The football corridors of the Bucha district are buzzing. In a single session on 11 September the executive committee of the Bucha District Football Association closed an unfinished season and opened a new one — and did it in a way top-tier functionaries could learn from.
FC Horenychi were finally confirmed as champions of the 2025/26 Higher League, the 2026/27 regulations gained a rule that, according to the association’s head, has never existed at amateur level, and the association got committees headed by lawyers and a separate media unit.
A Bucha FM exclusive: our correspondent was present at the meeting, which was chaired by the association’s head Vasyl Oleksiuk.
The transition period is over. Before the agenda Oleksiuk reported on the conference of 15 August: there he was elected head anew, because during his year as acting head after the resignation of his predecessor Valerii Chalyi the association had not managed to complete the Ministry of Justice requirements for a change of leadership. The hierarchy is now assembled: deputy head Serhii Lisnyk, a new executive committee, an audit commission, a control and disciplinary committee and an appeals committee.
The weight of the occasion was underlined by the participation of BRAF executive member Roman Solodarenko, president of Ukrainian Premier League club Kudrivka and head of the Chernihiv Regional Football Association.
Photo: Bucha FMSensation of the season — video reviews that, in the head’s words, amateur football has never seen
The real bombshell of the meeting was not in the handouts — it came from the floor. To the thirteen prepared amendments the executive added a fourteenth: the referee of a Higher League match — and of a First League match if it is being filmed — has the right, at the request of a team captain or on their own initiative, to take up to three minutes to review video in two cases: a direct red card and a penalty. There is one condition — technical feasibility.
As the head described it in practice, before the game the referee may ask the teams’ responsible officials whether filming is taking place that day.
The head proceeded from the premise that in 2026/27 the teams film their matches. Oleksiuk said he had also put the idea to the head of the Kyiv Regional Football Association Andrii Zasukha and to the regional association’s executive director, and called it the first such rule at amateur level. “A kind of VAR,” he said, immediately correcting himself: it is a video review, not a VAR system.
While the Ukrainian Premier League has argued about VAR machines for years, the district simply introduces replays where nobody expected them.
Photo: Bucha FMThe discussion was sharp but to the point. Dmytro Ohanesian, acting head of the referees’ committee, supported the idea and proposed a mechanism: one review per half for each team, retained if the review proves the team right. Dmytrivka’s representative Bohdan Didych insisted that a review could be initiated not only by the officials but also by a team — that, he said, is how it already works at winter tournaments.
The compromise was the captain’s right: “One person asks — the referee takes the review. Not ten or eleven players shouting on the pitch.” A request is possible only until play has restarted.
One member of the executive raised the question of quality: if a match is filmed with a single camera, there will be nothing to review. The head’s answer was clear.
Vasyl Oleksiukhead of the Bucha District Football AssociationRaise the quality of your filming, bring in professional camera crews — if you want the review to really work.
This is needed first of all by the teams themselves, not by the camera operators, the head of the association or the members of the executive.
Teams that provide filming will take part in the pilot.
Closing the loop — a champion it took two months to name
The regular Higher League season ended in mid-July with Horenychi on 51 points and Zabiria and Dmytrivka on 49 each. But already on 10 July the control and disciplinary committee met on the case of Oleksandr Smitiukh — a professional footballer who, as the committee established, had played for Horenychi under the card of his twin brother Mykhailo.
On 21 July the committee annulled the result of the match Vyshneve v Horenychi of 26 October 2025, awarded a 0:3 forfeit against Horenychi and fined the club 5,000 hryvnias.
The arithmetic is simple: minus three points, and Horenychi on 48 would have dropped below both pursuers, with the title contested between Zabiria and Dmytrivka. That is why the association could not name a champion for two months. “Because of the conflicts that arose, the suspicions and other circumstances, it was impossible to determine the champion,” was how Oleksiuk put it.
The Gordian knot was cut by the appeals committee, which, in the head’s words, “having examined the case more deeply than the previous committee”, named Horenychi champions a week before the meeting. The association has not published the text of that decision, so whether the forfeit and the fine were overturned was not clear from the meeting. The executive confirmed the outcome: gold to FC Horenychi, silver to SC Zabiria, bronze to FC Dmytrivka, with 30 sets of medals with yellow-and-blue ribbons for each.
One member of the executive voted against; there were no abstentions.
Photo: Bucha FMAsked about a complaint to the disciplinary committee over improper handling of the appeal and the player’s eligibility, the head replied that the appeals committee had refused to consider it because the ten-day deadline had been missed and the fee provided for in the regulations had not been paid. “Let us comply with all the rules: apply in time and pay the fees where the regulations require it,” he said.
The case has a heavy backstory. In round 18, after the match Zabiria v Horenychi at Zabiria’s Neptun ground, there was a scandal the association promised to refer to the disciplinary committee.
