Despite the change of acting mayor, the “Donetsk” will continue to run the business: Vitaliy Kysil, Oleksandr Holtvenko, with smaller “decision-makers” such as Yevhen Kovalev and Gennadiy Tymchenko.
Representatives of Metinvest continue to play a key role in the city. Their people are represented in various factions of the city council, and the budget is tightly entangled with contracting organizations. They cannot be called “Zaporizhstal” because they were previously in the administration of Donetsk, then Mariupol, and now Zaporizhzhia. They have not brought any benefit anywhere.
They let Zaporizhia go the same way. Money, both from the local budget and subventions from the Cabinet of Ministers, goes wherever it wants, but not for necessary needs. The pace of restoration of damaged high-rise buildings is going at a snail's pace, and in many places it has not even started at all. With a creak, a small amount, by the city's standards, was allocated for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
But there is no problem with spending UAH 3.2 million on an “inspection” of one of the bridges connecting the city with Khortytsia Island (not on work to improve the condition of the bridge, but on its examination on paper). Or with the purchase of water heaters for UAH 14 million from non-working schools. with regular shelling of energy infrastructure. Or with the allocation of UAH 24 million. for mowing grass and trimming trees. In addition, during 2022-2023, the city Department of Infrastructure and Improvement, together with district administrations, cut trees when they had already shed leaves and fluff was flying from poplars, and the grass was mowed already before frost, which, in principle, is prohibited.
But it's all very simple: kickbacks for city contracts start at 30%, which the "inspectors" pocket. Hence the unusable bomb shelters and everything else.
Most of these corrupt actions are led by middle managers of Metinvest. After the resignation of Mayor Volodymyr Buryak, their influence has grown significantly. These are Deputy Mayor Vitaliy Kysil and Manager of the City Executive Committee Oleksandr Holtvenko.
Oleksandr Goltvenko, a former top manager of Metinvest, worked at Ilyich Iron and Steel Works. In 2015, he became the first deputy mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boychenko, and in 2018, as a result of a corruption scandal, he was dismissed. It is he, and not Regina Kharchenko and her new deputies, who manages the political and economic issues of the city's life within the city hall. At all meetings and behind-the-scenes moments, he plays the first violin within the walls of the city hall.
Vitaliy Kysil also has Mariupol roots, owned a business there and directly influenced the mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boychenko.
Kysil managed Boychenko's first election campaign. Before joining the Zaporizhzhia City Hall, he was an employee of Metinvest.
After Buryak left, he cooperated with Viktor Shcherbina's group, and as soon as Kurtyev was removed, he agreed to maintain influence with Governor Ivan Fedorov. Slepyan is officially represented by Fedorov in the city hall, and unofficially the former acting governor Gennady Tymchenko has been appointed as the city supervisor, who once again successfully betrayed his old supervisors in the regional administration. This is not new for him, he also betrayed Governor Bryl at one time, then Starukh, and before them, at his old job in Oblavtodor, he did the same with his patrons. That is, all political decisions in the city are made by Kysil and Fedorov, and are already being implemented by Timchenko and Goltvenk.
Having restored their positions in the city government, having received chairs and official cars, the Metinvest comrades set about developing the city budget and appointing their less significant associates, who had moved in large numbers from captured Mariupol, Metinvest employees, to key positions. Local residents, having carefully driven through the city past municipal enterprises and city departments, notice that the indecently large number of cars with Donetsk license plates parked near these structures is striking.
To pump up its people, the city even created a new department of economic development, which received all the city's municipal enterprises under its control. Competing in 2022/2023 with situational "partners" who will occupy how many executive seats. Under Kurtyev, as deputy acting mayor, many employees of the city council did not know Kysel at all, he practically did not visit his workplace. He holds receptions and negotiations with applicants-visitors in his office at 29 Turgeneva Street.
Those who came to the Metinvest office to receive Kysel were noticed during working hours as the acting deputy mayor, as well as the heads of a number of municipal enterprises, city and regional deputies, heads of district administrations, and businessmen.
