paper does not guarantee the cessation of "toilet schemes", the transfer of green zones for development, or losses to the budget due to the alienation of land without auctions.
