Feudal Ukraine - 2: how the war changed the situation in the Dnepropetrovsk region

How the war in Ukraine changed influence groups in the Dnepropetrovsk region. Who removed Igor Kolomoisky from his position as leader.

When we wrote about the Dnepropetrovsk region in 2018, 5 influence groups stood out in the region, but changes during the war became very noticeable.

Igor Kolomoisky - from leader to pre-trial detention center

The man with whom the Dnepropetrovsk region has been largely associated throughout the years of Ukraine's independence is in pre-trial detention center on a number of charges. It all started with a suspicion of the theft and withdrawal of half a billion hryvnia from Privatbank, and has now ended with an accusation of organizing a contract murder.

Meanwhile, 2014-2015, when Igor Kolomoisky was the official governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, are considered the years of his greatest triumph. As Commentaries wrote, even after his official resignation, he controlled the situation in the region at the expense of his team members who remained to work under the new governor Valentin Reznichenko.

At the local level, the oligarch seriously strengthened his position in November 2015, when a member of his team, Boris Filatov, was elected mayor of the regional center, who continues to sit in this chair for the second term in a row. Gradually, relations between the mayor and what was considered his “senior partner,” Igor Kolomoisky, deteriorated. The apotheosis was Filatov’s tough interview, where he denied the businessman’s influence in the Dnieper. Subsequently, the mayor repeatedly accused his ex-partner of waging a “war” against him.

However, at that time Igor Kolomoisky himself was of little concern, because according to media estimates, he controlled up to 70 people’s deputies in the current Verkhovna Rada, and was considered a “gray eminence” under President Vladimir Zelensky. True, subsequently most of them reoriented towards the president and his office. They were probably prompted to this by the fate of their colleague Alexander Dubinsky, who is involved with the oligarch and has been in jail since November 2023 on charges of treason.

It is interesting that the previous head of the Dnepropetrovsk Regional State Administration, Valentin Reznichenko, apparently also established good relations with the businessman; at least, there was no information about their conflict. But the ex-head of the Regional State Administration left his post in February 2023 due to a scandal related to the victories of his probable mistress’s company in billion-dollar contracts.

In the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Council, the decline in Igor Kolomoisky’s influence is especially clear - in its last convocation, the businessman’s UKROP party received 25 mandates and another 10 were held by Vidrodzhennia, with which the oligarch was also associated. In its current composition, both factions are not present, and the people who were associated with the businessman are now in completely different political forces.

For example, the director of the economic development department of the regional state administration under Governor Kolomoisky and the first deputy head of the regional state administration under Valentin Reznichenko, Oleg Kuzhman, is today a member of the Proposition parliamentary faction, which is associated with Boris Filatov.

However, it cannot be said that the businessman has absolutely no levers of influence left, but there are only two of them - the 1+1 TV channel and money, the amount of which is unknown. Ukrnafta alone cannot obtain fuel worth UAH 5 billion from the oligarch.

Andrey Pavelko

However, Igor Kolomoisky can take comfort in the fact that not only he lost his influence in the region and ended up in a pre-trial detention center - a similar fate awaited the ex-people's deputy from the BPP, and the ex-president of the Ukrainian Football Association Andriy Pavelko.

As a representative of the team of the fifth president of Ukraine, Pavelko in 2018 had a weight that made him not the last player in the region. In addition, he acquired his own family connections. For example, his son Nikita married the daughter of an influential Dnieper businessman Alexander Petrovsky. The entrepreneur is considered a more than influential figure, at least he appeared at the presentation of the Tomos of the OCU. True, you can find information on the Internet that he himself is considered a crime boss nicknamed “Narik.”

But be that as it may, with the outbreak of the war, Andrei Pavelko’s father-in-law left Ukraine, but the ex-people’s deputy himself did not do this and, as a result, in the summer of 2023 he was arrested on suspicion of embezzling funds during the construction of a plant for the production of artificial grass for football fields. He was released 8 months later, in February 2024, but it seems he has clearly lost his influence and is behaving quietly.

Boris Filatov and Gennady Korban - on the wave of success

In the public space, the mayor remains more or less true to himself - he positions himself as the main patriot of the region, which is confirmed by the purchase of drones, and an honest person who refused a record bribe. Except that the mayor became more restrained, promising not to use obscene language on social networks, which was his “trick.” At the same time, Boris Filatov continues to demonstrate his independence, allowing himself attacks against the central government - calls to remove the “dogs” that are interfering with his work, to calm down the TCC, which took away almost all public transport drivers, and so on.

In a political sense, Boris Filatov has seriously strengthened his position - the Proposition party, which was created with his participation in 2020, has 22 votes in the Dnieper City Council and 16 in the regional council. And these are respectively 1st and 2nd places in terms of the number of deputies. That is, he can seriously influence at the regional level, although here he is inferior to the “Servants of the People” with their 30 “bayonets”.