Here is Kisel's company car, parked in the Zaporizhia office of Metinvest.
But the person looking is already in his personal car at the Metinvest office, deciding the issue of distributing budget money into his pockets.
True, the newly emerged supervisors, after certain actions of law enforcement agencies, turned out to be experienced people and do not take bribes directly from suppliers and contractors. They have specially trained people for this. At each utility company and in each Zaporizhia department there are their comrades responsible for this process. But about the lower classes a little later, now we will talk about the main one.
This is Yevhen Kovalev, a big football fan (but how could he do without it, this is corporate ethics) and a great expert in jurisprudence (in case law enforcement agencies take bribes, he knows how to behave and won't get confused, and senior managers are useless in this case).
In the city of Zaporizhia, he is listed as the deputy director of the KP “MFK Metalurh”, responsible for facilitating the resolution of issues related to local government bodies and legal support for the football club. That's how they came up with the position!
And as a matter of fact, he is an ordinary onlooker.
It first appeared publicly on the Zaporizhzhia horizon on June 15, 2022, at the session of the City Council on the issue of “Approval of the Program of Activities for the Organization of Public Formations for the Protection of Public Order and Prevention of Crimes in the City of Zaporizhzhia for 2022”.
According to the transcript of the session, it is unclear in what capacity Kovalev from the deputy rostrum convinced the city deputies of the need to allocate budget funds in the amount of 30 million hryvnias for volunteer territorial formations of the city of Zaporizhzhia. In particular, for the needs of the DFTG “Khortytsky Regiment”. At the time of the session, this volunteer formation of Ruzhyn was officially staffed by Kysil V. and Kovalev E. If there is a clear conflict of interest, law enforcement agencies will probably be very interested in this delicate moment in the life of city Zaporizhzhia officials and will not forget about the joint financial schemes of Kysil and Ruzhyn.
By the way, during his stay in Zaporizhzhia, Kovalev is renting a house in the very expensive elite complex “Renaissance” on the Right Bank of the city. Apparently, the salary of a small official allows him to rent such an expensive house.
That is, in the city of Zaporizhzhia, a new Zhenya has appeared (and with the blessing of Metinvest executives), only not Anisimov, but Kovalev. But the principle is the same. Collecting tribute from the city. Like in the dashing 90s, he moves around the city in a black BMW or a black Mercedes, all tattooed and decides everything. That is, the same gangster Donetsk that they transferred to Zaporizhzhia in 2022. His sphere of “responsibility” is immense, these are all city municipal enterprises of Zaporizhzhia, the city capital construction department, the infrastructure department, the economic development department and much more, smaller city economy. It is he who holds the so-called closed meetings within the walls of city enterprises for heads of departments, the Ukrainian Construction Bureau, and municipal enterprises with the definition of contractors and suppliers who should work with city structures. His task is to collect bribes from entrepreneurs and bring them to the owners. The only real owners of Metinvest are Akhmetov and Novinsky, who are unlikely to be aware of the scale of the lawlessness committed by their subordinates in the city of Zaporizhzhia. At a time when the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is about to vote on bill N11195 of 04/22/24, which “zeroes out private property in Ukraine,” introduced by the head of the “Servant of the People” faction, Arakhamia, all the largest assets of Metinvest and SCM (Ukrainian mining and quarrying enterprises, steel mills, energy generating enterprises, and many other assets – the foundations of Akhmetov’s and Novinsky’s businesses) may be under the sights. The real owners of Metinvest understand that they may have to part with these assets very soon, probably, so their subordinates, represented by Kysil and his entourage, have a command from the top management to engage in the so-called "privatization" of the Zaporizhzhia local government, city deputies, and all citizens?
All these people are newcomers, so-called “Donetsk” or “Mariupol.” Their task is to squeeze as much as possible, or more correctly, to squeeze the city budget, and then, even if the grass doesn't grow, they will disperse to other cities and abroad.