In round 21 the game Horenychi v Dmytrivka, in which the hosts turned 0:1 into 3:1 (two penalties in the 75th and 90th minutes and a goal in the 96th), ended with three visiting players and one home player sent off. At the meeting that match was recalled by a participant who had been there in person — as an argument precisely for video review: “If there had been filming, everything would have been different.”
Vasyl Oleksiukhead of the Bucha District Football AssociationWe must turn the page. Our task is to preserve district, amateur football and move on at an entirely different level: with different responsibility, different discipline and a different legal approach to any violations.
That is what the head said before the vote. To that end he invited football lawyer and advocate Roman Morozov to head the disciplinary committee and advocate Rostyslav Sachok to head the appeals committee.
Sporting merit — the First League champion is not going up, the question is shelved
The second heated discussion was whether the First League winner is obliged to go up. Borodianka won last year’s title in a play-off, 2:1 against Hostynnyi Dvir-SB, but it was the silver medallist from Vyshneve, not Borodianka, that entered the Higher League. Borodianka’s representative said that many in the team do not want to, and cannot, go to the Higher League.
Oleksiuk was at first categorical.
Vasyl Oleksiukhead of the Bucha District Football AssociationThat is not how it will be. The sporting principle is simple: you win — you go up. If you do not want to go up, do not win — finish fourth or fifth. You have been First League champions for the third or fourth year running.
Roman Solodarenko objected, using the Chernihiv region as an example: the regional association has no mandatory rule on promoting the winner of a district championship, and it is impossible to force a team without funding to play a level higher — “it will be the first to withdraw in two or three years”.
One member of the executive objected: if teams are systematically allowed to stay where they want, five or six teams will play in the Higher League “and all the others will simply go to the First, because there you can compete”. The question was shelved — it will be revisited after the first half of the season.
After the vote on the regulations, one member of the executive questioned the clause treating a vehicle breakdown on the way to a match as a valid reason for failing to arrive. The head agreed: otherwise “there will be manipulation every time” — the final wording was left to the competitions committee.
Permission from the military administration — without it the police can stop a game
The head dwelt separately on security. Before approving the calendar, the association submitted to the Bucha District Military Administration an application from each team — confirming participation, stadiums, responsible persons and safety rules, as required by the regional and district administrations’ orders restricting mass events. The association is awaiting permission.
Vasyl Oleksiukhead of the Bucha District Football AssociationHad we not gone this way, we would be holding these matches at our own risk. At any moment a National Police officer may ask for the permit — and stop the game.
If the police stop a game, the responsible team forfeits the match.
The new management monolith — who is responsible for what
Three committees were elected by the conference of 15 August: the competitions committee is headed by Serhii Lisnyk (members Roman Malchevskyi and Anastasiia Vyshniak), the control and disciplinary committee by Roman Morozov (Mykola Vasiuk and one more member), the appeals committee by Rostyslav Sachok (Roman Kents, Artem Antoniuk). The rest the executive approved as a package:
- referees’ committee — Dmytro Ohanesian (Viacheslav Sirenko, Dmytro Melnychenko);
- futsal and beach football committee — Anatolii Dombrovskyi and Serhii Lisnyk;
- veterans’ football committee — Serhii Petrovskyi (Serhii Tereshchenko, Ivan Starostiuk);
- youth football committee — Volodymyr Hinda (Oleksandr Yukhymenko, Yurii Melnyk, Andrii Davydenko);
- public and media relations committee — Serhii Bondarenko (Valentyn Ovdiienko);
- audit commission — Anna Zelenenko (Hennadii Mamon, Viktor Sivishkin).
A direct hook at the critics who complained about a lack of media presence — a new committee for public and media relations. It is headed by Serhii Bondarenko, long-time editor-in-chief of the newspaper Ukrainskyi Futbol.
The audit commission is headed by Anna Zelenenko. The commission’s members are Hennadii Mamon, director of the Yuvileinyi stadium, and Viktor Sivishkin, director of Bucha’s PMK stadium.
Oleksiuk also voiced a financial goal: every committee should become self-financing and earn money rather than live only on the teams’ contributions — “so that there are no laughable sums that committee heads receive for their work”. The largest share of money today, he said, goes to running the competitions and refereeing.
Only one thing was not adopted: the proposal to revive the district Super Cup, which has not been played for two years in a row because one team won both the championship and the cup. The options — to play against the cup finalist or the First League winner — were left for discussion. The season calendar approved at the same meeting is covered in a separate article.
As a reminder, professionals played at Yuvileinyi in Bucha on 11 September — Yuksa beat Chernihiv 3:2 in the national First League (Persha Liha), scoring the winner in the third minute of added time.
Nota bene
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