Kyiv City Council Secretary Bondarenko and his colleague Nepop face 10 years in prison

Kyiv City Council Secretary Bondarenko and his colleague Nepop face 10 years in prison

The replacement of the decision regarding the children’s competition with another, by which the city council expanded its powers and took them from the head of the KCMA, Tymur Tkachenko, is already being investigated by the SSU, and the main figures involved, including Bondarenko and another deputy mayor Nepop, face significant prison terms.

During a vote, the Kyiv City Council replaced a draft decision concerning a children’s competition with another, according to which the deputies assumed part of the KCMA’s powers. The secretary of the city council, Volodymyr Bondarenko, and deputy mayor Vyacheslav Nepop are accused in this matter. The substitution has already been formalized into a criminal case being investigated by the SSU: both figures involved face actual prison terms from 5 to 10 years.

City council deputy Andriy Vitrenko (head of the "Servant of the People" faction) talks about the decision substitution. He noted that the deputies voted for a draft decision supposedly updating the conditions for the children’s competition "Artistic Horizons" back on January 30, 2025. It was authored by UDAR deputy Viktoriya Mukha, and the document was submitted as urgent by city council secretary Volodymyr Bondarenko. The same project decision is mentioned in the ruling of the Solomyanskyi district court of Kyiv granting SSU investigators access to items and documents in the case since March 10.

In fact, Kyiv City Council deputies became victims of a substitution: they voted for one project, but "on output," they received a completely different one. And when Bondarenko announced the name (about "horizons" - nobody realized what exactly they were voting for), and further mentioned that the project was submitted with recommendations from profile committees and lawyer remarks, the deputies supported it.

"However, after the vote, it became known that the actual content of the decision significantly differed from that which the deputies, as they claim, were confident they were voting for. On the same day, January 30, deputy mayor and UDAR deputy Vyacheslav Nepop made amendments to the document. These amendments changed the essence of the project — from a cultural issue to serious personnel-institutional powers," explained Andriy Vitrenko.

What was inside the already replaced project? - The Kyiv City Council gave itself the right to approve the foundational documents of enterprises, institutions, and organizations of communal ownership - previously this was the competence of the KCMA (overall - the "executive body"). Vitrenko explains that essentially, by misleading the deputies, the city council received additional levers of influence over the management of communal enterprises.

"The content is simple — to limit the head of the KCMA... Naturally, the deputies themselves would not agree to such a step, but Klitschko has an informed secretary, Vova Bondarenko, who distributed Mukha’s project decision to the deputies, and they voted for Nepop’s project, and this decision was already called "On amending certain decisions of the Kyiv City Council," explained simply the blogger-investigator Volodymyr Bondarenko (namesake of the city council secretary).

According to Bondarenko, Lilіya Pashynna, a Kyiv City Council deputy from the "Servant of the People," addressed the SSU with a statement. This substitution is most likely related to the summoning of another Kyiv City Council deputy - Viktoriya Ptashnyk - to the SSU, which she reported on March 18. Ptashnyk is a member of the Kyiv Council’s regulatory committee, which was also involved in the falsification of the deputies’ decision. The actions of Bondarenko and Nepop fall under Art.109 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine ("actions aimed at the violent change or overthrow of the constitutional order, or the seizure of state power") — that’s what Ptashnyk was talking about before the interrogation.