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Who controls business in occupied Ukrainian cities
Доступно на русскомDate20 Dec 2024AuthorKsenia ChurmanovaMariupol, August 16, 2023. Photo: AFP / Scanpix / LETA
At the beginning of 2024, strolling through the destroyed Mariupol plant Illich Steel and Iron Works — once one of the largest enterprises in the Donetsk Oblast — the aide to the head of Chechnya, Vakha Geremeyev, tried to joke about the plant seized by Akhmat fighters: “I’ve already fallen in love with it. I’ve already become a metallurgist.” Now, associates of Ramzan Kadyrov own the enterprise.
It is not only Chechens who are involved in the seizure of businesses, property, and resources in the occupied regions of Ukraine. Entrepreneurs from various Russian regions are flocking to Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities for construction contracts, scrap metal, and surviving equipment.
IStories analyzed corporate documents of companies in the occupied territories, their connections with each other and with state structures, to understand who benefits from the occupation of Ukraine.
Where Russians are coming from to the occupied territories
“Almost all of Russia is here,” describes the situation with the construction business in Mariupol, an entrepreneur from Dagestan. “If earlier it was Saint Petersburg, Moscow, now people from all regions are working here.”
He arrived in the “liberated” city — as he calls it — in November 2022 at the invitation of a subordinate organization of the Ministry of Housing and Communal Services and Construction of one of the Russian regions. He managed to get this job thanks to his relations: “Through life experience, we somehow met in Moscow, crossed paths.” Nine months later, together with a partner, he registered a new construction business in Mariupol.
Entrepreneurs from all over Russia are indeed registering businesses in the Russian-controlled Ukrainian regions, as the IStories source from Dagestan claimed. Data from the Russian register of legal entities, which we examined, also indicates this.
Most Russians who have become beneficiaries of companies in the occupied regions are from the south of the country: from the Rostov and Volgograd Oblasts, as well as the Krasnodar Territory. This is more than 80% of the total number of owners with Russian TINs (this can be determined by the first two digits, which represent the code of the Russian region where the taxpayer identification number was issued). Moscow is in fourth place.
Companies are most often registered in the cities of the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts. For example, more than a thousand legal entities were registered in Donetsk since February 2022, 746 in Luhansk, and 255 in Makiivka. Transparency International analysts linked this to the perception of these territories by Russians as more "stable" for business compared to the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts.
Among the cities captured during the full-scale war, businesses are mainly registered in Mariupol and Berdyansk. For example, in Mariupol, the beneficiaries of more than half of the legal entities registered in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities (USRLE) are Russians, 40 companies are registered to Crimeans, and 179 are registered to entrepreneurs who received their Taxpayer Identification Numbers (TINs) in the occupied regions.
Explaining our calculations
We analyzed data on the owners, management, main activities, addresses, and revenue of enterprises in the occupied territories of Ukraine registered in the Russian register of legal entities. We downloaded the contracts of these companies and the legal entities that control them from the Russian government procurement website.
We analyzed the documents of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson enterprises that appeared in the Russian register since February 2022. For Donetsk and Luhansk companies, we selected the period from April 2014, when Russia began occupying Donbas. Officially, Putin annexed the four regions in September 2022, however, Russian entrepreneurs began operating in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts as early as 2014.
Some of these companies existed in Ukraine before the war and were simply re-registered in the Russian register under the occupation. Some of them changed owners. We did not exclude such legal entities from the sample in order to see and analyze all possible connections.
Using a Python library for graph construction, we found clusters of connected businessmen and companies. Their connections are based on several types of relationships — by owners, by management, and by government customers with whom the companies themselves or their owners have concluded contracts. We described two of them.
During the analysis, we found that access to data is gradually being closed: the database contains an increasing number of messages stating that data on the owners of a particular company is hidden in accordance with the law “On State Registration of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs.” In 2023, the government approved a new list of organizations to which access to data in the USRLE (Unified State Register of Legal Entities) may be restricted: banks that have contracts under the state defense order, as well as legal entities located in the territory of Crimea, DPR, LPR, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson Oblasts. One of the reasons for this is the attempt of entrepreneurs to avoid Western sanctions.
