Draft Law on “Supervision” No. 14048: A Legislative Cover for Robbing Communities or Building an Authoritarian Vertical Like Russia’s?

Introduction

Imagine your apartment is being robbed. But instead of immediately calling the police, the law forces you to first write the robbers a polite “request” to stop and then wait 20 days for their response. While this absurd bureaucratic correspondence unfolds, your property is long gone—shipped out, resold through several intermediaries, and laundered. Does this sound like a scene from a bad comedy? Unfortunately, this is precisely the mechanism for “upholding the law” proposed by the new draft law on state supervision of local self-government, turning a potential crime into a routine administrative procedure.

This document is not about control or order. It is about creating ideal, greenhouse conditions for the unpunished robbery of communities and the deliberate construction of a rigid, centralized vertical of power in Ukraine, based on the worst Russian models.

The Forgotten Citizen: A War Between Two Bureaucracies

The first thing to understand when reading this draft law is that it was written by officials, for officials. It is missing the main character—you, the residents of the territorial community, the taxpayers. Its entire logic boils down to how one bureaucratic apparatus (the state “supervisor,” appointed from Kyiv) will control another (the local council, which you elected). Your rights, your comfort, your influence on the government, and ultimately, your wallet—all are pushed aside as irrelevant details.

Instead of being an instrument for the people to exercise power, local self-government is being turned into an exclusive club where two types of officials “settle matters.” In this system, the citizen is transformed from a subject in whose interest the government works into an object of administration, whose opinion is of no interest to anyone. And as a deep analysis shows, these matters will certainly not be settled in your favor.

A Three-Month Head Start for the Corrupt: How It Will Work

The draft law creates a perfect, almost legal tool for implementing any illicit decisions. The scheme it proposes is simple, cynical, and painfully effective for criminals:

1. The Crime. A local council, in collusion, makes a deliberately illegal decision: for example, it gives a historic building to a developer for demolition at a bargain price, hands over hectares of protected forest for cottage construction, or funnels millions from the budget to a shell company owned by the mayor’s relative.
2. The Imitation of Supervision. The state “supervisor” (the head of the Regional State Administration), instead of immediately initiating criminal proceedings (since abuse of power is a crime under Article 365 of the Criminal Code), begins a leisurely administrative game. The law gives them a full 60 days to “notice” an obvious violation.
3. The Bureaucratic Red Tape. After “noticing,” they don’t rush to court. They send a “request,” which the council has another 20 working days to consider. That’s another month of precious time for the criminals.
4. The Result. Over these nearly three months of completely legal inaction, the historic building can be demolished, the forest can be cut down to the last tree, and the budget funds can be moved to offshore accounts. The consequences of the crime become irreversible, and the stolen property or money is securely laundered.

And most importantly: after three months of delays, the supervising official single-handedly decides whether to go to court. This creates ideal conditions for the formation of organized crime groups (OCGs), where local corrupt officials work in tandem with the state controller. A “pocket” supervisor, for a generous reward, will simply “forget” to file a lawsuit, effectively legitimizing the robbery of the community and ensuring complete impunity for the criminals.

Why “Supervisors” Will Destroy, Not Help

The draft law proposes appointing people with experience in the civil service or business to the positions of heads of Regional State Administrations (“supervisors”). And this is where a fundamental ideological subversion lies.

• A civil servant is accustomed to acting on the principle: “only what is explicitly written in the instructions is allowed.” Their mindset is that of an executor in a rigid hierarchy.
• A businessman is accustomed to acting with the goal of making a profit, where efficiency is measured by financial results.

But local self-government operates on a completely different, European principle: “everything that is not expressly forbidden by law is allowed.” This is a space for initiative, creativity, and the search for unconventional solutions in the interests of the community, not for blindly following orders or seeking commercial gain.

By appointing a person with the authoritarian mindset of a civil servant as a “supervisor,” we will get a controller who sees any community initiative not as an opportunity for development, but as a “violation of instructions” and a threat. They will not help, but hinder, stifling initiative and creating for themselves a boundless field for corrupt bargaining: “You want to build an innovative park that’s not mentioned in the law? Let’s negotiate.” This is an institutionally programmed conflict that destroys the very essence of self-government.

A Step Towards Russia: Building a “Unified Vertical of Power”

The most terrifying thing is that the proposed model is not a Ukrainian invention. It is an alarming copy of the management philosophy that operates in the Russian Federation, known as the “unified system of public power.”

