The Supreme Court has opened proceedings on the appeal of the Kherson City Council in the case concerning the early termination of councilor Olga Spivakina’s mandate.
This is stated in the court’s ruling.
At the beginning of February 2025 it became known that the head of the Kherson City Military Administration Roman Mrochko prematurely terminated the mandate of Kherson City Council councilor Olga Spivakina. The order cited her letter of resignation from the mandate as the basis.
Spivakina stated that she did not write or submit such a letter addressed to Roman Mrochko. In a comment to MOST she linked this decision to a conflict over the quorum in the Kherson City Council. The matter concerns a letter that the councilor sent to the head of the military administration and to the Ministry for Communities Development in response to the ministry’s request regarding the work of the city council.
According to Spivakina, in March 2022 she did indeed write a letter of resignation from her councilor powers, but at that time officials refused to accept the document — first the mayor Ihor Kolykhaiev, and later the city council secretary Halyna Luhova. The letter, she says, remained with her and in personal correspondence with Kolykhaiev.
Earlier the Odesa District Administrative Court and the Fifth Administrative Court of Appeal sided with the councilor, declaring Mrochko’s order unlawful.
However the Kherson City Council does not agree, insisting that the previous judicial instances did not take into account conclusions regarding the application of provisions of the law on the status of local council deputies in similar legal relations, which had previously been expressed by the court of cassation.
The panel of judges concluded that the arguments presented by the city council are sufficiently substantiated and require detailed examination.
The court has now requested the case materials from the Odesa District Administrative Court.
Thus the Supreme Court is officially initiating the process of reviewing prior court decisions at the highest instance.
Olga Spivakina was elected as a councilor to 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, stated that she no longer worked in Saldo’s team.
In the spring of 2022 she did not side with the Russians, lived in Kherson for the entire period of the occupation, and left after the start of Russian shelling of the city.