10-year anniversary of Klitschko’s reign in Kyiv: wild buildings and forgotten promises

“From now on, I declare: zero tolerance for corruption is declared in the city of Kyiv,” Vitali Klitschko assured when he took the oath of mayor of the capital in 2014. June 5 marked 10 years since the mayor of Kyiv first took office. Now he is in his third term in this position.

“Ukrainian Disneyland” at Hydropark, the barrier-free nature of Kyiv, the absence of traffic jams and even the metro to Vinohradar - this is only a small part of what Vitaliy Klitschko promised to implement during his time in office.

The movement HONESTLY analyzed the election programs and the loudest promises of the mayor of Kyiv for 2014, 2015 and 2020. Read more about what the path to this position was, what we managed to do, and how the 10 years of the Kyiv mayor were remembered - in a new material.

The path to mayor

Vitaliy Klitschko’s path in politics began back in 2006 - then he became a full-time adviser to the then President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko, and was also elected as a deputy of the Kyiv City Council from the civil bloc “PORA-PRP”, being its head.

Later, the politician re-entered the Kyiv City Council - but this time from the Vitali Klitschko Bloc, and during 2012-2014 he was a people's deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of the 3rd convocation from UDAR.

Vitaliy Klitschko was one of the most active politicians during the Revolution of Dignity, along with Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Oleg Tyagnibok. He regularly spoke on the Maidan podium, broke up clashes on Grushevsky Street and negotiated as a representative of the opposition.

The CHESNO movement previously wrote that Klitschko is in fact the only politician of the Revolution of Dignity period who managed not only to remain in politics after its completion, but also to be re-elected three times in a row.

In the spring of 2014, Vitaliy Klitschko noted that he “made a deliberate decision to run for the position of mayor of Kyiv” and expressed support for Petro Poroshenko in the presidential elections. Although Klitschko himself previously had presidential ambitions, Poroshenko wanted to run for mayor of Kyiv. At the same time, politicians signed a declaration of unity, which provided for consolidation for the victory of democratic forces in the elections. Soon, joint campaigning began to appear, calling for people to vote for Petro Poroshenko in the presidential elections, and for Vitaliy Klitschko in the local elections.

In 2014, local elections in Kyiv were held simultaneously with the presidential elections - on May 25. Then Vitali Klitschko won in the first round, receiving 57.46% of the vote, and the UDAR party received 77 seats in the Kiev City Council.

A few days later, on June 5, 2014, the Verkhovna Rada of the 7th convocation prematurely terminated Vitali Klitschko’s powers as a people’s deputy, and on the same day the politician took the oath as the mayor of Kyiv. And for ten years now, Vitaliy Klitschko has been the “city director” - as he jokingly called himself at a meeting of the Youth Council in December 2023.

It is interesting that before the start of his political career, Vitali Klitschko campaigned to vote for those candidates in local elections who later competed with him. For example, in 2002, the Klitschko brothers appeared at the campaigns of the Unity party, which was headed by the former mayor of Kyiv Alexander Omelchenko.

Exposing corrupt officials

The 2014 election program for the mayor of Kyiv began with an affirmation of changes in the city management system. Then Vitali Klitschko paid special attention to the need to expose corruption schemes:

“We will not allow persons involved in corruption, theft of city property, violations of the rights and freedoms of citizens and pressure on business to govern the city,” the program says.

The Kyiv mayor failed to completely get rid of corrupt officials, because many schemes were carried out during Vitali Klitschko’s stay in power, and sometimes even by members of his team. For example, in 2024, thanks to investigations, it became known that the former head of the Kyiv metro, Ruslan Braginsky, who held the position for 10 years, enriched himself by several million dollars during his tenure.

A few months earlier, a corruption scheme for the theft of 10 million hryvnia from budget funds allocated for road repairs was exposed. Among the defendants are the directors of Kievdorstroy and Kievavtodor.

In addition, in 2021, the SBI published an investigation according to which systemic corruption of officials of the Kyiv City State Administration can annually cause damage to Kyiv totaling about 10 billion hryvnia. And the main mechanism of theft is insufficient control over the distribution of funds between the management of the Kyiv City State Administration and utility companies.

Transparent city budget

Another emphasis of the capital’s mayor was to ensure budget transparency so that every Kiev resident could see the city’s budget expenditures - Vitali Klitschko noted this in the program of both 2014 and 2015.

Let us note that this is rather a successful example of the implementation of an election promise. In June 2015, the electronic budget of Kyiv was presented, and later the Kyiv Smart City service was launched. In addition to the fact that the platform became an open data portal and reflected the state of execution of the city budget, Kyiv Smart City also digitalized the transport infrastructure by introducing e-tickets and a Kiev resident card.

In 2021, the initiative ceased to exist, but most of the functionality was transferred to the Kyiv Digital mobile application. Now on the KSCA website in the “city services” category you can get information about the state of budget implementation and a list of budget requests.

Parks and squares are a PR locomotive

“Kyiv is a city convenient for living” - this was one of the guidelines for the future mayor of the capital in the 2015 election program. As one of the measures to achieve this goal, Vitali Klitschko promised to build new squares and parks, the total area of ​​which should be 2 thousand hectares. This was also discussed in 2020 - then the Kiev mayor noted that Kyiv should become a green city, “like Vienna.”

The parks were built over the course of ten years. Vitali Klitschko noted this as one of his achievements during his tenure on social networks - in total, since 2014, 570 parks and squares have been updated and created. The Kiev mayor opened the reconstructed parks “Kurenevsky”, “Pobeda”, “Otradny”, “Natalka” and many more green areas of the capital. And all with the note “on the initiative of the mayor of Kyiv Vitaliy Klitschko.”

