The plenary session of the Kyiv City Council, which was scheduled to take place on September 25, was canceled by order of the city mayor Vitaliy Klitschko. This decision appeared on the Kyiv City State Administration website late in the evening of September 24, less than half a day before the start of the session. The reasons for the cancellation are not officially explained.
However, the political background around the Kyiv City Council has become extremely tense in recent weeks. The other day, deputy Andriy Vitrenko, head of the Servant of the People faction in the City Council, registered a draft resolution on expressing no confidence in Vitali Klitschko and early termination of his powers. According to Vitrenko, this is a reaction to the systemic inaction and managerial inefficiency of the city mayor.
Vitaliy Klitschko did not publicly comment on the threat of impeachment. Instead, his deputy, Valentyn Mondryivskyi, made a statement, reminding that electing a mayor is the exclusive right of Kyiv residents and only during the elections can the mayor's performance be assessed.
However, sources in the Kyiv City Council suggest that the real reason for the cancellation of the session is Klitschko's reluctance to allow consideration of politically sensitive issues, in particular the situation surrounding his deputy Mykola Povoroznyk. It was the failure to implement the Kyiv City Council's decision to dismiss him that became the subject of conflict between the deputies and the Kyiv City State Administration. During a meeting of the conciliation council on September 23, Klitschko stated that Povoroznyk would not be dismissed, after which the deputies refused to consider other issues, except those that were critically important for the city's life.
Against this background, Andriy Vitrenko registered a draft resolution of no confidence in Klitschko, and within a few hours it became known that the plenary session had been canceled.
Another sore topic that was to be discussed at the session was the situation with the deceived investors of Kyivmiskbud. The city authorities publicly promised to resolve the issue of the developer's additional capitalization by the end of September. However, the promised meeting did not take place, and the investors never saw any progress.
Although the decision on additional capitalization was made last year, the 2.56 billion hryvnias earmarked for this purpose have not been allocated. According to Kyiv City Council deputy Volodymyr Levin, Kyiv's budget does not have enough money to implement this decision. This is partly due to the fact that a quorum was not met at the budget commission meeting on September 23. Vitrenko called the UDAR faction, which has a majority in the commission, the culprit.
There is also a version that the capital's budget allegedly lost 8 billion hryvnias due to changes in the legislation on the redistribution of bank profits. However, Vitrenko calls these statements manipulation, emphasizing that there are no official calculations that would confirm such a loss for Kyiv.
Regarding Kyivmiskbud, Vitrenko places full responsibility on Klitschko and his entourage, who, according to him, have abused investors' trust for years and avoided any responsibility.
In the current situation, it is unknown when exactly the next plenary session will take place. According to Vitrenko, there are discussions on the sidelines about holding it on October 2, but at the moment there are no necessary procedural steps: the presidium has not been assembled, the agenda has not been approved, and therefore it is not yet possible to organize the session in a legal manner.
