9. Poroshenko Makes a Fatal Mistake

On March 2, 2014, Acting President of Ukraine Oleksandr Turchynov appointed Ihor Kolomoisky as the head of Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration. Turchynov’s calculation was fundamentally correct. After President Yanukovych’s flight and the complete collapse of central authority, the country needed to be stabilized. Regional leaders – the most influential and wealthy people – were best suited for this. At that time, with the support of the Russian army, Crimea was being annexed. Unable to resist Putin in Crimea, Kyiv politicians feared a similar scenario in other regions.

In the spring of 2014, the interests of the Ukrainian state and oligarch Kolomoisky coincided. The oligarch feared that Putin, by capturing Ukraine, would seize his assets. But on March 3, the day after his appointment as governor, Kolomoisky, who always loved to speak publicly, made a mistake. During a TV interview, he called Putin a schizophrenic who wanted to revive the USSR or the Russian Empire. Understandably, after these statements, Kolomoisky became one of the main enemies of Russian propaganda. Later, the oligarch softened his rhetoric towards Putin and avoided harsh statements against him, even in 2022, following the full-scale invasion.

It must be acknowledged, but Kolomoisky quickly managed to establish order in the region entrusted to him. Pro-Russian forces and their leaders in Dnipropetrovsk were neutralized. How this was done was of little concern to anyone. Some were bought off, some were forced to flee the country through threats, and others disappeared into the unknown. Kolomoisky and his subordinates were such a powerful and influential force in Dnipropetrovsk Region that none of the pro-Russian forces dared to oppose them. Even the Vilkul family, the first of whom was the mayor of Kryvyi Rih and the second of whom headed the region for some time under Yanukovych.

Yes, in 2014, Kolomoisky saved Dnipropetrovsk Region from the “Russian world”, which he always proudly recalls. Losing Dnipropetrovsk could have detached several regions from Ukraine, at least Zaporizhzhia. But, fortunately, this did not happen.

In neighboring Donbas, the situation developed more dramatically. In March 2014, Turchynov offered Ukraine’s richest man – oligarch Rinat Akhmetov – to head Donetsk Region, but he refused. Given his influence in the region, he could have easily resisted pro-Russian forces, which at that time were at the stage of street rallies and the seizure of local administration buildings. Akhmetov erroneously believed that these protests could be controlled and would soon end. However, the situation quickly escalated into a military conflict, and Akhmetov lost almost all of his enterprises and mines in the part of Donbas controlled by the Russians.

Two months after the annexation of Crimea, in May 2014, it became clear that the fight against Russian hybrid aggression would be limited to Donbas only. In Odesa, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipropetrovsk, the situation was stabilized. Kolomoisky continued to head the region entrusted to him, but it was clear that he was not very interested in it. He spent most of his time not in Dnipropetrovsk but in Kyiv or with his family in Geneva. The actual leaders of the region were two of the governor’s deputies – the well-known corporate raider from Kolomoisky’s group, Hennadiy Korban, and his friend, the future mayor of Dnipro (the new name of Dnipropetrovsk since 2016), Borys Filatov.

It is worth noting that several years later, when Korban and Filatov broke off relations with Kolomoisky and left his influence, they both encountered problems at the presidential level. Violating the Constitution, Zelensky stripped Korban of Ukrainian citizenship and banned him from returning to Ukraine. Filatov was repeatedly on the verge of being removed from the position of city mayor.

While serving as the head of Dnipropetrovsk Region, Ihor Kolomoisky significantly expanded his activities. Previously, during Yanukovych’s time, he behaved quite cautiously, fearing that the president’s son, Oleksandr, also known as “Sasha the dentist,” might try to take away some of his assets. But after the events of 2014 and the successful neutralization of the “Russian world”, Kolomoisky began to act more brazenly. Apparently, he believed that his reward should be a portion of state assets.

In early 2015, tensions arose between Ihor Kolomoisky and the new president, Petro Poroshenko. The oligarch, who had controlled the state-owned company “Ukrtransnafta” since 2009, through his business partner Oleksandr Lazorko, proposed to pump out 675,000 tons of technological oil from the main oil pipeline. At that time, due to military actions in Donbas, this pipeline was not used for its intended purpose, and there was a risk that pro-Russian militants could pump oil from the pipeline in their area.

