18 June 2025
(Screenshot: Odesa City Council)
Members of the Standing Committee on Planning, Budget and Finance of the Odesa City Council have agreed to allocate UAH 800,000 to the National University "Odesa Polytechnic" to develop a project to repair a dormitory that was damaged by a Russian missile strike.
As Oleksii Potapskyi, a city council member and chairman of the commission, said during the meeting, the city council received a letter from the Department of Education and Science requesting to allocate budget funds for construction and technical expertise, development of project documentation, and repair of the dormitory's foundation and facade.
"I think we need to help our educational institutions. 800 thousand hryvnias is not such a big amount," the MP said.
He also noted that it was a dormitory, not an academic building.
Instead, MP Volodymyr Kornienko, who was present at the commission but not a member, suggested that his colleagues postpone consideration of this issue until the budget is distributed among utilities and institutions.
"This is a state institution that should be funded by the Ministry of Education and Science. They have a budget, which is replenished, among other things, at the expense of contract students, who are quite a lot at the Polytechnic," Kornienko said, adding that this money could be used, for example, to restore a building on General Petrov Street, which was also recently damaged by shelling.
He advised the university to apply to the Ministry of Education and Science for funds.
"If they refuse, then we will have legal grounds to consider this issue," he added.
However, the members of the commission approved the allocation of funds.
Moreover, in March 2025, the members of the same commission rejected a letter from Odesa Polytechnic University to allocate 700 thousand hryvnias from the city budget to help eliminate the consequences of the Russian Federation's attacks. According to Potapsky, <span>it was not the responsibility of the city council.</span>
<span>"A respected university has its own owner, and we believe that it is the prerogative of the state to eliminate the consequences of the attacks there, while we have many problems of our own in the city and cannot help everyone at the same time. In addition, there is the matter of precedent. If we start helping now, tomorrow other universities will start applying, and not only universities, but also commercial enterprises," the </span><span> deputy noted.</span>
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