Ukrainian businessman wanted and Chechen beneficiaries: participants of the construction cluster
A key figure in one of the largest groups of companies, whose main assets are concentrated in the construction sector, is Ukrainian Vitaly Kolesnikov. In 2020, the businessman was detained in Ukraine while transferring a bribe to the head of the State Property Fund, after which he left for Russia, and then, back in 2021, received an LPR passport. He was put on the wanted list in Ukraine, while in the Russian-controlled Ukrainian territories his career almost immediately took off: Kolesnikov became the owner of seven companies in the occupied regions and three in Moscow.
Kolesnikov’s companies are similar in names (VTEK, HIP-VTEK, VTEK Agro) and partners. They control several legal entities connected with large Chechen businesses and the government, IStories noted.
One of them is headed by Aslanbek Alkhanov. On Instagram, he poses at his desk against the backdrop of portraits of the Kadyrovs, Putin, and the Russian flag — the usual attributes for Chechen official offices. Judging by records from the GetContact service, Alkhanov introduces himself as an assistant to the representative of the head of Chechnya in the Krasnodar Territory: Alkhanov's acquaintances save his contact as “Aslambek Assistant Representative,” “Aslambek Representative Chechnya,” “Aslambek Sochi Kadyrov,” and “Aslambek Assistant Said”. He confirmed to IStories that he held this position.
In the Donetsk Oblast, Alkhanov heads the construction company New Territories, which his Sochi legal entity shares with the legal entity of businessman Kolesnikov. In a conversation with an IStories journalist, he said that he plans to build high-rise buildings, low-rise buildings, and cottage settlements in Donetsk and Mariupol: “Please, if you have money, come in, build. These are our territories, our Russian territories.”
In 2024, Kolesnikov’s VTEK became a co-owner of two more Donetsk construction companies with Chechen roots and similar names — Astar Group. Their beneficiary is the eponymous Grozny holding company of Salambek Zulaev, which was engaged in the renovation of the Heart of Chechnya mosque and, judging by its website and government contracts, led several other large Chechen projects. The new Donetsk company is headed by Zulaev’s brother, Ramzan Zulaev, a deputy of the Grozny City Duma from United Russia.
Claimants for scrap metal in Berdyansk and Mariupol
Tracking goods exported from the occupied regions to Russia through customs databases is now difficult. After the official annexation of the four regions, the need to declare goods coming from there has disappeared. But the occupation authorities do not hide the fact that they are exporting products from these territories. The head of the pro-Russian administration of the Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Yevgeny Balitsky, reported on the export of grain from the port of Berdyansk (he later edited the message and removed the information about the grain). And Ukrainian officials reported on the export of scrap metal.
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Since 2022, a total of 63 enterprises have appeared in the Russian register of legal entities in the occupied territories, whose main activity is related to the processing and trade of scrap metal — mainly in Mariupol, Donetsk, Melitopol, and Luhansk. Shortly after the city’s capture, a relative of the senator from Chechnya, Suleiman Geremeyev, Valid Korchagin (also known as Geremeyev), received a share of one of the main metallurgical assets in Mariupol — the Illich Iron and Steel Works. Alash Dadashov, who replaced him two months later, is also close to Geremeyev.
In 2024, United Russia member Mikhail Poslamovsky was appointed acting director of the company that manages the plant. Before the war, he was engaged in the processing and trade of waste and scrap metal in Stavropol, Moscow, Volgograd, and Rostov-on-Don, and in his free time — sailing, competing, among others, with the Akhmat team at races in the Krasnodar Krai.
By the end of the second year of the war, Poslamovsky became a deputy of the Mariupol City Council and acting director of the Mariupol Illich Iron and Steel Works. Data from the GetContact service suggests that he is still engaged in scrap metal in Mariupol and cooperates with Kadyrov’s representative in the Rostov Oblast, Adam Gonchaev, who now also reports on the achievements of the Chechen government in the captured city. Some of Poslamovsky’s acquaintances call him “Scrap Metal Mikhail Akhmat” and “Mikhail Adam Gonchaev Metal” in their contact lists.