But speaking about Boris Filatov, it is impossible to separate him from another ex-comrade of Igor Kolomoisky, Gennady Korban. Perhaps it was with him that the departure of the future mayor of the regional center from Kolomoisky began. At one time, Korban, being the chairman of the UKROP party, was detained by law enforcement officers and spent a lot of time in a pre-trial detention center, which he regarded as treason. After his release, he became even closer to Boris Filatov, and it is they who hold power in the Dnieper today - politically with the mayor, and economically with the businessman.

It is the companies associated with Gennady Korban that suspiciously often win state tenders in the Dnieper. For example, as of the fall of 2023, approximately 12% (UAH 2.65 billion) of the amount of all tenders held by the Department of Improvement and Infrastructure of the Dnipro City Council falls on the Construction and Production Company Elitproekt LLC.

Rinat Akhmetov - lost leadership, but holds position

What Igor Kolomoisky did at one time greatly helped the then President Petro Poroshenko at the head of the region was the sharp decline in the influence of the richest Ukrainian, Rinat Akhmetov. Boris Filatov’s victory over the entrepreneur’s protégé Alexander Vilkul in the fight for the seat of mayor of Dnepr further weakened Akhmetov’s position.

However, like Igor Kolomoisky, the Donbass businessman prefers to have connections at the highest level, and according to media reports, for the 70 people of his colleague from Dnepr he could respond with about 100 people’s deputies in the Verkhovna Rada in his sphere of influence.

The support structures of the businessman’s influence in the region were Krivoy Rog and Pavlograd, which is logical, because here Akhmetov owns metallurgical and coal assets, and the cities are led by people from the “Opposition Bloc” - Yuri Vilkul and Anatoly Vershina, respectively. Moreover, control over Pavlograd is perhaps even more important for Rinat Akhmetov than over Krivoy Rog. At least in 2022, DTEK Pavlogradugol managed to almost double its revenue - from UAH 23 to 44 billion, which is especially valuable in the context of the crisis in the metallurgical industry.

Let us note that at the regional level, Rinat Akhmetov’s position is at least no weaker than that of Boris Filatov. In any case, the personal bloc of the main person in the regional government, Alexander Vilkul, “Vilkul Bloc - Political Initiative” has 16 deputies of the regional council, as does the party of the mayor of Dnieper.

Victor Pinchuk - as Rinat Akhmetov

Another major businessman whose business interests are seriously represented in the Dnepropetrovsk region is the son-in-law of ex-president Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Pinchuk. What he has in common with the richest Ukrainian is a generally higher status, which allows him to “resolve issues” rather through VR, where, however, his “support group” was small - about 10 people.

However, the interests of the businessman in the supporting cities of Dnieper, Nikopol and Novomoskovsk, where pipe production is located, are clearly not threatened. And Viktor Pinchuk’s pipe business, after a decline in 2022, went up again. Thus, the Nizhnedneprovsky and Nikopol pipe rolling plants, for example, in 2023 collectively earned about 31 billion UAH, and Novomoskovsky - 2.7 billion UAH. At the same time, the businessman does not have any visible levers of influence within the entire region, except for StarLightMedia with six national TV channels.

Zagid Krasnov and Servants of the People failed

The last two groups can be classified as structures that have and even had good chances to take leading positions in the region, but for various reasons they could not.

Thus, the group of long-term candidate for mayor of Dnipro and ex-secretary of the city council Zagid Krasnov somehow went into the shadows after his second defeat in the 2020 mayoral elections. His party “Hromadska Sila” has 8 deputies in the city council and 9 (including the son of a businessman Ruslan, who serves in the Armed Forces of Ukraine) in the regional council, but is not particularly noticeable on the political map of the region.

The reason for this is the small number of both factions - out of 6 political forces in the councils, Gromadska Sila ranks 4-5 in terms of the number of deputies, which does not make it possible to carry out the decisions they need. Moreover, in the conditions of the much stronger position of Krasnov’s main competitor, Mayor Boris Filatov and his Proposition.

Zagid Krasnov’s last high-profile appearance was the defense of Dnepr City Council deputy Ekaterina Zbarskaya, accused of allegedly leaking information about the situation in the city to a “relative from the FSB.” However, such information, disseminated in anonymous Telegram channels, rather allowed the politician to simply declare himself once again.

An interesting situation is with the presidential party “Servant of the People,” which has 30 deputies in the regional council (the largest faction) and governor Sergei Lysak. But they never created a unified force in the region. Thus, the ex-head of the SBU in the Dnepropetrovsk region, Sergei Lysak, allegedly took up solving issues of increasing his own well-being. At least such information can be found on the Internet. However, it is difficult to expect the creation of our own stable influence group based on the governor, who can be removed by a decision of the president.

The most likely candidate for creating his own “clan” on the basis of the “Servants of the People” of the Dnepropetrovsk region could be the people’s deputy of Ukraine, chairman of the regional organization of the party, Yuriy Kisel. Moreover, in parliament he holds the position of deputy chairman of the “SN” faction and heads the Committee on Transport.

True, as some regional media noted at one time, Yuri Kisel’s success was allegedly based on his student friendship with Vladimir Zelensky’s assistant, Sergei Shefir. After the dismissal of the latter, Yuri Kisel's position probably does not allow him to fight for influence in his native region. Or he just doesn't want it.