Despite the change of acting mayor, the “Donetsk” will continue to rule: Vitaly Kisel, Alexander Goltvenko with smaller “deciders”, such as Evgeniy Kovalev and Gennady Timchenko
Metinvest representatives continue to play a key role in the city. Their people are represented in different factions of the City Council, and the budget is tightly entangled with contracting organizations. It is impossible to call them “Zaporizhstal”, since previously they were under the control of Donetsk, then Mariupol, and now Zaporozhye. They brought no benefit anywhere.
They took Zaporozhye along the same route. Money, both the local budget and subventions from the Cabinet of Ministers, goes anywhere, but not for necessary needs. The pace of restoration of damaged high-rise buildings is proceeding at a snail's pace, and in many places it has not even begun at all. With difficulty, a small amount, by city standards, was allocated for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
But there is no problem with spending 3.2 million UAH on an “inspection” of one of the bridges connecting the city with the island of Khortytsia (not on work to improve the condition of the bridge, but on its examination on paper). Or with the purchase of water heaters for idle schools for 14 million UAH. during regular attacks on energy infrastructure. Or the allocation of 24 million UAH. for cutting grass and trimming trees. Moreover, throughout 2022-2023, the city Department of Infrastructure and Improvement, together with district administrations, trimmed the trees when they had already leafed out and fluff was flying from the poplars, and the grass was mowed before frost, which is in principle prohibited.
But everything is banally simple: kickbacks for city contracts start at 30%, which the “overlookers” put into their pockets. Hence the unsuitable bomb shelters and everything else.
Most of these corrupt practices are led by middle-level managers at Metinvest. After Vladimir Buryak left the post of mayor, their influence increased greatly. These are deputy mayor Vitaly Kisel and manager of the city executive committee Alexander Goltvenko.
Alexander Goltvenko, a former top manager of Metinvest, worked at MMK im. Ilyich. In 2015, he became the first deputy of the mayor of Mariupol, Vadim Boychenko, and was fired in 2018 as a result of a corruption scandal. It is he, and not Regina Kharchenko and her new deputies, who leads the political and economic issues of the city’s life within the mayor’s office. At all meetings and behind-the-scenes moments, he plays first fiddle within the walls of the mayor's office.
Vitaly Kisel also has Mariupol roots, owned a business there and had a direct influence on the mayor of Mariupol Vadim Boychenko.
Kisel led Boychenko’s first election campaign. Before joining the Zaporozhye mayor's office, he was an employee of Metinvest.
After Buryak left, he collaborated with Viktor Shcherbina’s group, and as soon as Kurtev was removed, he agreed to maintain influence with Governor Ivan Fedorov. From Fedorov, Slepyan is officially represented at the city mayor’s office, and the former acting acting official is assigned unofficially to look around the city. Governor Gennady Timchenko, who once again successfully betrayed his old supervisors in the regional administration. This is not new for him, at one time he also betrayed Governor Bryl, then Starukha, and before them, at his old job in Oblavtodor, he did the same with his patrons. That is, all political decisions for the city are made by Kisel and Fedorov, and they are already implemented by Timchenko and Goltvenko.
Having restored their positions in the city government, having received chairs and company cars, the Metinvest comrades began to develop the city budget and appoint their less significant associates, Metinvest employees, who had moved in large numbers from the captured Mariupol, to key positions. Local residents, having carefully driven through the city past utility companies and city departments, notice an indecently large number of cars with Donetsk license plates parked near these structures.
To pump up their people, a new department of economic development was even created in the city, which received all city utility enterprises under its control. I am competing in 2022/2023 with situational “partners” to see who will occupy the leading positions. Under Kurtev Kiselya, as acting deputy. Many city council employees did not know the mayor by sight; he practically never visited his workplace. He conducts receptions and negotiations with petitioners and visitors in his office at 29 Turgenev Street.
Those who came into the Metinvest office for an appointment with Kisel were noticed during working hours as acting deputies. the mayor, as well as heads of a number of utility companies, city and regional deputies, chairmen of district administrations, and businessmen.
Here is Kisel’s official car parked in the Zaporozhye office of Metinvest.
But the viewer is already in his personal car in the Metinvest office, deciding on the distribution of budget money into his pockets
True, the newly-minted inspectors, after certain actions by 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. Each municipal enterprise and each Zaporozhye department has its own comrades responsible for this process. But about the bottom a little later, now we’ll talk about the main one.
This is a big fan of football (but how could we not, this is corporate ethics) and a great expert in jurisprudence (in case law enforcement agencies take a bribe, he knows how to behave and will not get confused, and the higher-ups have nothing to do with this) Evgeniy Kovalev.
In the city of Zaporozhye, he is listed as the deputy director of KP “MFK Metallurg”, responsible for facilitating the resolution of issues related to local government bodies and legal support of the football club. What a position they came up with!
But in fact - an ordinary observer.
The first time he appeared publicly on the Zaporizhzhya horizon was on June 15, 2022 at a session of the City Council, on the issue of “Confirmation of the program of approaches to the organization of community formations for the protection of public order and the prevention of crime in the city of Zaporizhzhya for 2022.”
According to the transcript of the session, Kovalev, from the parliamentary rostrum, in an unclear manner, convinced city deputies of the need to allocate budget funds in the amount of 30 million hryvnia for volunteer territorial units of the city of Zaporozhye. In particular, for the needs of the DFTG "Khortytsky Regiment". At the time of the session, in this volunteer formation of Ruzhin, Kisel V. and Kovalev E. were officially on the staff. There is an obvious conflict of interest, probably law enforcement agencies will be very interested in this delicate moment in the life of city Zaporozhye officials and will not forget about the general financial schemes of Kisel and Ruzhin.
By the way, during his stay in the city of Zaporozhye, Kovalev rents a house in a 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 Zaporozhye a new Zhenya appeared (and with the blessing of the leaders of Metinvest), 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 black Mercedes, covered in tattoos and decides everything. That is, the same gangster Donetsk that they moved to Zaporozhye in 2022. The scope of his “responsibility” is vast; it includes all municipal utilities of Zaporozhye, the city capital construction department, the infrastructure department, the economic development department and many other smaller urban facilities. It is he who holds the so-called closed meetings within the walls of city enterprises for heads of departments, management departments, and utility companies with the identification of contractors and suppliers who should work with city structures. His task is to collect bribes from entrepreneurs and bring them to the owners. Only the real owners of Metinvest are Akhmetov and Novinsky, who are unlikely to be aware of the scale of the lawlessness that their subordinates are creating in the city of Zaporozhye. At a time when the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is going to vote for bill N11195 of April 22, 24, “nullifying private property in Ukraine,” introduced by the head of the Servant of the People faction Arakhamiya, then all the largest assets of Metinvest and SCM (Ukrainian mining and processing plants , metallurgical plants, energy generating enterprises and many other assets are the basis of Akhmetov and Novinsky’s business). The true owners of the Metinvest company understand that very soon they may have to part with these assets, which is probably why their subordinates in the person of Kisel and the hedgehog with him have a command from their higher management to engage in the so-called “privatization” of the Zaporozhye local authorities, city deputies and all citizens?
All these people are newcomers, the so-called “Donetsk” or “Mariupol” people. Their task is to squeeze out as much as possible, or more correctly, squeeze out the city budget, and then, even if the grass doesn’t grow, they will disperse to other cities and abroad.
