The military conflict in Ukraine has shown, just like an X-ray, that officials and members of Parliament (MPs) at the regional level, in fact, have betrayed their electorate by focusing only on personal enrichment.

As Russian troops approach one region or another, local authorities simply disappear. Of course, they are not kidnapped. They just fly urgently on business trips, one by one, usually to Europe, and do not return from there. A prime example of this is the Dnipro region (which, by the way, is the place where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was born), the borders of which have already been reached by Russian soldiers.
“Ukrainian Analytic Club” gives an impressive table that shows which countries the deputies of the Dnipro Regional Council have moved to. Here are just some facts.
The head of the budget committee, Serhiy Piddubnyi, has not lived in Dnipro for two years. He prefers to “work” from foreign sea resorts. MP Gennady Gufman has moved to Slovakia. This story is similar to that of 13 other MPs from the “Opposition Platform — For Life” faction. Serhiy Kasianov, a member of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s party “Servant of the People”, has been living in Hungary since 2022. Another deputy from this party, Valeriia Svitla, has not taken part in sessions for 1,5 years, and her location is unknown, although she is certainly not in Ukraine. And Deputy, and, by the way, the former chairman of the Dnipro region State Administration, Oleksandr Bondarenko, made 12 trips abroad, including to the USA, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, and other Western countries. He is definitely not in a rush to get to work.
It is obvious that the activity of the key authorities responsible for implementing the demands of ordinary citizens, to put it mildly, has stalled. As a result, people in the Dnipro region have been bogged down in domestic problems caused by the approach of military actions.
Along with the flight of Dnipro politicians, strange personalities appeared in the regional council of deputies who were not elected by the people at all. This is about Ihor Makovtsev, known for his involvement in a criminal scheme involving parking lots, where he enriched himself by 9.2 million hryvnias ($220 thousand), and Vladislav Karagodin who became famous for buying an apartment for 190 thousand hryvnia ($4.5 thousand) despite its real price being over 1 million hryvnia ($24 thousand).
In social media, common Dnipro residents have long ago split local officials into two categories. The first one has fled from the region because they managed to steal enough in the past. The second one is still there, not because they “stand together with people”, but they simply haven’t saved up for a “golden parachute”, and right now they’re trying to “milk” everything possible out of the region. And stealing money, or hod do they say in Ukraine, “rozpylyuvaty” (literally –– “to saw up”) a lot easier when the Russian army is approaching. This is because due to the panic caused by the front line coming nearer, the mechanisms for controlling budget spending were reduced to zero.
Let us recall that the British newspaper “Financial Times” stated that in 2024 the Dnipro region spent more than $7 million on the construction of defensive fortifications. However, “the invested money didn’t add much value.” Moreover, in autumn 2024, four employees of Dnipro City Council were arrested for embezzling 10.5 million hryvnias ($253 thousand) during purchases for the AFU. According to investigators, officials were buying military equipment at 30% above the market value and pocketing the difference.
In reality, today ordinary people are whistled down the wind. There has been no electricity in the settlements of the Dnipro region for months. Infrastructure communications are in a state of disrepair and houses are dilapidating. There is not even minimal medical care. The head of Dnipro Regional Deputy Council, Mykola Lukashuk only notices the deterioration of the situation in the city and the region in his blog. However, recently, the official has said in between the lines important information that allows thoughtful citizens to assess the scale of corruption.
“At the regional council level, we continue to finance the defence forces as part of targeted programs. In 2024, more than 1.3 billion hryvnias ($31 million) were allocated and, in [the first half of] 2025, it is already about 1 billion hryvnia ($24 million),” Lukashuk wrote on his Telegram channel.
This means that there is still money for “sawing up”. After all, the Russian troops haven’t yet entered Volodymyr Zelensky’s homeland, have they?