Chernihiv CMA withholds staff names from Suspilne even after Commissioner's letter

Photo source: law.com

The Chernihiv City Military Administration is refusing to disclose the full names of its staff upon request by Suspilne Chernihiv even despite a letter by the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights urging them to do so, reports Andriy Titok, chief editor of the Suspilne North-Eastern Hub and Suspilne Chernihiv, to the Institute of Mass Information representative Pavlo Pushchenko.

In April 2025, after the Chernihiv CMA refused to provide information on the full names of their employees, Suspilne Chernihiv filed a complaint with the Commissioner.

In response to a letter from the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights and an information query by the journalists, the chair of the administration, Dmytro Bryzhynskyi, notes that disclosing information about military administration employees involved in enforcing the mobilization effort, ensuring material support for the country's security and defense forces, and resolving civil defense issues may put their lives and health at risk, which is why the CMA will not be providing this information.

“This reply is odd to us, because judging by the job titles, only 4 out of 19 CMA employees fall under these criteria. These are the employees responsible for civil defense, interacting with law enforcement, and mobilization. Then what is the problem with showing us data on the rest of the administration's staff? For example, the economists, accountants, information specialists?” said Andriy Titok.

The team is now considering whether to go to court.

Volodymyr Zelenchuk, a lawyer at the Institute of Mass Information, believes that the denial of access to information was in violation of the requirements of the Law “On Access to Public Information.”

“Personal data of all military administration staff who hold positions and are authorized to perform state and local government functions cannot be considered confidential information and, accordingly, access to it can not be restricted. Even if we disregard the clear requirements in the law which prohibit restriction of such information, there is another line of argument to prove that the military administration's refusal to provide part of the information was groundless,” he noted.

According to Zelenchuk, the Law “On Access to Public Information” states that the administrator may restrict access to information provided that a set of certain requirements, also known as the “three-part test,” is met.

“In their reply, the administration only cites two of the three mandatory requirements: the information is being restricted in order to prevent crime and its disclosure may lead to crimes being committed against administration staff. However, the administration’s response to the journalists does not seem to provide sufficient reasoning that such a threat actually exists and that it is real. Moreover, the administration did not explain at all why the harm from disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in obtaining it, which is the third mandatory condition of the test,” the media lawyer added.

We would like to remind you that the Chernihiv City Military Administration chair, Dmytro Bryzhynskyi, refuses to speak or give comments to Suspilne Chernihiv while readily giving interviews to other news outlets. The situation is becoming absurd: for several months now, Suspilne have been submitting dozens of information queries about each issue of interest, in accordance with the Law “On Access to Public Information”, and waiting for long periods for a reply, sometimes for 20 days.