Debts and Cypriot beneficiaries: the issue of Odesa Summer Theater is back on the agenda

At the April 29 session of the Odesa City Council, members of the city council decided to propose to return to the issue of the boundaries of the City Garden and the inclusion of the Summer Theater, which became the cause of a loud scandal earlier this year.

According to Olga Kvasnytska, a deputy of the Odesa City Council, the agenda of the session currently includes the issue of amendments to the City Target Program for the Protection and Improvement of the Environment for 2022-2028.

The amendments provide for funding for the development of scientific and project documentation to increase the boundaries of the City Garden Park by including the Summer Theater. The production of the documentation will cost UAH 200 thousand, and it is for the allocation of these funds that the deputies are asked to vote.

"In order to ensure the protection of the unified landscape and architectural ensemble, the Department asked the rector of the Mechnikov National University to provide an expert opinion on expanding the boundaries of the nature reserve fund (NRF). And I have important news for you: we have already received this expert opinion from scientists, which clearly confirms the feasibility of such a status!" the MP said.

On January 8, 2026, the executive committee of the Odesa City Council decided to propose to the deputies to approve the project for the maintenance and reconstruction of the park-monument of landscape gardening art of local importance "City Garden Park", in which two misunderstandings were noticed:

• First, the text part of the project contains a description of a large number of graphic materials, but there is not a single diagram in the published document.
• The second is that the descriptive part states that historically the City Garden project was located on an area of 2.2 hectares. At the same time, later in the document, the area of the City Garden is somehow reduced to 1.86 hectares. If you add the area of the Summer Theater of 0.39 hectares, then it should have been 2.2 hectares.

Initially, it was planned to submit this project to the session hall for the session to be held on January 28, then the date of the session was postponed twice and eventually this draft decision was removed from the agenda.

How it all started

The struggle for the Summer Theater began in 2002 when the then head of the Department of Cultural Heritage Protection, Natalia Shterbul, informed the Soling JV that the territory of the Summer Theater was not protected by the state as a park. After that, on July 4, 2003, Soling JV bought the buildings and facilities of the Summer Theater from the Regional Council's Department for the Use of Property of the Odesa Regional Council.

On December 23, 2016, the Odesa City Council entered into a 49-year land lease agreement with Soling for the 0.39-hectare Summer Theater, and on January 16, 2017, city officials issued urban planning restrictions on the development of the land plot. Subsequently, on June 2 of the same year, the company was issued a construction permit for the Summer Theater, which was later revoked.

On September 1, 2017, the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine refused to approve the historical and urban planning justification for the construction project. The Prosecutor's Office of Odesa Region, on behalf of Soling, filed an appeal and cassation, and the court dismissed the company's claim against the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine.

However, on November 3, 2017, the Department of Ecology of the City Council issued an act to remove 109 trees on the territory of the Summer Theater, which caused outrage among the townspeople. On November 14, 2017, the first public protest against the removal of trees took place. On November 18, 2017, the second public protest took place, which was attended not only by activists of eco-protection organizations and representatives of nationalist groups in the city, but also by ordinary Odesa residents. In total, about 1,000 people gathered. Fights broke out between the protesters and police officers, and in one of them, the then head of the regional police department, Dmytro Holovin, was injured - his head was smashed.

Eventually, the protests led to the following:

• On November 24, 2017, at a meeting of the Advisory Council on Cultural Heritage of Odesa Region, the boundaries of the City Garden were clarified, and the Summer Theater was included in its composition.
• On December 14, 2017, the Expert Commission for the consideration of the inclusion of cultural heritage sites in the State Register of Immovable Monuments of Ukraine of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine supported the conclusion of the rapporteur on the expediency of amending the accounting documentation regarding the Summer Theater's belonging to the City Garden.
• On September 23, 2020, the Fifth Administrative Court of Appeal upheld the right of Odesa residents to preserve their historical heritage and establish the boundaries of the architectural monument by including the territory of the Summer Theater in the boundaries of the City Garden architectural and urban planning monument in Odesa.

City council officials are being complained to the police

Intent asked environmentalist Vladyslav Balinsky, one of the leaders of the movement against the construction of the Summer Theater, to comment on the situation, who said that he was preparing a statement to the police against city council officials, in which he intends to accuse them of inaction.

"To summarize what is happening, the city authorities are not only playing along with the Soling JV within their powers, but are going to directly violate their powers for the sake of Soling's welfare. Thus, after the failure of the plans to build the territory of the Summer Theater, after 2021, Soling JV stopped paying rent for the leased land plot. At the same time, the city's Department of Land Resources not only failed to take measures to stop this violation, they tried to convince me that Soling's actions were completely legal, despite the fact that the city had lost almost UAH 8 million from 2022 to 2025. In February 2026, I personally filed a statement with the head of the city's military administration, informing Serhiy Lysak about this and reasonably asking him to take measures to terminate the lease agreement on the grounds that the tenant had breached its obligations. They have not yet responded," the environmentalist explained.

Кирило Бойко