Prosecutor General refers ZHAR.INFO's complaint to the prosecutor's office the complaint was against

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The online media outlet ZHAR.INFO filed a complaint with the Prosecutor General’s Office against the actions of the Khmelnytskyi Oblast Prosecutor’s Office, which only provided journalists with a part of the information they requested. Instead of reviewing the complaint and responding to the actions of its subordinate entity, the Prosecutor General’s Office referred the complaint to the Oblast Prosecutor’s Office, the media outlet reports to the Institute of Mass Information.

In turn, the Oblast Prosecutor’s Office reviewed the complaint and refused to provide the information again.

According to ZHAR.INFO journalist Alena Bereza, she submitted a query to the Khmelnytskyi Oblast Prosecutor’s Office on April 15, asking for data on the salaries of the Office's staff and that of district prosecutor’s offices for December 2024, January and March 2025.

In response to the query, the Office shared the data on all employees except for those who are active military servicemembers. Bereza says that there was no such problem the previous time she requested similar information in December 2024, for October and November of that year. The media outlet decided to collect this information after the scandal where over 60 prosecutors were found to have unlawfully been assigned disabilities to evade the draft.

Oksana Maksymeniuk, a lawyer at the Institute for Regional Press Development who is helping the media outlet to appeal the data manager's actions, says that the Oblast Prosecutor’s Office that is the subject of the complaint can not review it.

“The law on access to public information allows appealing a refusal to provide information to a higher authority. Such complaints cannot be considered by the information manager against whom the complaint was filed. The response indicates that the Prosecutor General's Office considered the reviewed improperly, violating the current legislation on access to public information,” Maksymeniuk says.

Having received the response from the Khmelnytskyi Oblast Prosecutor's Office, ZHAR.INFO plans to contest their failure to provide the information in full by other means.

On April 29, 2025, the Supreme Court declined a motion by ZHAR.INFO journalist Alyona Bereza to open cassation proceedings in the case against the VRU Apparatus and the VRU Apparatus Department for Citizens' Appeals.