Russians are interested in the factories because scrap metal and equipment remain there, believes Petr Andryushchenko, advisor to the mayor of Mariupol. According to him, Russian equipment is largely similar to the equipment installed at the Illich Iron and Steel Works, and due to sanctions, Russian metallurgy is experiencing problems with spare parts — therefore, “the equipment of the Illich plant can be used as a donor: remove something and send it to Russia.”
Zaporizhstal is another Chechen business that received permission in 2024 to process and sell scrap and ferrous metal waste in the occupied territories. It is controlled by 32-year-old Aslan Baisarov, brother of Chechen boxer Ramzan Baisarov, who performs for the Akhmat club. Ramzan Baisarov often posts photos on his Instagram with his brothers, as well as with Ramzan Kadyrov and State Duma deputy Adam Delimkhanov, who in 2022, against the backdrop of a burning building, reported on the fulfillment of Putin’s and Kadyrov’s “instructions” to seize Mariupol.
In a conversation with the IStories journalist, Baisarov admitted that his business did not work out because “the port workers monopolized everything,” and advised contacting him with the same question in two years. “Oh, please, I don’t want anything,” he reacted emotionally to questions about the business. “I once wanted to work in the Zaporizhzhia Oblast, export through the port, but the port workers are good guys and want to monopolize everything themselves. So, in short, I abandoned this idea, I don’t want anything anymore.” His successful brother did not help Baisarov with the business at all, he says disappointedly: “If someone had helped me, I would have already started a business there long ago.”
In 2023, Ukraine imposed sanctions against the new owner of the Mariupol Illich Iron and Steel Works, Valid Korchagin. Baisarov is not worried about these risks: “I’m not such a big player to be sanctioned. I’m a small trader.” In 2025, he wants to try again to do business in the Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
Petr Andryushchenko, advisor to the mayor of Mariupol, said that Kadyrov’s supporters were given the metallurgical industry in Mariupol to plunder. Transparency International analysts called this a “reward” for the capture of Mariupol.
An increasing number of Chechen entrepreneurs with influential relatives are appearing in the occupied territories. However, for now, those hailing from Chechnya represent a small fraction overall. Officially, they are beneficiaries or directors of only 35 legal entities registered in the occupied territories since 2014, which is less than one percent of the total number of companies whose co-owners or directors are known.
Baisarov believes that Chechen representatives in Ukraine are currently engaged in war, not business. “Everyone is mainly there for the ‘special military operation.’ Someone has to defend the Motherland,” he says.
Donbas mines and factories: family assets of the industrial cluster
In 2023, the Russian authorities initiated a coal reform in the so-called DPR and LPR. The idea was to reduce the number of coal mines from 114 (the number before the occupation) to 15 and find funding for the remaining ones. An investor for one of the mines, Volynska, was found this summer at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. It was transferred to GOK Energokoks, which promised investments of 211 million rubles. Judging by the company's documents, the investor turned out to be 71-year-old Russian citizen Sofya Belichenko.
This is not her only asset: Belichenko controls eight more companies in the occupied territories. Belichenko’s son-in-law is Yaroslav Tibekin, a Donbas and Crimean entrepreneur and member of the so-called integration committee Russia-Donbas.
The Tibekin family, which holds large industrial assets in the Donbas, gained a foothold in occupied Crimea before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine: in 2017, Yaroslav Tibekin’s wife, Tatiana, became the owner of the Nizhnegorsky Cannery — a company from the settlement of the same name, which has since concluded more than one hundred small state contracts for 18 million rubles for the supply of products with Russian ministries, the FSB, hospitals, and kindergartens. Tibekina’s Zaporizhzhia enterprise, the Melitopol Dairy Plant, formerly owned by Ukrainian entrepreneurs, managed to secure five state contracts – this time larger ones – for 14 million rubles from the regional Ministry of Science and Education created by Russia.
The 71-year-old relative of the Donbas businessman also owns 40% of the Komsomolsky Stone Quarry and – through the company GOK Energokoks – 50% of the Sverdlovsk Machine-Building Plant. Both enterprises are located in the Luhansk Oblast. In addition to these, this “family” cluster controls another hundred legal entities from four occupied regions of Ukraine. Together, they cover several key sectors in the region: coal mining, equipment trade, agriculture, and construction. In 2023, the revenue of all companies in this group, for which data is available, amounted to 8.5 billion rubles.
