In June 2024, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine imposed sanctions against Dmytro Firtash and his company "Motronivskyi GOK", which was supposed to extract ilmenite at the Malyshevsk deposit. According to the decision, special permit No. 3640 for the use of subsoil was to be canceled.
However, this did not happen. The very next day after the sanctions were imposed, Firtash’s company “sold” the right to use the subsoil to LLC “Tiberius Plus” — a structure that by all accounts is a shell company. Formally, it belongs to an “unsanctioned” person, but the transfer of rights itself was illegal and should have been considered null and void.
Instead of immediately canceling the permit, the State Service for Geonadra twice refused to consider the applications, effectively delaying the process. Mining continued. When the issue became public, Motronivskyi GOK appealed to the court, which prohibited the State Service for Geonadra from making any changes to the permit until the case was considered.
The Supreme Court lifted this ban only in April 2025, almost a year after the sanctions were imposed. After that, the State Geological Survey of Ukraine suspended the special permit, but de facto control over the field remained with structures associated with Firtash.
The scheme turned out to be typical of the oligarch's business empire: a complex network of legal entities, shell companies, the use of legal loopholes, and support from state authorities. The result is that strategic resources continue to work for the sanctioned businessman, while the state budget loses millions of hryvnias.
In fact, the NSDC sanctions in this case remained only on paper, demonstrating the vulnerability of the Ukrainian system to well-established schemes for circumventing restrictions.