A Lesson from Our Own History: The Old System Strikes Back

We don’t need to look at Russia to see how the game of a “strong vertical” ends. It’s enough to recall our own recent history. The model of rigid, centralized governance built by Leonid Kuchma and especially Viktor Yanukovych led to the emergence of “smotryashchiy” (overseers) and local feudal lords who answered only to Kyiv, not to the people. The illusion that this system has disappeared is extremely dangerous. It did not “lie low.” It continued to operate, constantly modernizing, changing tactics, and searching for new, more sophisticated tools to maintain and regain control. It learned to use democratic rhetoric to advance its anti-democratic interests. And Draft Law No. 14048 is not just a “blast from the past.” It is the most modern product of this undying system, its powerful and well-thought-out attempt to create an existential threat to local self-government—and to return the country to an era of complete manual control from a single center.

Sign of Centralization	In the Ukrainian Draft Law	In the Legislation of the Russian Federation
Centralized Personnel	Heads of Regional State Administrations (“supervisors”) are chosen in Kyiv. They are loyal to the center, not the community.	Governors and mayors are part of a “unified vertical of power” controlled by the Kremlin.
Administrative “Veto”	An official can block any decision of the community, substituting for an independent court.	The prosecutor’s office and governors have broad powers to directly interfere in the decisions of municipalities.
Total Control	Supervision extends to absolutely all, even the most minor, decisions of local councils.	Any decision by local authorities can be reviewed and overturned from “above” on formal grounds.

This is a civilizational U-turn. Instead of the European path of decentralization, which is based on trust, partnership, and accountability to the people, we are being offered an authoritarian model based on total distrust, manual control, and subordination to the center. This is the same path that turned the Russian Federation into a centralized dictatorship.

A Constructive Alternative: Power to Organized Communities

Criticism without a proposal is futile. Fortunately, a real alternative exists, and it doesn’t require inventing new laws—it’s enough to apply the existing ones correctly. This is a three-level model of self-government that returns power to the people.

1. The House Level (House OSON – Body of Self-Organization of the Population): This is the “nervous system”—representatives who know the problems of their building and communicate them upwards.
2. The Microdistrict Level (Microdistrict OSON): This is the “brain and heart” of the community, the creation of which is directly provided for by the current Law “On Bodies of Self-Organization of the Population.” This is not just a public organization, but a full-fledged representative body, elected by residents, to which real powers and finances are delegated. It becomes the sole management center in the area: it forms its own budget (from local taxes on parking, advertising, etc.), acts as the sole client and controller for utility services, and also builds partnerships with the school, the local doctor, the police officer, and the local prosecutor’s office. It is at this level that the abstract concept of “people’s power” from Article 5 of the Constitution becomes a daily reality, where the community directly manages the quality of its life.
3. The District Level (District Council): This level is populated not by politicians from billboards, but by the heads of microdistrict OSONs—practitioners who have proven their effectiveness on the ground and are directly accountable to their neighbors.

It is this structure that creates a legitimate and strong representative of the community—the Microdistrict OSON, which can and should become the main defender of its interests.

Conclusion: A New Model of Supervision—Balancing the Interests of the State and the Community

This draft law cannot be “fixed” with cosmetic amendments. It must be completely rejected and a new one developed, based on the protection of the rights and property of ordinary citizens through effective, not imitative, mechanisms.

The central element of such a system must be the protection of the public rights and interests of residents – members of the territorial community, and the only constitutional body capable of ensuring it is the prosecutor’s office. Its key role is to act as a “state advocate” for the members of the territorial community. The mechanism works as follows: when a local council, by its decision, violates the collective rights of the territorial community—takes away a common park, approves dense construction against the master plan, allows environmental pollution—the initiative comes from below. The legitimate representative of the community, the Body of Self-Organization of the Population (OSON) of the microdistrict, acting on behalf of and under the instruction of the residents – members of the territorial community, appeals to the prosecutor’s office, and then together with the OSON, it defends the interests of the members of the territorial community in court against the arbitrariness of their own elected government.

At the same time, the prosecutor’s office retains its function of protecting the interests of the state. If a local council violates the law, creating a threat to state sovereignty (separatism) or committing criminal offenses (corruption, abuse of power), it acts as a representative of the state. In such cases, the prosecutor’s office must immediately open criminal proceedings and stop the crime, not play games with months of administrative “requests.”

Such a model creates a healthy balance: the prosecutor’s office protects the state from the illegal actions of local self-government bodies, and at the same time, it protects the territorial community from the illegal actions of the same bodies. This gives the citizen real influence and creates an effective safeguard against corruption, forming a living feedback loop: a government that knows its illegal decisions will be challenged not by an abstract “supervisor,” but by its own voters, is forced to listen to their opinion. Anything else is a direct path to the usurpation of power, the legalization of corrupt schemes, and the building in Ukraine of the very authoritarian state that we are so desperately trying to defeat on the battlefield.