Every Second Telegram Channel of Regional Military Administration Heads is Personalized: A Potential Competitive Advantage in Post-War Elections

Twelve Telegram channels belonging to the heads of regional military-civil administrations (MCAs) are personalized.

This was revealed by the public initiative “Holka” during an analysis of the usernames of regional MCA heads’ Telegram channels.

Among the personalized channels, the one with the most subscribers belongs to the head of the Lviv Regional Military Administration, Maksym Kozytskyi, who has also headed the regional branch of the “Servant of the People” party in Lviv Oblast since 2020 and serves as a deputy of the Lviv Regional Council.

As of February 2026, Kozytskyi’s channel has 138,000 subscribers. For comparison, during the 2020 local elections, the Mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovyi, received approximately 143,000 votes in the second round.

Iryna Fedoriv, head of the public initiative “Holka,” emphasizes that some personalized Telegram channels migrate along with officials as they move from one position to another:

“This is exactly what happened with the channel of the former head of the Rivne MCA, Vitaliy Koval, who subsequently took over the State Property Fund and later the Ministry of Agrarian Policy. Currently, his channel has ‘fallen asleep,’ much like the channel of the former head of the President’s Office, Andriy Yermak. What is to stop former officials from utilizing such channels right before the elections? Officials, much like mayors, can grow these channels using their press services, whose salaries are paid from the state budget. When these officials leave their posts, they essentially take with them a fully formed media outlet with massive reach. Similarly, if sitting mayors decide to run again, they will hold a significant competitive advantage. The state should have completely banned Telegram—a platform created by a Russian citizen—yet we see that even the heads of military administrations continue to use it.”

Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Freedom of Speech, agrees that Telegram should be banned at the legislative level:

“Imagine Winston Churchill hosting a program on Nazi radio controlled by Goebbels. Hard to imagine, right? Yet, when Ukrainian officials develop the Russian Telegram network, we shouldn’t wonder why Europeans sometimes fail to see the difference between us and the Russians. Consciously investing in the enemy and feeding personal data to its social platform is something only traitors would do. Those who do it unconsciously are either incompetent or mere opportunists who don’t care who is in power, as long as they get a piece of it.”

As a reminder, “Holka” previously conducted a study of Telegram channels, uncovering a Kremlin-linked network operating on the platform. This network actively undermines trust in one of the state’s branches of power—the judiciary—and smears judges with high integrity as well as civil society activists advocating for judicial reform. This Kremlin network includes the Telegram channels of Members of Parliament Maksym Buzhanskyi and Oleksandr Dubinsky, lawyer Rostyslav Kravets, alongside several other channels, including anonymous ones.