The Mykolaiv District Prosecutor’s Office has filed a motion demanding that the City Council’s decision to give a land plot in a grove for a gas station construction be cancelled. The details and potential violations cited by the Prosecutor were collected and reported by the local media outlet MykVisti a year prior, chief editor Kateryna Sereda reported to the Institute of Mass Information.
The plot covers 7,643 square meters near a state-owned machine factory. This territory is deisgnated as a recreational green area for public use in Mykolaiv’s general plan.
In May 2025, MykVisti released an investigation tracking the timeline of the City Council’s decisions and legal proceedings regarding this land plot. The team found that the City Council changed the area’s assigned purpose in 2024, allowing road service facility construction there. The Council was passing the decisions regarding the land plot packaged together with other issues, without discussing it in detail.
“A year ago, I dug up the City Council decisions for various years, along with court cases, land commission files, and comments by the legal department. We showed how the City Council spent years in court to give the land to the community, and then leased it to the same company it had been trying to divest of the plot. Now the Prosecutor’s lawsuit featured the same details and violations that the journalists collected and described at the time,” said Kateryna Sereda.
In July 2026, the Prosecutor’s Office said that the City Council had no legal grounds for giving the plot to a new owner without a land auction and that it had disregarded due process in changing the area’s purpose.
The Prosecutor’s Office is asking the court to cancel the City Council’s decision, declare the lease agreement invalid, and order the company to give the land plot back in a usable condition. The Commercial Court of Mykolaiv Oblast has already opened proceedings in the case.
According to Kateryna Sereda, this case shows that the impact of reporting may not be immediate.
“Sometimes a year passes between publication and reaction. But this once again shows why journalism that works with documents, decisions, and facts is needed,” she added.
In December 2025, Mykolaiv Police opened an investigation following MykVisti’s reporting on meals in the city’s schools and a video clip showing school cafeteria staff cooking a meal outdoors during a rain.
In February 2026, the MIA service center in Mykolaiv adapted their premises for whllechair use after MykVisti pointed out the issue in their reporting.
MykVisti is included in the updated Map of Recommended Media Outlets by the Institute of Mass Information and Detector Media.