Appointed at the beginning of June by the President of Ukraine, the head of the Kherson MCA Yaroslav Shanko in September marks the first one hundred days of his rule.
We attempted to analyze the results of his work and find out whether anything has changed in the city.
First of all, it should be said that the situation in the city, especially the security situation, has not changed much over the past one hundred days. The only thing – the number of KABs has increased, which brought certain problems to the city’s head.
Personnel. Whom did Shanko dismiss and appoint?
Like his predecessors, Yaroslav Shanko felt the terrible Kherson personnel shortage. There simply are no people in Kherson who could be appointed to positions. There is no line of people willing to come here from other regions or from the capital, and those who do want to come mostly seek work in Kherson to earn money. The city has plenty of such locals as well.
The new head of the MCA partly thinned out the personnel bloc left by Roman Mrochko. Obviously, the first to go were people of the “gray cardinal” of the city administration Vadym Hlushko and the former head of the MCA: Tetyana Yushko, Ihor Kolodiazhnyi, Dmytro Shport, Denys Putintsev. A little later, the first deputy Natalia Chekhuta was dismissed.
Almost instantly, the director of the Department of Urban Economy of the Kherson City Council Serhii Manzhos lost his position.
Not without problems, on the second attempt, but they managed to dismiss the director of the municipal enterprise “Parks of Kherson” Andrii Tyshchenko.
At the beginning of August they dismissed the head of the civil protection department Oleksii Horin, who for more than two years controlled all the work on shelter repairs and was an important element in the corruption-earning system of Hlushko-Mrochko. Judging by everything, we will not see criminal cases in which Horin would figure.
And not only regarding Horin. It seems very likely that the new authorities have certain agreements with someone who controlled the old Kherson authorities.
This is very similar to Oleksandr Prokudin’s promises to imprison his predecessor Yaroslav Yanushevych.
Also, from Shanko’s team left the director of the Department of Economy and Investments Olga Evert and a number of other minor clerks.
At the same time, we did not see a large number of new faces in the team.
The first to join Yaroslav Shanko’s team was Vitalii Petryk, a former bouncer of nightclubs and of Andrii Putilov. We wrote extensively about this appointment; we will write about Putilov and his influence below, and later, when there is time, we will make a separate article.
Soon the team was strengthened by the director of the Karabelesh City Hospital Alla Malytska. According to our data, she was persuaded by both Shanko and Prokudin to take the position of deputy.
Dismissed Manzhos was replaced by Dmytro Kalyuzhnyi, who worked in the former Suvorovskyi [district], and now in the Central district council.
The key municipal enterprise “Parks of Kherson” was headed by the former deputy director of the regional municipal enterprise “HOKARS” Volodymyr Tsiktor.
This is, in fact, the entire list of “new faces”, and even then conditional. Apart from Petryk — all the faces are familiar to Kherson residents at one level or another.
Next there were internal movements within the MCA.
Shanko’s deputy became the director of the Department of Budget and Finance of the Kherson City Council Oleksandr Yevstratenko. Probably one of the most experienced people in the MCA.
In the departments and administrations, the deputies replaced the directors who left.
And one more appointment happened literally a few days ago.
The post of first deputy head of the MCA was taken by former deputy and former head of the Kherson district administration Mykhailo Linetskyi.
He already had experience serving as acting deputy mayor of Kherson during the tenure of Volodymyr Mykolayenko. Then Mykhailo showed himself to be a person incapable of working in municipal management, and his only achievement was a cake contest. By the way, it was then won by the now well-known cake “Kherson”. So Linetskyi has already entered history.
News of his imminent appointment as first deputy was met with laughter in Kherson’s political circles. Time will tell whether Mykhailo will manage to make Kherson residents feel his managerial talent, or, as has happened before, he will have to be an unrecognized genius.
Who was not dismissed?
As we wrote back in mid-June, most of Mrochko’s deputies remained in their positions. Sergii Orekhov, Natalia Chornenka, Anton Yefanov and Vitalii Bielobrov are working as they did before.
