Body guards for Yulia Tymoshenko: why does she need a personal criminal army

The leader of Batkivshchyna, Yulia Tymoshenko, is not shy about collaborating with criminals. We are talking about the Samsonov gang, known in Odessa.

The leader of the Batkivshchyna party, Yulia Tymoshenko, has her own army of body guards, who are known for a bunch of facts of criminal activity. Despite this, the party leader is not shy about not just direct connections with criminals. The activities of these persons literally take place under the shadow of the party flag and are even widely promoted on the official website of Batkivshchyna.

Yes, we are talking about the Samsonov gang, known in Odessa. Officially, their activities are legalized through the supposed security company SAMSON-GROUP-06 LLC. The OpenDat Register indicates that the former owner of the business (until February 2024) was Andrey Vasilyevich Babenko, a deputy of the Odessa Regional Council from the Batkivshchyna party.

His dismissal from the position of director of the LLC is purely formal. After all, Babenko was replaced purely by her own “foundational person” with Tamara Andreevna Vornik. The entire Babenko group of companies is registered to her as the “owner”: SAMSON SECURITY LLC, SAMSON RESPONSE LLC, etc.

At the same time, the deputy’s wife, Victoria Olegovna Babenko, holds the position of manager at SAMSON SECURITY LLC. He also recently formally divorced her in order to avoid a full declaration of his condition.

Meanwhile, both of them still remain the common owners of the Nadezhda Zatishye charitable foundation.

From "golden eagles" to body guards

How exactly Babenko found Tymoshenko, or she found him, is not known exactly. However, it is known that Babenko was one of the Berkut members who shot people on Maidan Nezalezhnosti during the “Revolution of Dignity.” But by some miracle Babenko still continues to avoid punishment for this.

Today, the party itself is actively helping Babenko to establish himself in his new role as a BYuT deputy. On the pages of Yulia Tymoshenko’s “Batkivshchyna” website, he is perhaps the main news maker, who is quoted no less than Vladimirovna.

Realities

Babenko’s real activities and his role in the pool of Yulia Tymoshenko’s associates are indeed very far from the pretentious party messages about “working for the benefit of the community and children.” Babenko's bodyguards, which he himself is a tool for doing dirty work. Beating, maiming, raiding a business, destroying property, setting fire to production or a car, intimidating, putting pressure on or blackmailing a business into cooperation is a brief description of their real work.

There have been legends about Yulia Tymoshenko’s talents to have a common language with representatives of the criminal world since the 90s. And now, obviously, little has changed.

Army for Vladimirovna

Since 2018, under the cover of the security agency Samsom and Babenko, a “Fight Club” has been organized in Odessa. Since then, these “custom fighters” have committed many high-profile criminal offenses.

According to materials of criminal proceedings from the Register of Court Decisions, “samsons”, for example:

— were the orderers and perpetrators of the attack on a businessman near the Garanta restaurant in Odessa.

— broke into and destroyed the apartment of another Odessa entrepreneur

— in broad daylight, a Samson security guard recently mutilated a woman on a bus, etc.

Babenko himself is also involved in criminal proceedings, which generally concern the murder of four foreigners.

Despite the openness and publicity of all the facts described above, Yulia Tymoshenko avoids commenting on this topic. She never once raised the issue of expelling the notorious Babenko from the ranks of her parties, for example, did she not call on law enforcement officers to look into his role in the events of the Revolution of Dignity. That is, Yulia Vladimirovna does not even take any purely PR steps to justify her patronage of this gangster group. And this can only indicate a very close connection between her and the “Samsons,” which, it is possible, rests on very serious secrets and orders.