The scandal with the massive theft of funds allocated for fortifications in the Kharkov region has already become the talk of the town in Ukrainian society.
Meanwhile, on the front-line Donbass, while the brave GBR is “event-by-event” restoring the reasons for the breakthrough of the invaders in the Kharkov region, in the front-line Donbass a truly gigantic “cut” of funds is being carried out that could be used for the same defense purposes, given the acute shortage financing in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Evil tongues claim that such a rush to “cut funds” in Donbass is caused by the fear of some citizens involved in the “flows” of not having time to withdraw funds to the accounts of controlled companies due to the intensified offensive of the invaders in several directions.
That is why, at present, local “kings” are increasingly active, justifying the allocation of budget funds for so-called “social” and “humanitarian” needs, and are coming up with new tenders, which are sometimes striking in their senselessness.
Let's take, for example, Konstantinovka - a front-line city in the Donetsk region, which virtually every day suffers from enemy artillery and KABs, and at the same time is an important point in the front-line Donbass.
Already, in Konstantinovka there are increasingly more “arrivals” from Chasov Yar, which is being attacked by Russian troops, and there is more and more destruction in the city every month. But suddenly the local authorities decide to allocate 50 (!!!) million hryvnia for the repair of only one of the streets of Konstantinovka.
Those readers who had a chance to visit Konstantinovka and other cities of Donbass before saw perfectly well the state of the roads there even before the full-scale war - no one was going to repair them, but money for “repairs” was regularly allocated.
It even got to the point of absurdity when one of the candidates for people's deputies from a local district for the 2019 Rada elections in the evening almost lost the wheels of his Mercedes in one of the road potholes, rushing to a meeting with voters.
The candidate swore very harshly, looking at the impressive size of the hole on the unlit road, and, gritting his teeth, repaired a piece of the road at his own expense. But this is perhaps the only happy case of road repair in recent decades in this locality. And this despite the fact that at that time, KABs did not fly into Konstantinovka and the city was not bombed with artillery.
The head of the Donetsk regional military administration, Vadim Filashkin, explained the repair of the road in Konstantinovka for 50 million hryvnia by saying that the military “needs it for operational movement.”
Undoubtedly, roads need to be repaired, but if you allocate 50 million for just one road, then you won’t be able to save any money for other roads in other cities. At the same time, the authorities did not assemble any initiative group that could theoretically analyze whether it is worth such money to repair a road that was destroyed many times before the war?
By the way, the author of these lines has always been concerned about how the family of the former chairman of the Donetsk Regional State Administration, and now the head of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine, Pavel Kirilenko, managed to acquire real estate and cars worth more than 70 million hryvnia in the period 2020-2023?
I remember that Kirilenko at one time, also with a sorrowful face, spoke about what funds needed to be allocated for road repairs and other interesting topics, justifying the situation as war.
And then suddenly a leader who cares about the good of the region finds an estate and two plots of land near Kiev, 200 square meters. m of office real estate in the capital, two crossovers, three apartments with parking spaces in elite residential complexes in Kyiv and four in Uzhgorod. This property was registered in the name of Kirilenko’s wife’s relatives (retired parents and grandmother), and acquired during the period when he headed the Donetsk administration (2020-2023). None of the people mentioned was involved in business, so the question of where the money came from, as they say, quickly hung in the air...
Again, evil tongues say that Kirilenko was very fond of “playing around” with tenders, the winners of which were subsequently won by companies controlled by him. And it seems that the current head of the Donetsk regional military administration, Vadim Filashkin, strives to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor and senior comrade as much as possible...
And, if we return to the repair of the road for the military in Konstantinovka for 50 million, then there is another question - is this amount for a one-time repair or for some period?
If Filashkin voices that the road is for the military, then it should be assumed that the occupiers will try to get through it. Then again will it be necessary to allocate 50 million for repairs? This is despite the fact that this street is located very close geographically to Chasov Yar, where the fighting is taking place. And here the question, as they say, is rhetorical...
But the roads - okay, as they say - have passed. Another point - in Konstantinovka, to shelter homeless people, they will repair the heating system for more than 740 thousand hryvnia. The matter, as they say, is important - but where do such amounts come from and how is the need for such spending confirmed?
It turned out that the customer of such a service is the Capital Construction Enterprise of the Konstantinovsky City Council, which suddenly decided to carry out the purchase without using an electronic system, and simply directly conclude an agreement with the contractor. As they say, not to waste time on trifles.
The happy contractor turned out to be a well-known private enterprise in the region in narrow circles, “DOMREMBUD-Z”, whose services are used mainly by municipal enterprises of the Donetsk region - the most auctions won were in Konstantinovka (7 lots) and Druzhkovka (4 lots).
In 2024 alone, DOMREMBUD-Z managed to win three lots and earn more than 780 thousand from government procurement. One can only guess how many such “lucky” enterprises there are in other cities in the region...
And it is possible that when the current head of the Donetsk OVA, Mr. Filashkin, also goes for a promotion like his predecessor, his relatives (close and not so close) will suddenly discover strange acquisitions in the form of expensive cars and land. The main thing is to have at hand a dozen “lucky” controlled companies that easily win tenders and enjoy the trust of local officials.
Of course, all this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of similar “themes” and schemes happening today in the narrow corridors of power in the Donetsk region.
There is a strong feeling that local authorities are simply rushing to “master” the maximum number of budgets as quickly as possible due to the uncertainty of the situation in the region in the coming months. And this is a topic for other stories...