As we reported, Bielobrov was told to stop the pre-election noise that he and his not very smart friends and supporters began after Roman Mrochko’s dismissal. The advocacy campaign: “Bielobrov – our next mayor” of course had no positive results, but it almost cost the “future mayor” his career.
The unofficial moratorium on political struggle, established by Yaroslav Shanko, is still being observed in Kherson.
All the other listed deputies who were inherited by Shanko did not have such ambitions and are unlikely to have them. Which, in principle, suits Shanko.
Besides the deputies, Shanko, to our surprise, left in the position the executive office manager Tetyana Turchyna. We have written about her more than once, and she was named as one of the first candidates for dismissal, but Tetyana somehow managed to convince Shanko of her loyalty, reliability and usefulness.
Turchyna very organically joined Kolyhaiev’s team, soon becoming his assistant. In Mrochko’s team she was almost the closest to the leader and almost formed a pre-election headquarters for him.
MOST’s sources in the Kherson MCA say that the situation with Turchyna is ambiguous, and she is being kept for now because there is objectively no one to replace her.
Also remaining in their position is the director of the municipal enterprise “Ritual Service of the city of Kherson” Serhii Chornyi. He, according to the same MCA sources, is Turchyna’s protégé and it is she who controls the lucrative funeral business in Kherson.
This is very strange, because, according to many interlocutors, the head of the Kherson OVA Oleksandr Prokudin has interests in this business.
There is an assumption that both Turchyna and Chornyi have agreed on new rules of the game and therefore remain in their positions.
Who influences Shanko and the processes?
It is obvious, and this is no secret, that Yaroslav Shanko is close to Oleksandr Prokudin, and the latter has the ability to influence all processes in the city of Kherson, which he could not do under Roman Mrochko.
Or almost all of them. Because in the Prokudin-Shanko duet there is another person who is able to appoint deputies to both policemen who by fate headed Kherson region and Kherson.
We are talking about businessman Andrii Putilov. This once influential (today it is exactly 11 years since he became head of the Kherson Regional State Administration, – MOST) Kherson businessman-politician, after 2016 lost interest in politics and concentrated on his own business. It was believed that he lost influence due to a defeat in the by-elections to the Verkhovna Rada and the betrayal of his own protégé Andrii Hordieiev. In 2015 the Putilov family made their lawyer Andrii Hordieiev a member of parliament, and soon after governor of Kherson region. He quickly forgot the kindness of his patrons and stopped listening to the advice of the late Stanislav Putilov and his son Andrii.
But fate gave the younger Putilov a new chance — his old friend Oleg Tatarov became one of the most influential people in the country, taking the position of Deputy Head of the Office of the President.
He did not use the opportunity personally and did not go into government; instead, he gained the right to appoint his people as deputies to Oleksandr Prokudin, and later to Yaroslav Shanko.
And if the deputy head of the Kherson OVA Volodymyr Kliutsevskyi, whom Putilov seriously prepared for the post of head of the OVA, after acar accident is no longer a player, then things are much more interesting with Shanko’s deputy.
On June 16, 2025 Vitalii Petryk was appointed to the post of deputy head of the Kherson MCA. On the same day, MOST recognized in him a person who previously worked as a bodyguard for Andrii Putilov, and later was a co-founder of a company with a criminal trail.
At the dawn of his career Vitalii was actively involved in sports and worked as a bouncer at the Millennium nightclub. He participated in no-holds-barred fights.
From 2010 to 2016 Vitalii Petryk worked as a quality controller at LLC “Yuzhspecsplav” and “Mechanical Plant”. Both companies belong to the Putilov family. However, it is unlikely that Vitalii controlled anything at Putilov’s plants, because almost all that time he worked as Andrii Putilov’s personal bodyguard and assistant.
For many years Vitalii carried the briefcase for Putilov and guarded him, and after the full-scale invasion he worked at the National Agency of Ukraine for the Detection, Tracing and Management of Assets Obtained from Corruption and Other Crimes.
