Volodymyr Zelenskyi's decision to appoint Ivan Fedorov as the head of Zaporizhzhia OVA caused an ambiguous reaction from society. In particular, Fedorov is reminded of corruption scandals, the story with the Russian fortune teller Elena Laurent, and they claim that the Russian capture of Fedorov was "fake".
Regarding the participation of Ivan Fedorov in corruption schemes, we should note that the entire Fedorov family was somehow integrated into the power structures of Melitopol through his father, Serhiy Fedorov. Fedorov Sr. had friendly relations with the then mayor Dmytro Sychov, under whose patronage he took the position of chief physician, and later became a deputy of the Melitopol city council. After becoming a deputy, Serhiy Fedorov becomes the owner of expensive medical equipment, in particular, tomographs, which are installed on the territory of municipal and state medical institutions of the city.
The artificially created monopoly on medical diagnostic services in Melitopol by Serhii Fedorov makes the Fedorov family literally millionaires. With the help of this money and connections, in 2010, Serhii Fedorov was able to get his son Ivan Fedorov from the Party of Regions elected to the Melitopol City Council.
In April 2011, 22-year-old Ivan Fedorov together with his former classmate Oleksandr Shcherbakov founded Wizard Group LLC. The company installed modular boiler houses that supplied thermal energy at significantly inflated tariffs to the city's medical and educational institutions without any tenders. After the opening of criminal proceedings No. 12015080140000706 in 2015 (the materials can be found on the website of the EDRSR ), Fedorov-Shcherbakov formally withdrew from the management of the company, and the case was "shut up" over time.
It is worth noting that Ivan Fedorov together with another regional official Serhiy Minko controlled almost all corruption flows in Melitopol: communal enterprises, transportation, tenders, waste removal. But Fedorov is most remembered for the " communal racket ", through the controlled LLC "Teplo-Melitopol", which effectively monopolized the provision of centralized heating services and set "draconian" tariffs for the population.
wrote about corruption schemes, the purchase of commercial real estate and money laundering by the Fedorov family . In addition, a lot of interesting and diverse information about Fedorov can be found on the local insider Telegram channel " Vaselin ".
At the same time, in the context of the recent appointment of Ivan Fedorov, we consider it necessary to recall the corruption scandal related to Fedorov's attempt in 2023 to overestimate the estimate for the construction of the ice arena in Melitopol by 56 million hryvnias. The absurdity of the situation consisted in the fact that the state paid for the construction of the ice arena, and the estimate was increased already after the occupation of Melitopol by the Russians.
On the initiative of Ivan Fedorov, 56 million hryvnias from the state budget were to be transferred to the accounts of Melcity LLC, affiliated with Fedorov-Minko. After publicity in the mass media, the Treasury of Ukraine blocked the payment, and the competent authorities became interested in the scheme.
Regarding the financing scheme from the State Budget of Ukraine for expenses in the temporarily occupied territories of the Zaporizhzhia region with the participation of Ivan Fedorov, we can cite another example, when 4,200,000 hryvnias were allocated for the purchase of equipment for anesthesia and resuscitation in the already occupied Energodar. According to data from the Prozorro system, both medical devices were purchased after the occupation of the city. The executor of the scheme was Serhiy Selevich, appointed director of the Energodar medical and sanitary department according to the Fedorov-Minko quota.
We will remind that on March 4, the Russian occupying forces entered Energodar, and on April 7, 2022, the Energodar Medical Center announced a direct auction for the purchase of S7100 anesthesia machines with one hundred percent prepayment. Thus, millions of hryvnias from the state budget went to purchase expensive medical equipment for the city's needs during the occupation. At the same time, most likely the physical delivery of the devices to the occupied territory did not take place, as this is impossible in principle, so in this case we are talking about banal embezzlement of state budget funds. So, as practice shows, the scheme is fully "working".
In addition to the corruption case, the journalists of our publication were interested in the story of the "fake capture of Mayor Fedorov." We remind you that at the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022, Melitopol came under the occupation power of the Russian Federation without resistance. The mayor of the city, Ivan Fedorov, according to the version that he himself voiced, was taken prisoner and kept in the local pre-trial detention center for 6 days before being exchanged.
It is worth noting that the analysis of Ivan Fedorov's interview immediately after his capture shows a number of inconsistencies. The first is Fedorov's excellent physical condition: after watching the video, one gets the impression that Fedorov is more likely to have returned from the resort than from captivity.
