Websites of regional councils in the South: what voters know about their elected representatives

Local councils' websites are primarily a source of information about the activities of local governments, a virtual platform where you can find information about deputies, council chairmen, decisions made, and announcements of important events. Intent has studied the openness of the websites of three regional councils in the South of Ukraine and compared them with each other.

With this publication, Intent opens a series dedicated to analyzing the transparency of local councils' websites.

Research methodology

Intent's journalists examined the websites of Mykolaiv, Odesa and Kherson regional councils. The analysis was conducted as of May 28, 2025, for the period since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. The analysis will be conducted starting in 2022 to find out how the websites of Mykolaiv, Odesa and Kherson regional councils have been informing users since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

The assessment of the openness of territorial communities' websites is based on indicators prepared by Intent together with experts of the all-Ukrainian public campaign "Certification of Local Deputies".

The editors of the Intent do not exclude the possibility that some information may be available on the website, but is so hidden that it is almost impossible to obtain it. The purpose of the publications is to study the openness of community websites and the ease of obtaining information by an average user, not to investigate how to find this or that information.

The experts selected sixteen indicators based on Ukrainian legislation:

The Law of Ukraine "On Access to Public Information";

The Law of Ukraine "On the Status of Deputies of Local Councils";

The Law of Ukraine "On Local Self-Government";

Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine "On Approval of the Regulation on Data Sets to be Disclosed in the Form of Open Data";

The Budget Code of Ukraine.

The evaluation criterion is the convenience of obtaining information, its completeness and quality.

The regional council website could receive from 0 to 2 points for each indicator:

• 2 points - information is available;
• 1 point - there is information, but it is not complete or difficult to identify;
• 0 points - no information.

Analysis of websites

Website of Mykolaiv regional council

The website of Mykolaiv regional council has a ticker with information: "The website is resuming its work after a cyberattack. Information is being updated".

The website contains photos of the deputies, dates of birth and party affiliation. Biographies are published only for the council chairman and deputies.

Based on the fact that every voter has the right to read biographies of each and every deputy in a convenient form, experts concluded that only 3 biographies out of 58 do not meet the criterion of 'published biographies'. Contacts of MPs are not published. There is only an offer to ask a question to the MP. The schedule of reception of citizens is not published. Also, the website does not contain any information on the schedule of reception of citizens, addresses of MPs' offices, only the "Procedure for organizing personal reception of citizens". It should be noted that some deputies in their reports provide information on contacts and schedules of reception of citizens, but this cannot be considered information provided by Mykolaiv regional council. The exception is the page of Tetiana Potapenko, which has information on contacts and personal reception hours. That is, technically, this possibility exists, but it is not used.

Screenshot

The website has information on meetings of permanent commissions and plenary sessions, but it is not presented separately and not conveniently, so an average voter may not see this information.

The regional council website has published minutes of plenary session meetings, but this information is incomplete and may mislead voters. Firstly, the council website leads to another page titled "Minutes of Plenary Sessions". This page does not contain any information. Secondly, as of May 28, the last published minutes of the XXVIII extraordinary plenary meeting of February 25, 2025, were published. But the council's website has information that the XXIX extraordinary plenary meeting was held on May 1. There is also a recording of it on the website, but there is no puncture. Thirdly, the minutes of the plenary sessions do not contain information on the personal voting of the deputies.

There is a YouTube channel of the Mykolaiv Regional Council(here). It has videos of plenary sessions and meetings of permanent commissions, but not all of them. For example, the channel has only a recording of the XXVII extraordinary session held on February 13, followed by plenary sessions on February 25 and May 1. There is no recording of them.

The same channel has recordings of meetings of the standing committees. However, the website does not contain information on the schedule of meetings of the permanent commissions, nor does it publish their agendas, so this information cannot be considered complete.

There is no information on:

• MPs' attendance at plenary sessions;
• attendance of the meetings of the standing committees by the MPs;
• personal voting at plenary sessions;
• personal voting at the meetings of the standing committees.

Anton Tabunschyk 's report as Chairman of the Board was published for the periods from the first quarter of 2023 to the end of the year and for 2024. It was on March 16, 2023, that Mr. Tabunschyk began to act as the Chairman of the Board. Since December 9, 2020, Hanna Zamazieieva has been the chairperson of the council, but her reports have not been published.

Out of 58 deputies of the Mykolaiv Regional Council, 31 have published their reports, which is just over half. All reports are only for 2024, and there are no reports for 2022 and 2023. It should also be noted that the deputies' reports are published in pdf format. This format makes it impossible to find a report during a regular internet search and requires special actions to find such a report on the website.

Image: Intent

Odesa regional council website

The Odesa regional council website does not provide voters with a single source of information on the exact number of deputies. According to the website information as of May 28, the number of deputies on different pages is not the same:

• The page of the general composition (main page) - 75;
• "Deputy factions" - 75;
• information on the schedules of MPs' receptions - 76;
• "MPs' groups" - 77 people.