Belichenko ignored the message from the IStories journalist.
A total of 203 companies declare mining — the extraction of coal, decorative and building stone, limestone, gypsum, chalk, and shale — as their main activity. 36 of them were registered in the Donetsk Oblast after the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Companies with the highest revenue
In 2023, only 13 companies registered in the occupied territories after the start of the full-scale invasion had revenue exceeding one billion rubles. The top earners are YUGMK (79 billion) and YUGMK Donetsk (39.9 billion). Both were registered in the Russian legal entities register a month after Putin’s decree on the “annexation” of four Ukrainian regions in 2022.
79 billion rublesrevenue of YUGMK in 2023the largest revenue in the occupied territories of Ukraine
The companies are managed by the Moscow-based Soyuzmetallservis, which in turn is headed by Vitaly Sherin, the former deputy governor of the Tula Oblast, who in 2022 transferred from there to the position of deputy general director at Roscosmos.
In the occupied Donetsk Oblast, YUGMKseized seven factories at once, three of which belonged to the holding of Ukrainian businessman Rinat Akhmetov before the war (just like, for example, the Illich Steel and Iron Works seized by Kadyrov’s army).
The company exports products from these plants abroad: judging by the customs data analyzed by IStories, at the end of last year, Soyuzmetallservis sent 3.4 thousand tons of coal from the Makiivka Coke Plant and about 31 thousand tons of steel products from the Makiivka Metallurgical Plant and Yenakiieve Iron and Steel Works (the enterprises are marked in the documents as manufacturers) to Turkey.
At the same time, some enterprises registered in 2024 are still “zero” — they have no income. The only entrepreneur from the Kurgan Oblast in the occupied territories, who registered three companies in Donetsk, calls his companies “zero.” A similar situation exists for a businessman from Dagestan, who has been engaged in construction projects in Mariupol since 2022.
“Any working person is interested in the financial component,” he replies to a question about his company’s revenue, “but so far I’m working for the future, for the subsequent regions — Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, and other territories. Everything is in progress, so to speak.”
“Legally, this business is hanging in the air”
In 2024, the Kyiv School of Economics estimated Ukraine’s income losses due to the full-scale invasion in trade, agriculture, and industry at $943.5 billion. These losses are associated with the outflow of clients, the need to relocate businesses, the destruction or damage of many industrial assets, the reduction in agricultural production, and the disruption of exports.
“Under international law of armed conflict, the destruction or appropriation of property not justified by military necessity is a war crime,” explains lawyer Grigory Vaypan. “Both government officials and private individuals can be held accountable for this.” As an example, he cites Germany, where after World War II, German industrialists were convicted — including for the appropriation of property in occupied territories and the use of slave labor.
In 2023, the international arbitration court in The Hague ordered Russia to pay Ukrainian businessman Rinat Akhmetov $267 million for seized assets in Crimea. They planned to receive this compensation from Russian assets in other countries. In June 2022, Akhmetov filed a complaint with the ECHR for compensation for damages already in connection with Russia’s full-scale invasion and the subsequent blockade, looting, destruction, and redirection of grain and metal flows. The ECHR can still consider it, as this is a complaint about violations that occurred before September 16, 2022 (the court does not consider complaints about later violations by Russia due to the country’s expulsion from the Council of Europe). However, Russia has already stated that it will not comply with the court’s decisions on Akhmetov’s complaints.
Vaypan notes that Russian businesses in the occupied territories lack any legal guarantees. “Ukraine considers any acts of the Russian authorities in the occupied territories null and void, including any real estate transactions, and it is right, because under international law Russia cannot introduce its own laws in the occupied territories,” the lawyer says. “This means that any property rights in the occupied territories of Ukraine, which are today confirmed by Russian documents, are ‘worthless.’ Legally, all this business is hanging in the air. When the war ends, any Russian owner or entrepreneur could be left with nothing.”
