Cultural heritage and green areas. What should the government do in the new year to preserve it?
Ukraine has to fulfill some strict requirements to properly follow the path of European integration. This includes the preservation of both cultural heritage and nature.
The public initiative “Holka” has prepared a summary of several cases in which communities are fighting for what is important to preserve not only now but also for future generations.
The capital is the undisputed leader in the number of cases where citizens protect historical heritage, archeology, and green areas.
The question arises: What could the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Community and Territorial Development, the State Inspectorate for Architecture and Urban Planning, the Kyiv City State Administration, and the Kyiv City Council do to ensure that next year, the public sector and the media focus their efforts on community and state development rather than on the fight to preserve what has historical or environmental value?
The map shows the sites protected by the members of the Network of Active Citizens
The Ministry of Culture’s actions in protecting cultural heritage are most accurately characterized as “sabotage.”
The protection of historical heritage has been blocked since 2022. Developing any scientific or project documentation is impossible, as the Ministry has not yet developed relevant draft resolutions for approval by the Cabinet of Ministers, considering the new law requirements.
They are trying to disguise the sabotage with fictitious documentation to determine the boundaries and modes of use of historical areas. This is exactly the situation that arose with the historical and architectural reference plan of Lviv, which the court quickly canceled. The same can happen to other cities.
Failure of the agency to fulfill its duties can have extremely negative consequences, including for the Pirogov Open Air Museum.
At present, it is simply impossible to establish protection zones for monuments to protect the museum from nearby high-rise buildings, even if the court orders the ministry to do so following a lawsuit filed by the prosecutor’s office.
The Ministry of Culture failed to comply with the requirements of the State Anti-Corruption Program and did not hold the required public consultations when preparing changes to the procedure for registering cultural heritage sites. As a result, the rules that were in place during the Yanukovych era were secretly returned, significantly reducing the public’s ability to protect valuable buildings.
The state anti-corruption program stipulated that new construction and reconstruction within historic areas should be prohibited without historical and architectural reference plans. However, even here, the Ministry of Culture did not comply with the requirements or prepare a corresponding project. If it had, situations like the brutal demolition of the Zelenskyi estate in Kyiv could have been avoided.
Activists have repeatedly appealed to this ministry, as it is its exclusive authority to monitor compliance with the requirements of monument protection legislation within historical areas. Officials did not respond. However, after demolishing the building, they immediately issued a statement explaining why such actions were illegal. A few days later, the officials decided to grant the already destroyed manor the monument status, violating several requirements of the newly approved Procedure for the Registration of Cultural Heritage Sites.
It is unknown whether the situation will change next year. At present, Mykola Tochytskyi, who was appointed head of the department in September, has not yet made the necessary personnel decisions, and the officials responsible for the situation continue to work in the ministry.
Some of the problems are related to the fact that the legislation turns certain things upside down: first, the state sells a special permit for subsoil use or provides a land plot for certain construction, and then the business owner makes an environmental impact assessment and holds public consultations. The money has already been invested in the project, so the business will use any means to ensure that it can continue to be implemented.
There are many questions about the quality of the work of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources and the relevant departments of regional and Kyiv city state administrations when issuing environmental impact assessments.
In Kyiv, a new amusement park was allowed to be built on the territory of the Obolonsky Island Nature Reserve Fund, “not noticing” that the island, which was completely covered with vegetation, had turned into a desert in the environmental impact assessment, as well as a number of other violations of the law. In Kharkiv, a forest was allowed to be cut down for the sake of a sand quarry, although the environmental impact assessment “forgot” to assess the negative impact of this deforestation.
The public cannot always verify the legality of officials’ actions or compliance with environmental impact assessment requirements when conducting work. During the martial law period, the Ministry of Environment closed access not only to the materials of the environmental impact assessment conducted before the full-scale invasion but also to information about the assessment. Although the Ministry has promised to open access, it is in no hurry to fulfill this promise.
In many cases, it is difficult to even understand which government agency is playing in the interests of dishonest business because the development of events resembles a tug-of-war. For ten years now, they have been trying to build another ski resort in Svydovets in the Carpathians, where virgin forests, alpine meadows, glacial lakes, and incredible mountain rivers have been preserved. However, this does not stop the company, which, according to some publications, is linked to oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky.
In the Zhytomyr region, the community of Negrebivka is trying to protect the lake and drinking water because a private company decided to resume dolomite mining in a quarry for profit. In the Kyiv region, the authorities dream of creating an industrial zone in the sanitary zone of the Kazkovyi Yar reserve and have organized pseudo-public hearings for this purpose.
