A 26-year-old deputy of a village council in the Lviv region has left the country for business trip purposes more than 15 times in two recent years. However, the police assume that he actually went to the UAE, Cyprus, Turkey, Spain, Egypt, Austria, Switzerland, Canada, and other countries “to arrange his personal business and have some rest”.
Unfortunately, a story like this is not a rarity. So NGL.media decided to take a closer look at how the deputies of the Lviv council use their business trips.
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At the beginning of 2023, all deputies, including the ones of the local councils, were prohibited from leaving the country regardless of gender or age. Current requirements envisage only several reasons for a deputy’s trip abroad In addition to a business trip, there are only three reasons for a current deputy to go abroad regardless of their age or gender: going for medical treatment (a letter of the Ministry of Health is required); due to the death of a deputy’s family member abroad, related in the first or second degree; if a deputy is a single father/mother and accompanies a minor child or goes to visit his/her children , and, of course, the most popular one of all is a business trip.
The stories of foreign business trips have already caused many scandals in Ukraine. For instance, Oleh Meidych, a deputy of the AU “Batkivshchyna” [“Motherland”], was found by the “Slidstvo.Info” to have probably had rest with his wife in Italy twice. Or Oleksandr Kunytskyi, a people’s deputy from “Sluha narodu” [The Servant of the People] party who went on a short business trip to Israel and came back three weeks later from American Florida.
The deputies of local councils are no exception. Last year, NGL.media already told about their using the “Shliakh” system to have some rest abroad during the war. So, this year, we decided to check whether they all use the possibilities of business trips in good faith.
Non-public information
At first, the investigation into the business trips of the Lviv regional council deputies didn’t seem to be incredibly complicated. In late August, NGL.media made a common informational inquiry to the regional council to obtain information about all the deputies’ business trips from May to August.
First off, the regional council officials used their right to have 20 days to respond, which, in their opinion, is necessary “to search for this information among a considerable amount of data”. Yet at the end of September, when the time to respond, envisaged by the law, ended, they expressed their “deep respect and appreciation” and sent us a refusal, which took them five pages to formulate. Among the reasons for this refusal, they mentioned the need to “conduct analytical processing”, “sensitive information”, and “protection of personal data”.
Then we took another way and asked them to provide us with copies of some documents. The matter is: to have a business trip abroad, the deputy has to address the head of the regional council, who has to sign the corresponding resolution, and after coming back, the deputy has to report about the trip. All these documents are kept at the regional council, so no “analytical processing” is required to provide them in response to the inquiry. This is how NGL.media received the copies of relevant documents.
On reading a few dozen reports about foreign business trips, one can come to the conclusion that, as a rule, deputies do not take them seriously. There is little to be learned from these “reports” since they mainly consist of one or two paragraphs about nothing, without any pictures or specifics: names, dates, or places of meetings.
Out of all the documents analysed by NGL.media, only the reports of two deputies can be highlighted. For instance, 53-year-old Yuriy Mazur (NRU) [People’s Movement of Ukraine] described all the meetings he had had during his only 11-day-long business trip to Slovakia in July in detail and attached the pictures of each meeting. “My business trip was made after the invitation of the European Institute for Development and Education (EIDV); I met community representatives, city mayors, representatives of our diaspora, medical professionals, and police officials,” Mazur said.
He assured us that he had gone to Slovakia without his family and generally doesn’t want to visit any events abroad, “I am invited to a conference now, and I say, “Guys, really, this is not the time.”
Traveling with wives and children
We paid the greatest attention to long business trips, especially when the deputies took their wives/husbands or children with them because a busy schedule and quality work on a business trip and spending time with one’s family is not the best combination. However, the deputies seem to manage it somehow. Using these criteria, we managed to single out several deputies.
Not only this factor made these trips suspicious. People and foundations who had invited the deputies ignored our letters for weeks, thus confirming neither the fact of their invitation nor whether the deputies actually had paid a visit.
One of them is 36-year-old Zakhar Mylianyk from “Holos”. This year, he has been abroad twice — both trips were in summer, and both were long.
At the invitation of “Plast”, on July 1, Mylianyk went on a business trip to Bratislava “for participation in a series of events to share experience and discuss the involvement of pupils from the Lviv region in extracurricular and summer camps in Slovakia”. His wife and son left Ukraine along with him.
It was only July 18 that Zakhar Mylianyk and his family came back. Despite the considerable duration of his business trip, his report was extremely laconic: “During the working meetings with the representatives of “Plast” union of Ukrainian-Rusyn nationality in Slovakia, we discussed the directions of further cooperation with the partners in Ukraine both in the current year and in the nearest years ahead.” And that’s it. The Slovak “Plast” did not respond to NGL.media’s inquiry with the request to confirm these meetings.
The same story took place three weeks later. On August 8, Zakhar Mylianyk, together with his wife and son, went to Germany to have some negotiations about the cooperation of “Bamberg:UA e.V.” and the communities of the Lviv region “to organize the process of transporting humanitarian aid”. The Mylianyks came back to Lviv only on August 20. The Lviv regional council did not provide us with the deputy’s report about this trip, and the German foundation didn’t respond to our request for comments.
It is noteworthy that the deputy’s Facebook page does not mention these business trips. Zakhar Mylianyk didn’t respond to numerous requests from NGL.media to give his comments on this article.
For comparison, another deputy of the regional council from “Holos” party, Severyn Khobzei, left the country several times in 2024, but each business trip was not too long — up to six days, including the time on the road. And it is easy to trace most trips on his Facebook page. For instance, this trip to Italy. In the summer, he went abroad only once — left on August 27 and came back on August 28.
He doesn’t hide from journalists, and during the very first conversation, he talks about his recent trips in detail, highlighting where he was heading and whom he met. He says that he didn’t take his family members with him, although he considers it usual practice to take one’s wife on one’s business trip.