All this is definitely an advantage in favor of greening the city. But there is one “but”. The activities of the Kyiv mayor in providing the capital with green areas are inconsistent. And while some zones are opening, others are at risk of development, despite their many years of existence.

Previously, the Movement HONESTLY wrote about the continued risks of developing the Protasov Yar landscape reserve named after Roman Ratushny. In 2022, Vitaliy Klitschko promised that Protasov Yar would remain a green area - the corresponding decision to create a landscape reserve was made by the Kiev City Council. However, legal battles continue - activists reported that the claim of the developer Protasov Yar LLC to cancel the decision to create the reserve was returned for reconsideration to the appeal court.

Another green zone, the Osokorki ecopark, continues to struggle with developers. Close to Lake Tyagle, which is located in the green zone, the Ukrainian-Lithuanian development company Stolitsa Group continues to implement its plan to build high-rise buildings and residential complexes. At the same time, park activists oppose the project, since it could cause irreparable harm to the nature of the reserve.

At the beginning of March, a fire broke out on the territory of the Osokorki ecopark. Then there were versions that it could have been a planned arson, which was associated with the development company Stolitsa Group.

New green areas are indeed opening regularly in Kyiv. However, at the same time, natural landscapes are under threat of destruction due to uncontrolled development. And this is where regulation by the Kyiv mayor could help protect them.

Development of transport infrastructure

One of Vitali Klitschko’s promises in 2014 was to improve the transport infrastructure in the capital so that there would be “priority of people and public transport over the car.” In the following election campaigns, this was supplemented by promises about a metro to Vinohradar by the end of 2020 and the construction of five metro stations to Troyeshchyna.

In January 2020, during an inspection of the construction of the metro on Vinogradar, Vitaliy Klitschko assured that “everything is going according to schedule and both metro stations – Mostitskaya and Prospekt Pravdy – will be opened on time: before the end of 2021.”

It is worth noting that in 2015 the World Bank developed a new scheme of transport routes for Kyiv. However, a significant part of the recommendations, unfortunately, was not implemented, but remained only on paper. Among the routes that have begun operating in the capital are trolleybus route No. 30 and bus route No. 114. A tender for the development of a feasibility study (TES) for Troyeshchyna was announced in 2019, but was soon cancelled.

In the context of public transport in Kyiv, it is impossible to avoid the stop of five metro stations on the blue line in 2023, which were associated with problems in the tunnel between the Lybidska and Demeevskaya stations. Vitaliy Klitschko notes in all public statements that the stop of train traffic took place in order to prevent an emergency situation, and not because of the emergency situation itself. At the same time, there is still no expert opinion on the causes of the problem in the tunnels, but reconstruction work continues as planned.

A separate problem is the uncontrolled construction that was carried out above metro stations - in particular, the construction of the Obolon Plaza residential complex above the Obolon station and the Oasis and Dream Town shopping centers at the Heroes of Dnepra and Minskaya stations.

The potential impact of flooding in the Pochtovaya Ploshchad area on the Pochtovaya Ploshchad metro station itself also remains unknown. The HONEST movement previously wrote about VSK's on-site visit to Kyiv to inspect the site where an expert study was ordered to identify the emergency situation on the territory.

Construction and repair of bridges

The new bridges were a step towards realizing the promise of turning Kyiv into a “city without traffic jams.” In 2020, Vitali Klitschko noted that work to update the infrastructure is already ongoing:

“We are updating the road infrastructure, bridges and overpasses, the repair of which we have not invested in for decades,” the Kiev mayor assured at the online conference “How We See Kyiv.”

In his report for 10 years as mayor, Vitaliy Klitschko noted that a major overhaul of 175 bridges and overpasses had taken place. Indeed, in 2019, a bicycle and pedestrian bridge was opened from the Freedom Arch of the Ukrainian People to Vladimir Hill - the Glass Bridge. The final stage is the launch of the Podolsko-Voskresensky bridge, which will connect the left bank and the Podol region. At the same time, the timing of the opening of this bridge for cars is constantly changing - for now only special municipal and public transport can use it.

It is worth remembering the Shulyavsky Bridge, which partially collapsed in 2017. Then parts of the external structure of the pedestrian part of the overpass collapsed. After repairs, a few years later, lighting poles on the bridge also fell, restricting traffic on the bridge. Then Vitali Klitschko said that “the bridge was not in disrepair, but simply tired.” However, in addition to the “fatigue” of the bridge, the problem is that the restoration of the Shulyavskaya interchange was carried out by the company of the scandalous people’s deputy of the previous convocation, Maxim Mikitas, who is a defendant in anti-corruption investigations.

A few days earlier, Vitali Klitschko opened a new pedestrian bridge connecting the uninhabited Obolonsky Island and Natalka Park. The mayor noted that the bridge was erected with funds from patrons, but on the Prozorro website there is a tender of 20 million for the “completion” of it. In addition, 174.9 million hryvnia were spent on the improvement of the island.

Obviously, all this is happening while other bridges are in need of repair - at the last meeting of the Kyiv City Council, Vitaliy Klitschko himself noted that the Metro and Paton bridges are in disrepair. During the tenure of Vitali Klitschko, repair work on the bridges was not carried out, although the section of the Metro Bridge is complex - it is an experimental design, of which there were only a few in the USSR. According to the mayor, a project for emergency response work is currently being developed and preparations are underway for the start of repairs.

Ten years of Vitaliy Klitschko as mayor of Kyiv were different - and, frankly, not always successful for the capital. As the mayor of Kyiv himself noted on his social networks, during this period roads were updated, kindergartens and schools were built and repaired, and medical institutions received updated material and technical support. At the same time, the period of Vitali Klitschko's tenure deepened problems in areas of strategic importance - for example, in transport infrastructure, and highlighted the problem of lack of proper control over the use of budget funds.