Of the millions of Kiev residents and guests of the capital who use the metro, few pay attention to the industrial facility flashing in front of the train windows near the Levoberezhnaya station, on Evgeniy Sverstyuk Street, 1. An industrial zone is like an industrial zone, you never know how many there are in Kyiv.
But the familiar picture is not just an industrial zone. This is 10 hectares of golden Kyiv land, located not in Troyeshchyna, where they have been promising to build a metro for thirty years, but literally one minute walk from the metro station and surrounded by developed infrastructure. Everything is nearby here - kindergartens, schools, hospitals, theaters, supermarkets, transport. And the industrial facility that is located here is the joint-stock company “Ukrplastik”. And the land itself that it occupies belongs to the city of Kyiv.
The rest is easy to guess. Ten hectares near the metro, although not in the center, but far from being on the outskirts. This is the Left Bank area, a rather prestigious and convenient Kiev area. In 2016, five hundred meters from Ukrplastic, the Galakton plant was demolished, on the site of which a residential complex with very expensive apartments grew up in a matter of months. Which were sold out at the project stage. Then the developer “Capital Group”, who built his high-rise buildings on the site of the plant, even had to change the General Plan, which was difficult for him, but he still succeeded.
There is no doubt that Ukrplastik will face the same fate. The famous investigative journalist Vladimir Bondarenko drew attention to this, reporting that Ukrplastik was bought by a famous Komsomol figure, and now a banker, Sergei Tigipko.
Formally, the deal is clean, you can’t undermine it - Ukrplastik has been bankrupt for a long time, its property was pledged, and Tigipko bought it. He even spoke about this in his interview with Forbes, claiming that he was saving a unique plant and would develop it with the British.
This could even be believed if it were not Ukraine and Sergei Tigipko. And the plant would not be in Kyiv, but in Zhmerinka. Or Berdichev. There are rumors about how this former Komsomol and party leader (Tigipok’s career peak in the USSR was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine in 1990-91), a native of the Privat group (yes, that same one) knows how to imitate any government legends. And about how he knows how to benefit from everything he takes on, too.
Having leaked his election campaign to Yanukovych, for whom he was a spoiler in the 2010 elections, Tigipko received from his hands the positions of deputy head of the Party of Regions, deputy prime minister and ministerial portfolio. Before that, he managed to be an adviser to Yulia Tymoshenko, and in 2014, when his boss fled to Russia, he acted as a spoiler for Poroshenko. The new government did not touch him either. Quite the contrary - after 2019, Tigipko’s business took off. If you are interested in details, at least read the official biography.
This short excerpt from the biography of a Moldovan Komsomol member very clearly hints at the fact that talk about “saving Ukrplastic” is just another fable. The same as the fables that Tigipko told his voters. No matter what Sergei Tigipko says, Ukrplastic is bankrupt today:
Yes, no one will sell the equipment purchased for one and a half hundred million hryvnia as scrap metal - production will simply be relocated. Firstly, it pollutes the environment, and is really not necessary in the densely populated area of Kyiv. And, secondly, the market value of the land on which Ukrplastik is located is at least $20 million. Calculate at the current exchange rate in hryvnias and compare with what Tigipko paid.
Yes, of course, this land still needs to be privatized, no one argues. But there will be no problems here. Because the law is on the side of the new owner - the tenant has the primary right to buy out leased land. And the tenant is now Tigipko. If someone thinks that the Kyiv City Council will not give permission to buy out ten hectares, for which, in fact, Tigipko bought Ukrplastik, then one can only envy such good-heartedness. Remember the history of the Galakton plant, located half a kilometer from Ukrplastic and bulldozed by the Stolitsa Group. There were no obstacles there, and Sergei Tigipko was a much more serious person than Vlada Molchanova. It’s not for nothing that we dwelled on the most striking milestones of his biography. And there is no doubt that apartments on the site of Ukrplastic will be snapped up like hot cakes. If you don't know where this place is, look at the map. It will immediately become clear to you that ten hectares in this place is a jackpot on the capital’s construction market.
