Kropyvnytsky City Council cancels online livestreams of their sessions

The Kropyvnytsky City Council will not be livestreaming their sessions online until the end of the full-scale war.

This was reported by the local media and confirmed to the IMI representative in Kirovohrad oblast by the City Council's chief of mass media Serhiy Yakunin.

The City Council convened on May 28, with reporters being notified just a few hours prior. Journalists were also informed in a closed group chat that from now on there would be no livestreams from the session hall, as had been the case for the last ten years.

In his comment to the IMI representative, the head of the "press service" Serhiy Yakunin claimed that the City Council seeks to comply with the amendments to the Law "On Local Self-Government in Ukraine", which were recently signed by the President. According to this law, plenary sessions of local councils and meetings of their standing commissions should only be livestreamed after martial law is lifted.

IMI lawyer Roman Holovenko notes that the current law does not order anyone to stop livestreaming. However, the livestreams were a show of good will on the part of the Council itself more than anything. So the switch to uploading the videos after the fact may be unpleasant for the media, but a completely legal step, he added.