Ukraine's municipal authorities remain the only independent force in the country, the Mayor of Kiev Vitaly Klitschko said, adding that it grew to become authoritarian during the war in Ukraine. 

During his assessment of the country's "state of democracy" in Ukraine, Klitschko asserted that the country's governing institutes have deteriorated, keeping local municipal authorities the only independent force standing, during an interview with German daily Der Spiegel. 

The mayor said that “Ukraine is on the path to authoritarianism,” adding that "there is only one independent institution left –local authorities– and they are under enormous pressure.” The central government hasn't been functioning properly with local authorities, since the beginning of the war, the mayor said.

“In a year and a half since the beginning of the conflict with Russia, there has not been a single meeting or telephone conversation between [the city of] Kiev and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. At some point, we will get to the situation where everything depends on the mood of a single person,” Klitschko told Der Spiegel.

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Counteroffensive a failure

Relations between the capital's mayor and the central government have deteriorated due to several public spats. In one instance, back in June, the national government reprimanded Klitschko over the state of bomb shelters in the city, and the district heads, along with two acting district heads, were all dismissed from their posts for failing to keep facilities operational.

It is worth noting that the mayor was one of the first public figures in Ukraine to admit the failure of his country's long-heralded counteroffensive against Russian forces. 

Kiev on shaky grounds

Earlier in October, it was reported that Ukraine's war efforts might head downhill after Poland announced that it would stop providing Kiev with weapons and with Slovakia's Robert Fico, who is known to oppose the US-led Western role in the war, winning the country's latest parliamentary elections, Belgian military expert Pierre Henrot told Sputnik.

Fico's socialist Slovak party Direction, also known as Smer, won 42 seats in the Saturday parliament elections after garnering around 23 percent of votes. Meanwhile, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced in September that his country would be prioritizing strengthening its military and therefore would no longer send weapons to Kiev.

"Kiev will actually not suffer much immediately from this Slovak decision: the small country of 5.4 million people has nothing more to deliver, but the joint decision of Slovakia and Poland not to deliver arms to Ukraine anymore is a very bad blow for the Kiev government," Henrot said.