The Court of Appeal sided with former deputy of the Kherson City Council Olga Spivakina and confirmed that her mandate was taken unlawfully. The court upheld the decision of the first instance, which annulled the order of the head of the Kherson MVA to prematurely terminate her deputy powers.
This is stated in the appellate court’s ruling.
The Kherson City Council tried to appeal the decision of the Odesa District Administrative Court, but the appellate court denied the complaint.
The court concluded that the order of the head of the Kherson City Military Administration dated February 6, 2025 was adopted without proper grounds. Formally it was issued based on Olga Spivakina’s statement of resignation from her deputy powers, dated March 17, 2022. However, the Kherson City Council did not have the original of this statement — only a copy.
The court noted: without the original statement and confirmed expression of will by the deputy, such a decision cannot be considered lawful.
At the beginning of February 2025 it became known that the head of the Kherson City Military Administration Roman Mrochko prematurely terminated the powers of Kherson City Council deputy Olga Spivakina. The order cited her statement of resignation of her mandate as the basis.
Spivakina stated that she did not write or submit such a statement addressed to Roman Mrochko. In a comment to MOST she linked this decision to the conflict over the quorum in the Kherson City Council. It concerns a letter that the deputy sent to the head of the MVA and to the Ministry for Communities Development in response to the ministry’s inquiry regarding the council’s work.
According to Spivakina, in March 2022 she did indeed write a statement of resignation from her deputy powers, but at that time the document was refused acceptance — first by Mayor Ihor Kolykhaiev, and later by the city council secretary Halyna Luhova. The statement, she said, thus remained with her and in her personal correspondence with Kolykhaiev.
Olga Spivakina was elected a deputy of the Kherson City Council from the now-banned party “Volodymyr Saldo Bloc” in 2020. Spivakina herself was very close to Volodymyr Saldo, worked in his team for more than ten years, but in 2020, during the elections, she stated that she no longer works in Saldo’s team.
In spring 2022 she did not side with the Russians, stayed in Kherson for the entire period of the occupation, and left after the start of Russian shelling of the city.