Screen shot

The website has photos of deputies and their contacts, but no biographies. There is also no page on the council leadership. This is noteworthy because Yulia Chukhalo, a deputy of Odesa regional council, won a lawsuit against Odesa regional council regarding the illegality of 2 deputy heads of the regional council. The regional council still has the opportunity to appeal the decision, but the two deputies continue to work.

Screenshot of the website

The website contains the council's decision on the personal composition of permanent commissions, but this information is not available in the deputy's card. That is, if a voter wants to get information about a particular deputy, he or she will need to look through the entire list of commissions. It is also noteworthy that there are 71 MPs, which is less than in the parliamentary groups, factions, and MPs whose schedules are published.

The website has information on when committee meetings or plenary sessions will take place, but it is not presented in a very convenient way. For example, in order to get information about the next commission meeting, one has to take several not-so-obvious steps. Home page - "Activities" page - page of a particular standing committee - page of the next meeting. You can also get this information by going from the home page to the page"For the attention of deputies," but this is not at all obvious to a voter.

Video recordings of plenary sessions and meetings of standing committees are published, but the main page of the website only contains a link to the video of the last plenary session. To watch the archived recordings, you need to go to a separate page. Since June 2024, video recordings of the meetings of the permanent commissions have been published, but to view them, one has to search for them in the materials of a particular commission. It is noteworthy that the council does not have a single channel for publishing videos. Videos are published on the iacodesa YouTube channel, and meetings of permanent commissions are published on theAparat_OOR YouTube channel. Here, for example, is a meeting of the Standing Committee on the Management of Jointly Owned Property of Territorial Communities of the region on May 27.

Deputies' reports are published on a separate page, which is convenient for voters, but the reports are in pdf format, which makes it impossible to find the report during a regular internet search and requires special actions to find the information on the website.

Kherson regional council website

On the main page of the website there is a message that the site has been resuming its work since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, and information is being updated.

The website only publishes photos of the deputies, no biographies or contacts. Such information is very selectively available on the page that publishes schedules for receiving citizens.

The Kherson regional council website also makes it difficult to understand the number of active deputies. The page"Deputies of the VIII convocation" contains 58 photos of deputies and councillors, while the page with the composition of permanent commissions lists 35 people. According to the minutes of the last XIX extraordinary session, which took place on February 27, 2025, 59 people were expected to register, and 34 were present.

On May 28, 2025, the page "MPs' factions, groups and inter-factional associations" has information about Volodymyr Saldo's bloc.

Screenshot of the page

It should be recalled that after the start of the full-scale invasion, Volodymyr Saldo showed a pro-Russian position. On March 17, 2022, the Prosecutor General's Office opened treason proceedings over the creation of the so-called occupation "authorities" in Kherson Oblast. On May 11, 2023, the HACC confiscated Volodymyr Saldo'sproperty. On November 8, 2023, the Malynovskyi District Court of Odesa sentenced Saldo. He was found guilty of high treason, collaboration and denial of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation and sentenced to 15 years in prison. On May 10, 2024, the Odesa Court of Appeal upheld the sentence of the so-called "governor of the Kherson region." On September 10, 2024, Saldo was once again sentenced to 15 years in prison in Odesa. On April 26, the SBU announced a new suspicion to collaborator Volodymyr Saldo and two of his accomplices, FSB officer Serhiy Yeliseyev and Kherson resident Serhiy Razdrohin. They created a scheme to seize an oil transportation facility and gas station chains during the occupation of Kherson region.

Attraction to the bosses' PR

The website of the Mykolaiv Regional Council is clearly inclined to the PR of the council chairman Anton Tabunschyk. The main page of the website features his picture. The second news item also contains the name and surname of the council chairman.

Screenshot

The website of Odesa regional council took a slightly different approach. As of May 28, there is no image of the council chairman on the main page, but there is a link to his Facebook page in the upper right corner of the main page, and it already contains Hryhoriy Didenko's PR, which is sometimes interrupted by videos of Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Screenshot of the screen

Out of the first six news items on the Kherson Regional Council website, three are somehow related to Oleksandr Samoilenko and contain his photo.

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This situation cannot be considered new or exceptional. It is a legacy of the Soviet Union. However, this hardly gives the right to use a website that was created and maintained at the expense of taxpayers to skew information in favor of one or another person.

In general, it can be stated that despite the fact that the regions were far from being in equal conditions during the full-scale invasion, the websites do not have striking differences in terms of transparency and user-friendliness for the voter. The slightly better state of affairs on the Odesa regional council website can be explained by some improvements made before 2022 rather than a fundamentally different information policy after February 2022.

Кирило Бойко

Ігор Льов

Сергій Лозовський