“This is European and American practice. You might know that practically two weeks ago, a senator from California visited Lviv, or, actually, there were two senators. I met them, and the senator came together with his wife and his assistant. It is normal in the modern world when your wife travels with you. It seems to me that we have this Soviet-type approach when someone has to go only on his own, without his wife. But when the entire family is going, there are some questions”, he says, and adds that there should be specific reasons for that, like the child’s disease, for instance.
“The Security Service of Ukraine has already asked me whether I have been to any places”
The business trips of Vsevolod Bilas, the deputy of the European Solidarity party, who turned 60 in November, seemed strange to us as well. In early June, he went to Estonia to meet the representatives of the humanitarian organization “United Delivery Mission”.
At the same time, for some reason, he was leaving Ukraine by car via the Transcarpathian region, heading to Hungary together with his wife, Lidiia Bilas. Later, she posted a picture of having a rest on the Slovakian coast of the Adriatic Sea. Vsevolod Bilas came back to Ukraine only on June 14, while his wife continued her rest in Australia, judging by her posts on social media.
The deputy described his almost two-week-long business trip in the report in dry and short words: “…participated in working meetings on the issues of providing assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Estonia. The discussion covered the needs, the collection, and delivery of humanitarian cargo for the Armed Forces of Ukraine from Estonia into Ukraine in 2024.”
In September, Vsevolod Bilas went on a business trip to Estonia again on the invitation of the same foundation to discuss the same issues. On September 5, he and his wife left by car via Krakivets and came back on September 16 together again.
This time, the deputy wrote in his report that he had met the representatives of local authorities: “The plan of further joint actions regarding the delivery of humanitarian cargo from Estonia to Ukraine was discussed and coordinated.” At the same time, his wife, who had accompanied him, posted pictures about having a rest in Greece.
Vsevolod Bilas is reluctant to comment on these trips. “Make a written inquiry to the regional council, and I will tell you,” was his cold reply to the question of NGL.media. “The Security Service of Ukraine has already asked me whether I have been to any places… I have not had any rest; I have not been to any seas. I have visited my acquaintances to provide our Armed Forces with the things not provided by the state.”
On hearing the direct question of whether his wife accompanied him on his business trip, Vsevolod Bilas answered in a peculiar way, “Weeeell, no… What’s the matter? Doesn’t she have a right to leave?”
Then, the deputy promised to prepare a written response to our questions but failed to keep his word. There was no reply from the Estonian foundation, “United Delivery Mission”, on whose invitation Vsevolod Bilas had made a trip, either.
Another deputy, travelling abroad for humanitarian purposes, is 48-year-old Rostyslav Dobosh (“Holos” party). This year, he went abroad many times, but contrary to Bilas, these trips were not long, two to three days each. And their results are more specific. For instance, the deputy’s trip in July was completed with the delivery of a bus for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The deputy has even provided us with a copy of the corresponding declaration.
“Generally, all my trips in spring, summer, and autumn had a humanitarian purpose. I am helping “Narodna samooborona Lvivshchyny” [“People’s Self-Defence in the Lviv Region”], [організації] Bamberg:UA and several other minor foundations to bring in the humanitarian aid. All my trips are confirmed with relevant letters and declarations,” Dobosh said. As per his words, his family did not accompany him on these trips.
My wife gave me a lift
“It was a business trip to the Republic of Poland. My acquaintances from “Plast” invited me to the camp,” Roman Dmytryshyn (“Holos”), a 36-year-old deputy of the Lviv regional council, working at the Military-medical clinical centre in the Western region, told NGL.media about his only business trip this year.
On August 19, he went to Poland on the invitation of “Plast” to participate in the cycle of trainings on the first premedical aid and tactical medicine. He came back only on August 28. Was the deputy present at these trainings all this time? “Of course, we were there not for the entire seven days, because some time was spent on the road, and some time…” he said.
The wife of Dmytryshyn left and came back together with him. Yet, in his words, she just gave him a lift, “My wife drove me to the place, and then she went on to have her vacation.”
The deputy refused to give us the contact data of the Plast camp participants who could verify his presence in the training. “I am not giving any personal data. And I don’t have any pictures because, during that period, I switched my telephone off at all, not to have anything from Ukraine disturb me,” Roman Dmytryshyn claimed.
The Polish “Plast” did not answer the inquiries of NGL.media about the involvement of Roman Dmytryshyn in the trainings, conducted by the organization, for an entire month.
In addition to studying and participating in humanitarian projects, the deputies often went to conferences for business purposes. For instance, business trips were often used by Vitalii Svishchov, the deputy of the “European Solidarity” party. We counted ten such trips made in the period from January to October, and the total time spent by him abroad exceeded two months. These were conferences and meetings, but we found no information about his taking his children along.
Yet, in fact, there was one deputy of the Lviv regional council from the “Holos” party, who went on a business trip with her entire family — Roksoliana Voronovska, who works at the Ukrainian Catholic University. This year, she has been abroad five times, but it was in August that she left the country for two weeks together with her husband and their three children.
The official reason was a trip to Wrocław to meet the community of the UCU alumni in Poland and the representatives of the Willy Brandt Centre at the University of Wrocław.
Voronovska’s report about this two-week-long business trip takes just one paragraph of four lines. “My trip was associated with the business of the UCU Foundation, headed by me. That was the time when we started the process of delegating my authorities; there were some issues with lawyers, with other partners,” the deputy explained to NGL.media. “My family went with me. I have three children who have made friends during our stay in Wrocław, so we used this opportunity to visit them.”
This piece of investigative journalism was made and published within the RPDI project “Support for Investigative Journalism” with financial support from the International Media Support (IMS).