Members of Kherson Regional Council deny access to their declarations

The number of Kherson regional council members who concealed their declarations has increased to 12, and another 20 do not report their income at all. Among them are officials, businessmen, defendants in criminal cases, and those suspected of collaborating with the occupiers. While the region is suffering from shelling, a significant part of the political elite prefers to keep their finances "under lock and key" under the guise of martial law.

This was reported by the Center for Investigative Journalism.

The highest concentration of "secrecy" is observed in the ranks of the presidential party "Servant of the People". Exactly half of the MPs who have denied access to the reports represent this political force. Among them are the head of the regional council Oleksandr Samoilenko and the first deputy head of the DIA Dmytro Butriy. Although the latter's salary data is published monthly, the full picture of his assets remains inaccessible to voters.

Galyna Gondareva(Servant of the People) attracted special attention of journalists. Although the law allows those who perform tasks in the combat zone to close their declarations, the MP has reportedly been outside Ukraine since 2022. Despite this, her declaration remains non-public, and the MP ignores media inquiries about the motives for this decision.

PHOTO: investigator.org.ua

The most critical situation is with 20 MPs who do not submit declarations at all. For most of them, the reason is obvious - open cooperation with the Russian invaders.

• Oleksandr Kistechok (Batkivshchyna): One of the richest farmers in the Genichesk district remained in the occupied territory. His company, Dnipro LLC, was cloned in the Russian register and is now supplying grain to the occupiers.
• Viktor Pungin (European Solidarity): Despite belonging to the opposition party, he and his family own the Voskhod farm, which has successfully reported hundreds of millions of rubles in revenue in Russian jurisdiction.
• Dynasties of collaborators: Iryna Zbarovska (OPFL), the wife of the well-known gauleiter Petro Zbarovskyi, heads the "financial department" of the invaders in Kakhovka.

Even those declarations that remain open raise many questions due to obvious inconsistencies. Yuriy Vlasov ("We live here") declared a modest family income of 190 thousand hryvnias per year, but during the same period his wife became the owner of two apartments in Bulgaria, the total value of which reaches 3.8 million hryvnias. At the same time, the family's cash savings miraculously increased from 650 thousand to 3.2 million hryvnias over the year.

The situation with the first deputy chairman of the regional council, Yuriy Sobolevsky, is no less interesting. Journalists found that the politician declared more than UAH 3.5 million in cash in foreign currency, without providing clear explanations as to the sources of these funds.

Against this background, there are also "altruistic MPs", such as Anna Pyliai (Bloc Saldo), who did not declare any property or income for the entire year 2025, and allegedly lived on only 4 thousand hryvnias of IDP assistance last year.

While some hide their wealth, others leave the regional council. Danylo Repilevsky and Yuriy Kovalev (both from the Servant of the People party) were recalled by popular initiative for collaborating with the enemy. Several other deputies, such as Ihor Yosypenko and Vesna Martynova, resigned voluntarily. The regional council is still considering the resignations of three more deputies, but their consideration is systematically postponed.

In addition, in their 2025 declarations, some MPs from Kherson region demonstrated a significant difference in the level of income, property and savings - from multimillion-dollar assets to their actual absence.

TheCenter for Public Investigations, together with Intent, found that the largest amounts of declared funds are concentrated in cash, while some MPs are limited to salaries and minimal savings.

Анна Бальчінос