The Vinnytsia region is a two-in-one: They plan to create a phosphate limestone quarry near the Busha State Historical and Cultural Reserve, which will threaten the environment and cultural heritage. The list goes on and on.
When the prosecutor’s office has to go to court to return to the state land in the Bilychansky Forest within the Holosiivskyi National Park because it was privately owned by the wife of former Minister of Ecology Mykola Zlochevsky, environmental problems are no longer surprising. Hence, it is not just a heavy legacy from the former government.
In 2018, the State Building Standards, which include requirements for hotels, introduced a new type of building to enable developers to make money by building housing in exclusive locations such as recreational or coastal areas—the apart-hotel. At its core, this is a regular apartment building, but its apartments are called “apartments” or “studios” and can be built on plots designated for sanatoriums and recreation centers.
This is exactly what is happening now with the former Prolisok tourist complex in Kyiv, next to the Holosiivskyi National Park. There is reason to believe that this is the fate being prepared for the green area on the lake near the center of Ivano-Frankivsk under the guise of building a rehabilitation center for the military on a small piece of the planned site.
The second loophole is the definition of “reconstruction.” According to the relevant state building codes, partially preserving the elements of load-bearing structures is enough for reconstruction. Therefore, the developer needs to leave at least one brick from the old foundation in the ground, and thanks to this “partially preserved element of the bearing structure,” de facto new construction turns into de jure reconstruction.
Thanks to this, an old barn can be easily turned into a multi-storey building or a valuable historical building even without registration of the right to use the land, as it happened with the already mentioned Zelensky estate in Kyiv.
Both schemes are well known, and these changes to state building codes were made during Petro Poroshenko’s presidency. Although five ministers have already changed in the Ministry of Regional Development since then, the regulatory holes have not yet been patched.
During martial law, inspections can only be carried out with a separate permit from the Ministry of Regional Development in case of real threats to the rights and interests of a person or the state. However, no legal requirements stopped the Ministry of Regional Development and the State Inspectorate of Architecture and Urban Development (hereinafter – the Inspectorate) when they had to put pressure on the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy at the request of Olena Shulyak, head of the Servant of the People party. An inspection with gross law violations was scheduled not once, but twice.
But when inspections are really needed, you can’t wait for them. For example, the Inspectorate refused to schedule an inspection of the aforementioned construction of the Prolisok tourist complex, despite numerous appeals from activists. In the case of the Zelensky estate, the Ministry of Regional Development and the Inspectorate simply forbade the relevant department of the Kyiv City State Administration to conduct an inspection, saying that the destruction of the historic building does not violate anyone’s rights and interests.
But confidence in impunity always leads to new brazen violations.
In Kyiv, a new amusement park was built on Obolonsky Island on the territory of the nature reserve fund, spending almost UAH 200 million from the budget at the height of the war. It was just unauthorized construction without any permits or even the right to use the land. The inspection did not even notice this.
The company, which is close to the notorious former president of Kyivmiskbud, Ihor Kushnir, began to dismantle the historic building almost in the center of Kyiv without any documents. This was hard to imagine at a time when architectural and construction control was used to combat illegal construction, not to pressure and intimidate those who opposed the authorities.
When Kyiv, the region, and neighboring communities see the boundaries of the capital differently, it means that de jure these boundaries do not exist at all. Even the position of the Supreme Court, which canceled the new boundaries of Kotsiubynske and recognized Bilychanskyi Forest as part of Kyiv, does not solve the problem.
Last year, the Ministry of Justice canceled Kyiv’s ownership of a land plot within the Bilychansky Forest near the Kyiv-Irpin highway because the head of the Kyiv Regional Military Administration considered the forest to be part of the region. Kyiv disagreed with this and reclaimed the land through the courts. In the midst of the war, the city and the region are fighting not even over the principle but over who will make money from advertising along the highway.
However, the forest around Kotsiubynske is only the most famous of many such problems. For example, a part of the Osokorky Ecopark was simultaneously leased by Kyiv and owned by the neighboring village council.
Now all this is just unpleasant. However, next year, the uncertainty of the boundaries will become a critical obstacle to the restoration and further development of both Kyiv and the adjacent territorial communities. This results from the expiration of the transitional provisions of Law No. 711-IX, “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine on Land Use Planning.” Therefore, it is necessary to approve comprehensive plans of territorial communities and master plans of individual settlements in accordance with the new requirements. It is impossible to do this without agreeing on all controversial issues with neighboring communities.
