Ukraine's European partners will raise the issue of decentralization of power in the capital of Ukraine if it is not carried out earlier, Chairman of the subcommittee on administrative-territorial structure and local self-government of the Verkhovna Rada committee on the organization of state power Vitaliy Bezhin (the Servant of the People faction) is convinced.

"It is not normal when we talk about decentralization, about European approaches, and we have the capital of Ukraine, which is outside of decentralization, which it bypassed altogether. We will either do it ourselves, or our European partners will force us to do it anyway," Bezhin said in an exclusive interview with Interfax–Ukraine.

According to him, one person cannot simultaneously manage the city and control its activities.

"If Paris has a mayor of Paris and there is a prefect of Paris, then why does Kyiv have Vitali Klitschko as a mayor and Vitali Klitschko as head of the KCSA [Kyiv City State Administration]? This is wrong from the point of view of state administration," Bezhin stressed.

The parliamentarian sees no obstacles to the differentiation of the positions of the mayor and the head of the KCSA during the war, as provided for in the bill on the capital of Ukraine - Kyiv.

"It seems to me, on the contrary, ideally it should have been done before the war. If there had been a demarcation before the war, such a structure as the Kyiv City Military Administration would not have been created in Kyiv. Well, it's absurd that we have Kyiv City State Administration and Kyiv City Military Administration," the MP said.

Bezhin recalled that in Ukraine military administrations were created on the basis of regional and district state administrations, and only in Kyiv another body was created due to legislative gaps.

The MP is also confident that the bill on the capital of Ukraine – Kyiv (No. 2143-3), which the Verkhovna Rada adopted in October 2019, will be submitted for consideration at the second reading at the plenary session of parliament.

"We updated this issue at the last meeting of the TSC [temporary special commission]. I am convinced that either in this edition or in an improved edition, if such a miracle happens and we find a consensus with the Kyiv city government, it will be submitted to the hall for the second reading," he said.

As reported, Bezhin heads the temporary special commission of the Verkhovna Rada to study the effectiveness of the functioning of public authorities in Kyiv as the capital of Ukraine during martial law.