In February, a large agricultural exhibition called “Gulfood” was held in Dubai (UAE), among the participants of which they noticed the “Melitopol Oil Extraction Plant” from the occupied Ukrainian city of the same name in the south of the Zaporozhye region.
The height of cynicism is that this enterprise is taking part in the exhibition from Russia. Before the full-scale Russian invasion, this enterprise produced sunflower, soybean, rapeseed oils and their products under the Ukrainian flag.
This information has already spread to many Ukrainian news portals.
The owners of the Ukrainian legal entity were the spouses Sergei and Lyudmila Zhelev. They owned, respectively, 60% and 40% of the authorized capital of Melitopol Oil Extraction Plant LLC.
Both led active political and social lives. Sergei Zhelev twice ran for the Verkhovna Rada from the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (2007) and the party of Natalia Korolevskaya Ukraine - Forward! (2012) But he never became a people’s deputy. In 2012, he unsuccessfully tried to get into the Zaporozhye regional council from the Opposition Bloc party.
Since 2018, Zhelev has been the honorary consul of Bulgaria in the Zaporozhye, Donetsk and Lugansk regions. In April 2022, the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, reported his possible abduction. But the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry denied these rumors.
“Bulgarian Consul Sergei Zhelev was not kidnapped, but is safe in his home,” the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry said then.
On the website of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhelev is still listed as the honorary consul of the Republic of Bulgaria, but no contact information is provided.
Lyudmila Zheleva is still a deputy of the Zaporozhye regional council. She was elected there from the Servant of the People party.
Now the couple have received Russian passports and re-registered their business in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation. In Russian information databases you can find information about Melitopol Oil Extraction Plant LLC, which in January 2023 appeared in the Unified Register of Small and Medium Enterprises of the Russian Federation.
In March, Sergei and Lyudmila Zhelev became its founders. They are also the owners of several other companies in the occupied part of the Zaporozhye region, which were re-registered in accordance with Russian law.
