Business trips abroad: how top Odesa officials spent the budget

While Odesa was building international relations in the midst of the war, city council officials were traveling abroad on a massive scale. According to the analysis, the largest expenses on foreign business trips were incurred not by the city leadership, but by department heads.

Nikcenter analyzed information on officials' business trips and found out how much they cost taxpayers.

The most frequent traveler abroad during the full-scale war was the former mayor of Odesa , Hennadiy Trukhanov, who made 18 trips in three years. These were mostly international conferences and negotiations on rebuilding the city. The first visits took place in 2022, to Marseille, Rome, and Venice, where they discussed, among other things, the inclusion of Odesa's historic center in the UNESCO heritage. In 2023, he also visited Japan, where he signed agreements on infrastructure development and received medical aid for the city.

The year 2024 was the most active for Trukhanov: he visited a number of European cities, participated in international summits and negotiations. In total, he spent 33 days abroad this year alone. Although officially the trips are called free of charge for the budget, the documents indicate additional payments for business trips - 240 thousand hryvnias in 2024 and more than 100 thousand in the first half of 2025.

Deputy mayors also traveled extensively. Pavlo Vugelman, in particular, traveled to Israel, Kenya, Japan, Spain, and Germany, spending more than 50 days abroad. His trips were also not financed directly from the budget, but he received travel expenses. Hanna Pozdnyakova traveled to Europe to participate in negotiations and study energy and renewable projects, spending more than three weeks on business trips in total.

The largest expenses were in departments. The leader was Ivan Liptuga, former director of the Department of International Cooperation, Culture and Marketing, whose trips in 2024-2025 cost the budget more than UAH 860 thousand. His business trips included participation in international events in France, Austria, and other countries. In total, he spent about 88 days abroad. Together with the expenses for his deputy and subordinates, the total cost of one department reached almost UAH 1.9 million.

Other departments had smaller but still significant expenses. For example, the director of the Economic Development Department, Andriy Rozov, made a number of trips to Europe and Asia, which cost about 540 thousand hryvnias. Some business trips raised questions, in particular, when employees of municipal institutions or even relatives of officials traveled abroad with officials at budget expense.

In addition, employees of municipal enterprises also went on foreign trips. Such business trips cost the budget another 230 thousand hryvnias. As a result, all foreign trips of Odesa officials and utility workers during the war cost almost three million hryvnias.

Also, when searching the official website of the Odesa Regional Military Administration for travel orders for Oleksandr Prokudin, the specialists of the Center for Public Investigations faced a problem - these documents were not available there. At the same time, they managed to get them through an information request, which made it possible to find out the reasons and circumstances of the head of the region's trips outside the region.

In addition, in 2025, Vitalii Kim, the head of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration, spent 49 days outside the region on business trips. Most often, Kim traveled to Kyiv - 15 trips were recorded. He also traveled to Kharkiv, Dnipro, Sumy region, Zakarpattia, and Odesa. The only foreign visit was to Copenhagen.

Анна Бальчінос