On 28 August 2023, representatives of a municipal department in Zaporizhia refused to provide journalists with information on contracts for the renovation of local roads, claiming that this could only be provided after the end of martial law in Ukraine, reported Serhiy Sydorov, the head of the Zaporizhia Investigative Center, a local media outlet. According to the outlet, journalists had asked for this information to verify suspicions of corruption in the spending of funds. In a comment to Ukraine’s Institute of Mass Information (IMI), a press freedom group, Sydorov added that despite the official response provided by the authorities, the municipality was regularly publishing photos from renovations of local roads on its social media pages.
In a Facebook post, the Zaporizhia Investigative Center questioned whether there were any security risks linked to the Russian military being able to see which roads in Zaporizhia had been renovated. Commenting on the case, a lawyer with IMI confirmed that that the refusal by authorities was “unfounded”. “The administrator [of the data] should provide copies of documents, excluding from it the information which they consider to be confidential,” lawyer Roman Holovenko said.