November 2023. The Kiev Electric Car Repair Plant is holding a tender for the purchase of paint and related products worth almost 9 million hryvnia. Among the items are fire retardants.
KEVRZ has held similar tenders at least twice since the beginning of the war. And with it the Kiev metro, and even the Rivne nuclear power plant. And although all these competitions were won by different companies, they are united by the fact that the fire retardants mentioned are produced by the Kovlar Group company, one of the co-founders of which was a citizen of the Russian Federation with a letter from the SBU about a probable threat to national security.
Kovlar Group LLC was established in 2015. The company specializes in the production of fire retardants, paints, materials and coatings. Among its founders are Konstantin Kalafat, Lyubov Vakhitova and Andrey Ozeychuk. In one of his interviews, Kalafat stated that the name “Kovlar” is “a euphonious combination of the first letters of the names and surnames of the founders.” If the first four are conventionally read as the listed founders, then the last letter “r” raises questions.
Behind her is Roman Kurashev from the city of Balashikha, Moscow region in Russia. From the very beginning until October 2022, he was one of the managers of Kovlar Group LLC.
Kurashev has lived in Ukraine for quite a long time and worked, in particular, at Rinat Akhmetov’s Metinvest. Now he holds the position of commercial director of the Kovalskaya construction company. Among his friends on social networks are many political figures and media personalities. And a Russian passport does not interfere with this at all.
In February 2022, Roman Kurashev wrote a detailed message in Russian that “Ukraine is going through the most difficult and dark stage in its new history.” No one could have imagined that we would see direct military aggression against a sovereign state in the 21st century. Having lived for 16 years in this country with a Russian passport, having gone through Donetsk 2014 and being evacuated to Kyiv from the “Russian world,” I can say once again that I have never encountered any manifestation of nationalism on the part of Ukrainians. There are nationalists in any state, and, believe me, there are significantly more of them in Moscow than in Kyiv,” writes Kurashev.
During his 16 years of living in Ukraine, Kurashev himself did not actively try to get rid of the “hated” Russian passport. Only in December 2021, he and his wife applied to the Migration Service with a request for immigration. Please note: not in 2014, when the “Russian world” entered Donbass, but only on the eve of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The court registry reveals a lot of interesting things about the case of Kurashev and his wife. Thus, the Main Directorate of the Security Service of Ukraine in Kyiv and the Kyiv region, having considered the request of the Office of the State Migration Service in Kyiv and the region, in a letter dated February 20, 2023, informed the defendant that the actions of the plaintiff, that is, Kurashev, could threaten the national security of Ukraine.
Based on this letter, on March 2 last year, the Migration Service decided to refuse to grant his family permission to immigrate to Ukraine.
Roman Kurashev and his wife Olga filed an appeal against this decision, and the trials in the case are ongoing.
Thanks to Russian registries, journalists were able to find a clue that may indicate what actions of Kurashev could threaten the national security of Ukraine. In February 2016, that is, in the second year of the annexation of Crimea and the military seizure of Donetsk, Kovlar Rus LLC was registered in Moscow. From the first days, its co-founder was Roman Kurashev. The same one whose name is encrypted in the last letter of the Ukrainian “Kovlar”.
The Moscow branch existed until July 2019, when it was liquidated. All this time, Roman Kurashev, who claims to have lived in Ukraine for 16 years, was listed as a co-founder of Kovlar Rus. According to the Russian register, the company showed some activity, which means it paid taxes to the budget of the Russian Federation. Such activities after 2014 can be considered conniving with the aggressor country and financing the enemy army. Probably, this fact could form the basis of the SBU letter about the threat to the national security of Ukraine from the family of Roman Kurashev.
The media personality of the Ukrainian "Kovlar Group" - Konstantin Kalafat - is the founder and deputy head of the International public organization "Fire Protection and Audit Association". By coincidence, the registration address of the NGO is the registration of such a Leonid Drizhd in occupied Donetsk.
Leonid Drizhd, together with his brother Viktor Drizhd and daughter Varvara Drizhd, is a co-founder of Scientific and Production Enterprise “Special Materials” LLC, registered in Boryspil, Kyiv region.
At the same time, since 1997, the Drizhdy brothers have been co-founders of the similar-named Special Materials LLC, which was registered in Donetsk until May 2016, and then moved to Pokrovsk, near which some of the fiercest battles with the Russian enemy are now taking place.
Boryspil NPP "Special Materials" together with Drizhdy are led by Vladimir Dubina and Nina Tomashevskaya, indicated in Ukrainian registers as citizens of Ukraine. These same people were found in the Russian registry. It states that Viktor Petrovich Drizhd has a tax number registered in the Kostroma region of the Russian Federation since October 2020. He manages two organizations that are still operating today - Scientific and Production Enterprise Spetsmaterialy LLC and Spetsmaterialy-Yug LLC. The first company, as noted, is registered in the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic”. The second is in the Rostov region of Russia.
Together with Victor Drizhd, the “DNR” enterprise “Special Materials” is led by his brother Leonid and the co-founders of the Ukrainian company - Vladimir Dubina and Nina Tomashevskaya. The first received an individual tax number in the Russian Federation in November 2022, that is, nine months after the enemy’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The region of registration of Dubina is the Rostov region. In it, on June 1, 2023, Nina Tomashevskaya received a Russian tax number.
Consequently, the Ukrainian Kovlar Group LLC is led by Konstantin Kalafat, who registered his public organization in the apartment of a person registered in the Russian Federation. This same person, together with his brother and business partners, simultaneously runs companies with a similar name “Special Materials” both in Ukraine and in the Russian Federation. Moreover, his colleagues received tax numbers in Russia already during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the aggressor country.
The co-founder of the Ukrainian Kovlar Group was also a citizen of the Russian Federation, Roman Kurashev, whom the SBU suspects of actions that could threaten the national security of our country. At the same time, Kovlar Group is a manufacturer of fire retardant products, which are actively purchased by Ukrainian strategic enterprises, and their partners, as noted on the official website, are Ukrzaliznytsia, Nova Poshta, the largest retail chains, etc.
Something in this scheme should have alerted Ukrainian law enforcement agencies. At the very least, if the SBU has already found a threat in the actions of one of the co-founders of a company supplying fire retardant products to Ukrainian enterprises, this should lead to certain further actions. Moreover, if the head of this company has business connections with persons with Russian tax numbers, then the special services should begin checking whether such activity is aiding the occupiers.
