Mykolaiv City Council expects road conditions to deteriorate by the end of the year due to a lack of funds for repairs
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- Yuliia BoichenkoReporter
The condition of the road on Tsentralnyi Avenue in Mykolaiv after the snow has melted. Photo: ‘NikVesti’, 2026The city council predicts that with the arrival of the autumn rains, Mykolaiv’s roads will once again begin to fill with potholes. At present, there are no funds in the city budget to repair them.
This was discussed during a staff meeting at the city council on 4 August, according to NikVesti.
Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych said he had already noticed new damage on Bohoiavlenskyi Avenue.
«Yesterday I drove from Avanhardna to Kosmonavtiv; large cracks are appearing. We need to think about what to do about them. It seems to me that if the autumn rainy season starts now, they will all turn into potholes. We need to address this issue,» he said.
At present, there are no funds available for repairing the city’s roads, according to Vitalii Shevchenko, director of the municipal enterprise «ELU Avtodorig». He also explained that at the start of the year, the enterprise was operating under tight financial constraints and was only repairing individual potholes.
«At the moment, we have absolutely no money. At the start of the year, when there was a shortfall, we agreed that we would tackle the roads section by section: if there’s a pothole, we’ll fill it; if there’s a mesh patch, we’ll leave it. So now we can see that the mesh patches we left in place are starting to crumble. This means the situation will get worse over time. In a month or two, when the rain comes, we’ll find ourselves in virtually the same situation as we were in this spring,» said Vitalii Shevchenko.
The mayor added that at the end of August, councillors are due to allocate funds from the city budget — which are planned to be directed, in particular, towards patching potholes.
«We are all preparing for the August session; the next session will take place by the end of the month. I would ask all my colleagues, please, to take a responsible approach to the reallocation of funds. If we are not given the money, we will have to halt and reallocate it. This includes funds for pothole repairs,» said Oleksandr Sienkevych.
He also instructed that a tender for the purchase of asphalt be announced immediately, so that no time is wasted on this once the funds have been allocated.
«Please update the information on potholes and be ready to use the funds. Perhaps we need to announce tenders for the purchase of asphalt right now, in accordance with the procedure, so that we don’t run into problems later and don’t have to wait another month,» said the mayor.
What is the situation with road repairs in Mykolaiv?
Following this year’s winter, deep potholes have appeared on Mykolaiv’s roads due to the effects of freeze-thaw cycles and the de-icing agents that were spread over the tarmac.
Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych stated that the city budget currently lacks funds for routine and major road repairs. He noted that the budget contains only 20 million hryvnias exclusively for patching potholes throughout the year.
Meanwhile, in a comment to NikVesti, Vitalii Shevchenko, director of the municipal enterprise «ELU Avtodorig», explained that there will be no large-scale pothole repairs on Mykolaiv’s roads for about another month due to unstable weather conditions and the dampness of the road sub-base.
In early March, municipal workers began carrying out pothole repairs on Tsentralnyi Avenue.
And it was decided to allocate 14 million hryvnias from Mykolaiv’s budget for emergency and pothole repairs to roads.
As of May 2026, over 8,500 square metres of roads with emergency potholes had been repaired in Mykolaiv. At the same time, the municipal enterprise «ELU Avtodorig» has announced a tender for the repair of potholes and other deformations in the asphalt concrete surface in Mykolaiv. Over 3 million hryvnias are planned to be allocated for the works.