In particular, there are no traces of handcuffs or ropes on the wrists. Fedorov also claimed in an interview with the Ukrainian media that he was taken to the exchange "with a bag on his head", but this did not prevent him from describing all the details of the road, such as the speed of movement, the names of settlements and the number of Russian soldiers who accompanied him on various stages of exchange.
Continuing our investigation, we contacted people from Ivan Fedorov's close circle who managed to leave occupied Melitopol to territories controlled by Ukraine. On the condition of anonymity, we were confirmed that Ivan Fedorov was not in captivity at all.
After the Russians entered Melitopol, the town hall building was one of the first to be captured. Fedorov, together with a small number of "relatives", moved to DK "Shevchenko" (Peremogy Square, 4), where he was all the time of "captivity". At the same time, Fedorov had a normal dialogue with the Russian military. According to eyewitnesses, they were frequent guests in his office. Ivan Fedorov tried to agree to keep the position of mayor of Melitopol, but the position went to the pro-Russian Galina Danylchenko. After that, according to our sources, Fedorov came up with the idea of "captivity" in order to legitimize his return to the territory controlled by Ukraine.
It is worth noting that in the occupied Melitopol, the Russians immediately confiscated the real estate and business of all Ukrainian officials. At the same time, Fedorov's house and business were not affected. Moreover, Fedorov's business, including tomographs, worked in Melitopol for about a year (until spring 2023), and the income from it was transferred to Fedorov's controlled territory.
In the context of Ivan Fedorov's connections with the Russian military at the TOT of the Zaporizhia region, it is also worth mentioning the case of the owners of the "Melitopol Oil Extraction Plant", collaborators Lyudmila and Serhiy Zhelevykh. Currently, the Zhelevys have re-registered the plant in the Russian Federation, openly cooperate with the occupying forces and have received Russian citizenship . We will remind you that Ivan Fedorov claimed that Serhiy Zhelev was captured, which turned out to be a fake, which was refuted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria , where Serhiy Zhelev worked as a consul.
Serhii Zhelev's confidant, lawyer Andrii Bezukh, who according to the Russian Federation registers was listed as the head of the Melitopol Oil Extraction Plant, is currently in Zaporizhzhia, among Ivan Fedorov's close circle. According to the data of the Zaporizhia insider telegram channel Vaselin, Bezuh returned to Zaporizhia from the city of Ruse (Bulgaria), after, on behalf of Serhiy Zhelev, he helped the Cargill corporation organize a scheme for the export of Ukrainian grain seized by militants from TOT elevators.
We will remind that Cargill continues to work both in Ukraine and in the Russian Federation, and expressed its position on the war in a comment to the Russian Forbes . At the same time, Melitopol was actually captured not by the regular army of the Russian Federation, but by fighters of illegal terrorist formations of the DPR and "Chechen" battalions. As a matter of fact, with them, through the mediation of Serhii Zhelev, and with the participation of lawyer Andriy Bezuh, the Cargill corporation conducted negotiations regarding the export of grain, which according to international law can be considered as "financing of terrorism."
Also, according to information from the TG of the Vaselin channel, the legal entities in the photo above are related to Ivan Fedorov, who remained to work in Melitopol after the occupation.
We remind you that the story of the "capture" of Fedorov took place in the first days of the war, when Ukraine was in a critical situation. For example, most of the special services were evacuated from Kyiv, and the head of the SBU, Bakanov, left the country altogether and refused to return. In a situation where intelligence and counter-intelligence officers were taken out of Kyiv, the story of the "capture" of the mayor of a provincial town could really have gone unnoticed. Another interesting detail is that Ivan Fedorov refused to take a polygraph after his capture, without explaining the reasons for his refusal.
Also, in the context of the appointment of Ivan Fedorov, the case of the "Russian fortune teller Elena Laurent" (Alena Laurent), whose services Fedorov used, is interesting. In the Russian Federation, there is a practice where "fortune tellers" who advise politicians and top officials are controlled by the FSB. Especially since Olena Laurent publicly voiced pro-Russian narratives about the victory of the Russian army and the disintegration of Ukraine, and recorded all communications with Fedorov. But we were interested in another detail in this case: Fedorov helped Elena Laurent leave with her children to Crimea, "as if to a safe place." It is difficult to imagine why Crimea, and not Kyiv or Lviv, is a "safe place" for Ivan Fedorov.
The ambiguous background of Ivan Fedorov, the head of Zaporizhzhia OVA, raises a number of questions, including taking into account active attempts by the Russian Federation to advance towards Zaporizhzhia. And the first should be the question of Fedorov passing a polygraph.
