Officials of Ternopil City Council sneak in tombstones for cemetery of fallen Ukrainian soldiers

Ternopil is at the center of a scandal surrounding the arrangement of the Pantheon of Heroes military cemetery. The director of the Ritual Service municipal enterprise, Serhiy Tlumatsky, was suspected of embezzling budget funds worth 400,000 hryvnias. According to the prosecutor’s office, the overpayment arose from the purchase of tombstones for the military, which turned out to be thinner than specified in the documentation.

According to ZAXID.NET, the head of the utility company was notified of suspicion of improper performance of official duties. According to the case file, instead of the 10 cm stated in the contracts, the thickness of the sandstone slabs used for gravestones on the graves of military personnel was only 6 cm. This discrepancy, according to law enforcement officials, led to significant losses for the city budget, as payment was made for thicker stone.

The Pantheon of Heroes military cemetery has been under construction at Ternopil’s central cemetery since 2023. The project envisages a single design for all graves – tombstones in the form of crosses made of gray sandstone. UAH 14 million was allocated from the city budget for the implementation of this project, and 0.83 hectares of land on Mykulynetska Street were allocated for reconstruction.

The Ternopil City Council reacted strongly to the accusations, saying on January 10 that the prosecutor’s office was “deliberately fabricating an information campaign” against the city authorities and “manipulating public opinion.” In a statement, the mayor’s office argued that such actions resemble “political or administrative reprisals” rather than legitimate procedural steps. The city council also linked the situation to the interests of a particular family of judge Maria Stadnyk, who demanded the erection of an individual monument for her son, a former prosecutor who died in the war. However, the Eighth Court of Appeal of Lviv had previously upheld the claim of the Ternopil City Council and banned the installation of individual monuments at the Pantheon of Heroes, insisting on a unified design.

In response to these allegations, the Ternopil Prosecutor’s Office stated that the validity of the suspicion against the head of the Ritual Service was confirmed by an act of the State Audit Service and the conclusion of a forensic economic examination. Representatives of the prosecutor’s office called on the local government “not to take on uncharacteristic functions, but to comply with the laws and ethics in public communication,” noting that their actions do not affect the construction of the Pantheon.

However, the Ternopil City Council, for its part, reported having its own expertise from the Eastern Office of the State Audit Service in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, which, according to them, did not reveal any financial violations, misuse of budget funds or damage, thus contradicting the findings of the prosecutor’s office.

The case will soon be transferred to the court, which will evaluate all the evidence in the criminal proceedings.

Earlier, we reported that the Ternopil City Council transferred to the religious community of the OCU a land plot (at 1 Konovaltsia Street, Ternopil, Ukraine), where the Cathedral and diocesan administration of the Ternopil Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church are located. This decision was made by the city council despite the fact that the Supreme Court of Ukraine seized the land, prohibiting the city council from disposing of the property in any way. Now the OCU community, which was given the land under the UOC Cathedral, is going to build a chapel there.