After some time, “Ukrtransnafta” emptied the pipeline and left the pumped oil in storage facilities controlled by Ihor Kolomoisky’s “Privat” group. Then, the oligarch’s structures doubled the storage tariff. As a result of this cunning scheme, the state had to pay Kolomoisky 2.5 million hryvnias or about $100,000 every day for storing its oil.

On March 13, 2015, Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn initiated the dismissal of the chairman of the board of the joint-stock company “Ukrtransnafta,” Oleksandr Lazorko, for exceeding storage costs of technological oil at the “Privat” group’s facilities. On March 19, the dismissal was approved at a meeting of the company’s Supervisory Board.

Ihor Kolomoisky reacted extremely negatively to the news of his appointee’s dismissal from the state company. Firstly, Lazorko refused to comply with the Supervisory Board’s decision and barricaded himself in his office. Secondly, on the evening of the same day, March 19, Ihor Kolomoisky himself arrived at the head office of “Ukrtransnafta” with dozens of armed men. For Ukraine, this looked like a typical scenario of a corporate raider attack. The only difference was that the armed men were brought to the company’s office by the head of Dnipropetrovsk Region.

According to the chairman of the Supervisory Board of “Ukrtransnafta,” Oleksandr Savchenko, who witnessed all these events, Kolomoisky threatened that “he has 2000 fighters, and tomorrow they will all be in Kyiv because his companies are being taken away.”

The story with “Ukrtransnafta” seemed so wild that Poroshenko decided to end it with a radical solution – the dismissal of Kolomoisky as the head of Dnipropetrovsk Region. It was not just about this episode, of course. Kolomoisky began to behave not only as a thief of state property but also as a powerful political player. However, there was one nuance: his capabilities were then limited by the lack of his own faction in parliament.

On March 25, 2015, six days after the events at the “Ukrtransnafta” office, Poroshenko dismissed Kolomoisky. According to the official formulation, the governor himself wrote a resignation letter, although the initiative came from the president.

Before announcing the dismissal, Poroshenko and Kolomoisky had a lengthy meeting. As it turned out later, the main topic of the conversation was “peaceful coexistence” between them after the dismissal. According to unofficial information, Poroshenko promised Kolomoisky not to touch his business interests and not to prosecute Lazorko, who, by his actions, had earned at least several years in prison. Indeed, after that, the former head of “Ukrtransnafta” quietly left for London, and Ukrainian law enforcement did not put him on the international wanted list. In turn, Kolomoisky promised the president not to go into opposition to the current government “for the sake of peace in Ukraine.”

By firing the thieving oligarch from a high government position, Poroshenko did what any head of state would have done. At least if we’re talking about civilized countries. But at the same time, the Ukrainian president made a fatal mistake, as it turned out later. He left Kolomoisky with a terrifying weapon in his hands – a nationwide TV channel, with which the oligarch could shape public opinion.

Putin went through something similar in 2000. And unlike Poroshenko, he knew exactly that enemies should not be left with weapons. First, he took away the control of the most popular TV channel in the country, ORT, from oligarch Berezovsky, then forced oligarch Gusinsky to sell another nationalwide channel – NTV – to the state-owned “Gazprom.” Before 2000, Berezovsky and Gusinsky naively believed that their influence on the media was enough to create problems for Putin and limit his influence. It turned out that a criminal case against the owner of a TV channel could quickly and effectively neutralize both the television killer Sergey Dorenko on ORT and the thoughtful analyst Yevgeny Kiselyov on NTV, and all other journalists.

Poroshenko did not understand this. He hoped for a truce because he was promised by a fraudster who had spent most of his adult life robbing state enterprises. As it turned out, the dismissal of Kolomoisky triggered a series of events that led to the victory of stage comedian Zelensky in the presidential elections.

>>> 10. Lyashko, Avakov, and a President on Shaky Ground

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