Since September 2022, he, according to his declaration, has lived free of charge in a Kyiv apartment that belongs to Nadiia Putilova — Andrii Putilov’s mother. According to our sources, the secret of Petryk’s success is that he is the nephew of Andrii Putilov’s wife.
According to rumors circulating in May-June, when the month-and-a-half bargaining for the post of head of the Kherson MCA was underway, Andrii Putilov actively joined this struggle but did not nominate himself for the post. Instead, he offered the Office various candidates who were later “vetoed”. Perhaps Petryk was among them, who was refused, but later was given the “silver medal” by being appointed deputy.
And not just a deputy. According to the division of responsibilities, Petryk was given matters of communal property, management of capital construction and the legal department.
This is a rather “fat” portfolio that demonstrates Putilov’s influence, who has now received an instrument to control not only all construction, and therefore financial matters, but also a lever to manually control the litigation activity of the city authorities. Now Petryk, and therefore Putilov, can hypothetically influence whether the city council files or does not file lawsuits and other matters that can be resolved manually on terms favorable to themselves and other stakeholders.
So, alongside the obvious influence of Oleksandr Prokudin on the processes, there exists in Kherson another person who has, albeit lesser, influence. As long as Oleg Tatarov occupies an office in the Office of the President. In principle, Prokudin himself influences the processes while his patron Ihor Klymenko serves as Minister of Internal Affairs.
What has Shanko achieved and what are the risks?
The most difficult question we ask ourselves is: what achievements has Yaroslav Shanko had in the last 100 days? In reflecting on this, my colleagues and I concluded that the main positive change in Kherson during Shanko’s time is the start of installing net protection on the city’s roads. The work began, generally, as on the Mykolaiv highway, much later than needed, but is visually ongoing.
To say confidently that the nets are Shanko’s personal merit, obviously we cannot. The position of some military and the pressure of public opinion also played a role.
Shanko managed to carry out the evacuation from the Korabel neighborhood after the bridge over the Koshova river was damaged by the Russians. That too, of course, was not without the help of the police and regional authorities, but it was achieved.
And visually – the city’s utilities in Kherson are working. The communal workers diligently sweep roads and sidewalks, garbage is being removed, and damaged houses are still being properly boarded up with OSB sheets. That is, the system works as it did before, although the media panic-mongers who were fed from the hands of the predecessors proved not very good seers and a collapse in the city did not occur. Even after the dismissal of the petty bribe-taker Tyshchenko.
But the real test for Yaroslav Shanko and his team is ahead. Only the upcoming heating season will show the ability to operate in a real crisis. First of all, this will concern the work of the CHPP, which the city and regional authorities do not control. The security situation in the CHPP area is not the best, which could lead to half of the city remaining without heating.
The residents of Ostrov, of whom there are not many left, will also be a big problem, but these are living people, and the authorities will have to make significant efforts to help them survive the winter.
So this part of the material should be supplemented in spring 2026 in order to see whether the new authorities will pass the test.
Instead of a conclusion
Of course, we could not omit the issue of the corruption resource — the almost only quantity that can be counted in absolute figures in Kherson.
And here the situation currently plays into Yaroslav Shanko’s hands, although it does not depend much on him. As is known, the previous city leader made good money on shelter repairs and the construction of underground schools. Shanko had to suspend these repairs and constructions because the topic had become so sensitive and smelled so bad that it was impossible not to notice it.
This deprived Shanko’s team of financial resources at the most difficult stage of their work. After all, it is known that most problematic issues can be closed with “cash in hand”. The topic of underground schools, contractors and cash-out, I think, will arise again on MOST’s pages, since the underground schools will still have to be completed, as will the shelter repairs. But for now all these issues are on pause.
Although, as we found out earlier, Shanko, or, more likely, Prokudin showed mercy and allowed the unfortunate contractors of Hlushko-Mrochko to complete those works for which they had taken money from the budget in advance. This means that no one will ‘catch up with’ and put anyone in jail anymore. Quite traditionally and predictably.