Opposition MPs are not allowed abroad, – MP Osadchuk
Source: member of parliament Andrii Osadchuk
‘Golos’ party MP Andrii Osadchuk stated that he was asked to withdraw his application for a trip to The Hague after he voted against government’s draft law.
He wrote that the president’s office turned business trips abroad into ‘political currency’ and opposition MPs are not allowed to visit foreign countries.
Osadchuk noted that this is happening when ‘Ukraine critically needs to promote its agenda everywhere in the world’.
The MP believes that ‘deputies from opposition factions who know English and other foreign languages could and should perform this function, communicating with their counterparts abroad, as well as with the voters of our partner countries, because politicians are oriented there to the will of voters’.
‘We urgently need weapons, we need funding, but the Ukrainian leadership does not draw conclusions from the shortcomings of the work, and this can all end very badly. We now have to throw all our resources into working with the West, because Ukraine’s survival in this war depends on their support,’ Osadchuk concluded.
In 2025, the deadliest year yet for civilians, Ukraine’s three largest charitable foundations raised a record 105.9 billion hryvnias. It is more than the years 2022–2024 combined. According to the UN, humanitarian aid in Ukraine was delivered by more than 450 organisations, reaching five million people over the course of the year. Civic foundations hold licences to purchase lethal weapons, which is a function states have monopolised for centuries. These record sums were underwritten by international government grants, which means foreign states now channel billions directly through Ukrainian civic funds, bypassing inter-state channels. It is hard to imagine a stronger institutional trust in civil society.
During the GLOBSEC Defence Forum 2026 in Prague, representatives of “Steel Front”, an initiative by Rinat Akhmetov, discussed with NATO delegations, military officials, and representatives of the European defense industry the lessons learned from Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.
After the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine witnessed an unprecedented wave of private support for the army. Citizens, big businesses, charitable foundations, and international philanthropists began financing the country’s defense alongside state assistance provided by international partners. Estimates of total private contributions range from tens to hundreds of billions of hryvnias. However, determining the exact amount remains difficult. In many cases, companies combine military aid, humanitarian programs, tax payments, social spending, and employee support in their reporting.
Rinat Akhmetov’s military initiative, “Steel Front”, has delivered a batch of drones worth UAH 214 million to the 1st “Azov” Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine. This shipment is part of the Metinvest Group’s ongoing support for the unit in 2025.
On October 6, the Administrative Cassation Court within the Supreme Court of Ukraine continued hearing case No. 990/80/25, in which the fifth President and leader of the party “European Solidarity”, Petro Poroshenko, seeks to have Presidential Decree No. 81/2025 from February 12, 2025 — enacting sanctions by the decision of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) — declared illegal and annulled. The plaintiff claims the document was falsified and that the sanctions are a tool of political persecution of the opposition, contrary to international norms. Government representatives deny the allegations and insist their actions were lawful. Journalists of Bukvy were present at the hearing.