Victoria Belyavtseva, the head of the Kharkov Regional Police Department, is suspected of stealing humanitarian aid. The official states that she is ready to fight for her name, because she worked and did all the work that management entrusted to her.
“I woke up from the explosions and immediately ran to work, at seven in the morning I was already at work.” This is how Victoria Belyavtseva, chief of staff of the Kharkov OVA, recalls the first days of the full-scale Russian invasion.
Not everyone was left in complete chaos, under shelling on the ground. A completely different work began, the administration had to provide people with food and everything they needed, all this happened in conditions when the city found itself in the middle of the front line, and the enemy had already approached key administrative buildings.
Now, NABU detectives suspect Belyavtseva of being involved in the embezzlement of 15 million hryvnia back in March 2022. This is the cost of more than two hundred tons of chicken cargo, which was sent to the Kharkov region.
Belyavtseva confirms: in early March, it was she who actually concluded an agreement with Ukrzaliznytsia and the director of a private enterprise for the supply of meat for distribution to people. And not only meat, but also hundreds of tons of other products from many suppliers. At that time, due to the attack on the OVA building, not a single authorized administration employee except her had a special key with a signature.
“When the rocket hit the administration building on the first day, it was a miracle that we didn’t die. We literally postponed the meeting by 15 minutes, I met this rocket at the intersection of Yaroslav the Wise and Mironositskaya, I was driving up to the administration by car. I was the only one of those who had the right to sign who kept the key. This is the flash drive we use to sign documents. None of the deputies ever carried it with them. But I had it in my bag, I didn’t leave it at work, and that’s how she escaped from a missile attack.”
The Office of the President and the Cabinet of Ministers decided to introduce the movement of humanitarian aid across regions through the Ukrzaliznytsia platform. This decision was made at the beginning of March 2022. Separately, the relevant ministry identified enterprises where it was possible to buy food and, at the expense of the budget, feed people in the affected areas. Each of the regional administrations could join, but this required the same hardware key-flash drive. It turned out that there were no more surviving keys for the entire OVA - so Victoria Belyavtseva became involved in providing the region with products. According to Belyavtseva, in fact, the Regional Humanitarian Headquarters in the Kharkiv region, created at the direction of the Office of the President, was headed by Vita Kovalskaya, deputy chairman of Oleg Sinegubov’s HOVA. He brought her with him from Poltava and appointed her to the position of deputy literally a couple of weeks before the invasion. This Humanitarian Headquarters also included the leaders of the region’s security bloc, people’s deputies and the heads of some district administrations - everyone who remained in place, survived and did not run away.
“After the blow to the administration, we moved to the State Industry building, and from there, from that basement floor, I practically did not leave for many weeks. Everything that we did in the first months of the war was not part of any of our job responsibilities, we never did this, we never did this. I had to act spontaneously. I actually ordered these products because I had the right to sign - there were whole echelons of cereals, canned food, powdered milk and much more. But the only way to make sure that everything really arrived was to come to the station. Other people from the governor’s team took care of things on the spot,” recalls Belyavtseva.
Messages about the work of this headquarters regularly appeared on the HOVA website. It was Deputy Head of Administration Kovalskaya who reported how much flour, cheese, milk and other products were allocated for the needs of communities. It was she who spoke in detail, sometimes even against the backdrop of freight cars, where and how much food would go this time.
Belyavtseva had nothing to do with the reception or distribution of these humanitarian supplies, says her lawyer Evgeniy Riyako.
“Yes, indeed, at that time only one key with the right to sign did not burn out, and the chairman of the OVA himself decided by a separate order to grant Belyavtseva the authority to sign documents. I want to emphasize that we only drew up documents, there was no authority to accept the goods. Legally, this is nonsense, because the acceptance documents must be signed by those people who directly accept the goods, but then, at the beginning of the war, everything was different, then there were certain people who directly accepted the goods. And only one person, who had never seen the product, signed it electronically and loaded it into the system,” says the lawyer.
Of all the hundreds of wagons with products that OVA ordered from manufacturers, for some reason the law enforcement officers were interested in only one batch of chicken. They’ve been looking into it for about a year, but in reality there hasn’t been a single theft or embezzlement – no matter who it was thrown at,” says Belyavtseva’s lawyer.
“All the chicken was distributed to people. The question arose precisely before whether 235 tons of goods were delivered to Kharkov on time. This means the following. The investigation is trying to prove that information about the receipt of this batch of chicken was loaded into the system, and accordingly it was already paid for, but the goods themselves have not yet actually arrived in the city. Then KHOVA sorted it out and found this batch, which was stored in a warehouse and was eventually distributed. And even Belyavtseva never dealt with this issue. There are letters from KHOVA to the supplier company, where the issue of chicken storage was resolved,” said Evgeniy Riyako.
This is precisely the period when law enforcement officers became interested in humanitarian aid. And then, Victoria Belyavtseva recalls, she was offered to sign documents for meat “retroactively.”
“I knew nothing about possible manipulations with these cargoes; I did not sell the products, did not place them in warehouses or transport them to communities. I just ordered them - I worked around the clock, sitting in a semi-basement. Therefore, of course, I categorically refused to do this,” says Belyavtseva.
Most likely, after this refusal, she turned into the so-called “weak link.” Now I am forced to defend myself and turn to lawyers.
“We have evidence, both legal and factual, that one team received and distributed humanitarian supplies, and the second team signed documents remotely, without really knowing how much had arrived. There was a unique situation here - only she had the key, she physically could not manage to do both things, she had to trust her colleagues,” says lawyer Riyako.
The court will make a decision on the preventive measure for the official on Wednesday. Victoria Belyavtseva declares that she is ready to fight for her name. After all, all this time she worked and did all the work that the management entrusted to her, did not leave her position and until the last fought and continues to fight for her hometown. In the meantime, it seems, says Belyavtseva, that a new person from Poltava has long been found for her position.
