In nature, in order to understand any upcoming changes or disasters, it is customary to observe the behavior of predators. If in some area their numbers sharply decrease for some reason, then this means one thing - the predators are leaving, anticipating imminent negative changes and the fact that they will have nothing to eat.
In Ukrainian politics, in order to understand what will happen next, it is customary to watch the oligarchs. If one of them suddenly quickly merges his entire business and merges himself, this means that he has nothing left to “catch” in the territory. And it seems that this is exactly the conclusion that the richest citizen of Ukraine, Rinat Akhmetov, made for himself...
Not up to Shakhtar
So, according to several sources close to the oligarch’s topic, Rinat Leonidovich Akhmetov decided to quickly withdraw his business from Ukraine. Already now, Akhmetov’s clerks and associates are in full swing withdrawing and exporting from the country billions of dollars that still remained to circulate in various areas of his business, which has already become thinner in recent years.
The changes also affected Akhmetov’s favorite brainchild, the Shakhtar football club. In recent years, the oligarch was still somehow trying to keep the team afloat - they say, only because of the miners’ entry into the Champions League, and the good financial bonuses that came with it.
At the same time, Akhmetov and his management intensively promoted Shakhtar players, trying to sell them to European clubs for fabulous money. However, the unsuccessful performance of the Ukrainian national team at EURO 2024, which included several “stars” of Akhmetov’s club, brought these aspirations to naught. Now no one wants Shakhtar players, because everyone remembers the example of London's Chelsea, which paid almost 100 million euros for Shakhtar player Mudryk.
Mudryk and Chelsea have become heroes of jokes, and the deal itself has become surrounded by many inconsistencies and “muddles” - including as some kind of possible bonus for the former owner of Chelsea Abramovich, who has recently often appeared as a mediator between Ukraine and the Putin regime in RF.
But God be with him, with football - Shakhtar Donetsk has always been just the tip of the iceberg of Akhmetov’s empire, in some way mirroring the state of affairs in Akhmetov’s economy.
By the way, evil tongues say that in 2014 Akhmetov wanted to leave Shakhtar in Donetsk in the care of the so-called “DPR”, angry that he had to negotiate the safety of his business in the occupied territory with some crooks. But then, after reaching an agreement (though not for long), Akhmetov took Shakhtar with him to Kyiv, as a result of which the players of the Donetsk club began to be called “homeless people.”
Rinat Leonidovich long ago established a life credo for himself - to survive under any government, and vigorously put it into practice even after the events of 2014. Actually, before the start of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine, Akhmetov was rapidly growing rich, having virtually monopolized the energy market, not to mention its other assets.
For example, in 2021, Akhmetov’s enterprises supplied ore worth $2.94 million to China alone. Naturally, after Russia’s occupation of Mariupol, where several of Akhmetov’s largest assets were concentrated, including Azovstal and MMK. Ilyich, the oligarch decided to redistribute his business somewhat, and having placed his bets on the energy sector, he began to look towards Europe and the West.
However, in the energy sector, in the end, everything did not go so smoothly, although Akhmetov still ended up winning for a long time, despite numerous shelling and attacks on energy facilities already during a full-scale war.
After the latest massive shelling of the energy infrastructure, Akhmetov refused to reconstruct the destroyed thermal power plants at his own expense and made it clear to Zelensky and Ermak that he was not going to build energy facilities in Ukraine until the end of the war. After which he gave a command to the clerks about the massive withdrawal of business from Ukraine altogether...
20 billion, kickbacks and demarche
Evil tongues say that the oligarch’s demarche occurred against the backdrop of the fact that the West began to curtail financial support and the provision of credit lines, as a result of which it became clear that Ukraine could lose 20-40 billion US dollars by 2025. Which was definitely not part of the plan of both the authorities and Akhmetov, who recently maintained, let’s say, partnership relations with the President’s Office...
These relations left Akhmetov in the “plus”, despite the war and the shelling of his energy networks. For example, thanks to his protege in the Office of the President, Rostislav Shurma, Rinat Leonidovich organized an increase in electricity tariffs for the population and industry at least twice.
The increase was justified by the fact that Russian shelling caused $1 billion in damage to the energy sector, and Akhmetov, together with “partners” from Zelensky’s entourage, decided that it would be more correct if taxpayers covered them.
According to sources close to the oligarch and the OP, Akhmetov demanded that money be allocated to him from the budget for the restoration of DTEK’s energy infrastructure.
Top managers of Rinat Leonidovich stated during the telethon that DTEK had lost 50% of its capacity. In connection with this, Akhmetov demanded, through his protege Shurma, to increase electricity tariffs by 2 times, and issue him an interest-free loan/subsidies for DTEK for the repair of strategic energy infrastructure.