Only the Verkhovna Rada can cut this Gordian knot, as it is the only body authorized to approve the boundaries of Kyiv and end all disputes. However, its specialized committee, headed by Olena Shulyak, is not concerned with the problem.
The mayor inherited most of the high-profile scandals with Kyiv’s development from Oleksandr Omelchenko and Leonid Chernovetsky.
The most controversial issue in terms of its scale is the attempt to build up almost 180 hectares of natural areas where Kyiv residents want to create the Osokorky Ecopark. The city authorities, under the leadership of Vitali Klitschko, actively supported the Kyiv residents when the Arkada Bank was behind the development plans. However, after the project was transferred to the Stolitsa Group company associated with Vladyslava Molchanova, the position of the city authorities changed to the opposite.
Thanks to the active position of the Ecopark Osokorky organization, the developer failed to renew the lease agreements for some of the plots in court, and the Kyiv City Council began attempts to renew them.
It is worth emphasizing here that such a decision would be illegal, as the tenant, by failing to pay the rent in full, lost the right to renew the contracts.
For the second decade, local residents and activists have been defending themselves against construction in the Samburky, Bolharske, and Kitayiv tracts. We are talking about five plots with a total area of almost 60 hectares close to the Holosiivskyi National Park, and two of them fall within the territory of the Kytaivskyi archaeological complex.
Over the years, the developers have changed several times, and all of them had strong ties to the authorities at the time, but they did not succeed. However, the situation deteriorated with the emergence of Ihor Nikonov, a developer close to Klitschko, as the developer. Despite a record-breaking petition and lawsuits filed by the prosecutor’s office, the Kyiv City Council decided to side with the developer and renew the lease agreements.
So far, the deputies have limited themselves to renewing the contracts for three plots, and the fate of two more is to be decided by the court, which is still undecided whether the land belongs to the state or the city.
A tense situation has arisen with an attempt to build on a plot next to the Holosiivskyi National Park, dismantling an old water tower. However, this tower is state property, so one can only wonder how a private company under Omelchenko got a lease on a plot with a state building on it.
Thanks to activists, the tower was protected by granting it the status of a newly discovered cultural heritage site. But the fate of the rest of the site is currently being decided by the court: the developer wants to force the Kyiv City Council to renew the lease agreement for the sake of building a residential complex, but activists and the Ministry of Ecology do not give up hope of including it in the national park. It is worth noting here the active position of the Prosecutor General’s Office, which entered the case to protect the public interest
However, it is unclear why the prosecutor’s office does not use an approach similar to the scheme for protecting the above-mentioned sites in China. In this case, it is much easier to prove that the land is state-owned and the Kyiv City Council has no right to renew the lease at all. As of the moment of delimitation of state and municipal land, only one state-owned building was located on the plot, so the entire plot is undoubtedly state property according to the mandatory provision of the law of January 1, 2013.
The Kyiv City Council began the year with promises to protect the Museum of Outstanding Ukrainian Cultural Figures from close-in multi-story construction and to refuse to renew the lease agreement. The year ended with these promises.
It is not the first convocation of the city council that has promised to make it impossible to build on Observatory Hill, and now the developer has attempted to partially cancel the Kyiv General Plan adopted in 2002 in court, with the city authorities being inexplicably passive.
The intentions of the city authorities to build a parking lot next to Sobache Hyrlo Bay caused a considerable public outcry. Already at the stage of transferring the land plot for its construction, the Kyiv City Council went in direct violation of the law – it transferred a vacant plot for construction in the absence of a detailed plan of the territory. This was done fraudulently – the draft decision provided for the transfer of the land plot for the construction of a linear transport infrastructure facility, but this wording was excluded from the recommendations of the land commission.
This story is also interesting because it discusses the authorities’ use of petitions as a mechanism to push through their own deals under the guise of fulfilling “public demands.”
I would like to end this review with a story in which Kyiv residents won this year, thanks to public outcry. It is about the attempts of the city authorities to push through the illegal construction of a parking lot on Peizazhna Alley. Under public pressure, Klitschko personally proposed to withdraw this issue from consideration to return later. However, due to amendments to the legislation (we are talking about the aforementioned law No. 711-IX), this detailed territory plan can be adopted only by the end of this year because it was developed under the old legislative provisions.
So we need to ensure that the Verkhovna Rada does not steal at least this victory from Kyiv residents by making further changes to the legislation.
Specially for “Dzerkalo Tyzhnia”