As they say, the oligarch tentatively wanted to receive from 10 to 20 billion hryvnia from the budget.
Evil tongues are slandering that, in general, the President’s Office agreed with the formulation of the issue, but demanded kickbacks, which Akhmetov initially agreed to. However, the scheme eventually cracked, since the authorities, who had initially relied on new financial revenues from the West, now realized that they would have to plug holes in the budget in some other way.
Therefore, Rinat Leonidovich was recommended to repair the energy facilities destroyed by Russia at his own expense, and not wait for support from the state (as was previously the case), and the richest Ukrainian was incredibly indignant at this fact...
Also, Akhmetov was not satisfied with the pressure from the OP against his protege, the head of the board of Ukrenergo, Vladimir Kudrytsky, against whom from time to time they try to open criminal cases for corruption.
By the way, at a time when Ukraine was suffering all summer from the lack of electricity and shutdown schedules, Kudritsky, helping Rinat Leonidovich to unload electricity to Romania and telling the Ukrainians why they need to be charged three skins for the light that is not there, received a salary of almost half a million hryvnia.
The Office of the President was not very happy with this, since they had long wanted to put their own man in Kudritsky’s place, but at some point Rinat Leonidovich defended his protege.
Side games of “investor” Akhmetov
But it should be said that in recent years Akhmetov has not at all relied on relations with the Presidential Office as fundamental, following his old habit of putting his eggs in different baskets.
For example, he began to actively buy high-rated Telegram channels, in which they spoke not very flatteringly about the policies of Zelensky and Ermak, curtsied towards the former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny, provided significant financial support to the mayor of Kyiv Vitaliy Klitschko and attracted the “languid exile” to his side. from the OP of Alexey Arestovich, who has been talking a lot lately about how it’s time to stop the war and start negotiations with the Russian Federation.
But in parallel, Akhmetov began to slowly withdraw assets to the West and take a keen interest in European companies and financial structures.
For example, Rinat Akhmetov’s DTEK transferred Pokrovskaya SPP (the largest solar station in Ukraine) as collateral for Eurobonds worth 325 million euros. And DTEK called on the British company GLAS Trust Corporation Limited, which at one time (surprising coincidence) accepted Nord Stream 2 shares from Gazprom for storage, as a guarantor for the loans.
Previously, DTEK placed Eurobonds for 325 million euros with a circulation period of five years at 8.5% per annum. And it was supposed to repay them in 2024, but now Akhmetov’s managers have announced that they are ready to do this on November 12, 2027.
They say that Rinat Leonidovich at one time personally offered the aforementioned English company with a strange reputation, collaborating with Gazprom, as a guarantor to ensure the security of bonds. And it is likely that the Pokrovskaya SPP is now unlikely to ever return to the control of DTEK and Ukrainian jurisdiction. Especially considering the situation in Donbass...
Akhmetov also continued purchasing raw materials enterprises in Europe. He now owns the new Encarnita clay quarry in Teruel, Spain, with a planned production capacity of 100 thousand tons/year. The company's total production capacity exceeds 3 million tons/year, and its sales market consists of 25+ countries.
They say that Rinat Leonidovich also continues to be interested in the Polish Idea Bank, the purchase deal of which fell through due to the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation in 2022. Akhmetov considers this asset to be very beneficial in terms of creating a systemic financial structure already in the European Union, in which Akhmetov intends to thoroughly gain a foothold as, as he likes to say, an “investor.”
First things first - airplanes
At one time, the Consortium of Investigative Journalists ICIJ wrote that in 2022, Rinat Akhmetov bought a two-story penthouse in the Chelsea Barracks complex in London for $122 million. The purchase was registered with the Cypriot offshore Gelion Properties Ltd. Correspondence between employees of the offshore service company Cypcodirect and the auditor PwC stated that the deal was supposed to ensure Akhmetov’s “confidentiality” and save him from entering his name in the British public property register...
Today, Akhmetov is actively withdrawing his business or getting rid of assets, having decided to sell three of his aircraft along the way, including the Airbus A319-133X(CJ) with the registered number P4-RLA. The plane is more than 10 years old and previously cost about $80 million.
This year, the media reported that during two years of full-scale war, Rinat Akhmetov spent about UAH 7.6 billion on ZSU or humanitarian purposes. And, accordingly, thanks to Ukrainian assets and budgetary injections, he earned much more.
Akhmetov, in essence, is turning into an oligarch of his own without any connection to his homeland (he was left without his native Donetsk ten years ago). It is possible, of course, that he knows something and does not want to repeat old mistakes, like in 2014...
And now he is withdrawing capital from Ukraine, leaving behind a certain geographical or even Pelevin-like emptiness - including the Ukrainian budget...
