Companies with large turnovers have appeared in cities occupied by Russia: who owns them?

Russian businessmen from various regions are seizing enterprises, property, and resources in occupied Ukrainian cities, especially Mariupol. This is according to the investigation by Important Stories .

The most active in developing Ukrainian property are businessmen from the southern regions of Russia (Rostov, Volgograd regions, Krasnodar Territory), but there are even those from Chukotka, Kamchatka, and Sakhalin.

Structures associated with Ramzan Kadyrov are particularly active. Chechen entrepreneurs have gained control over metallurgical enterprises, in particular the Mariupol Ilyich Metallurgical Plant and Zaporizhzhchermet.

Most often, new companies are registered in the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which were occupied ten years ago. For example, in Donetsk since February 2022, more than 1,000 legal entities have been registered, in Luhansk – 746, in Makiivka – 255. Transparency International analysts attributed this to the perception of these territories by Russians as "more stable" for business, compared to Zaporizhia and Kherson regions.

Among the cities occupied during the full-scale war, businesses are registered mainly in Mariupol and Berdyansk. Thus, in Mariupol, the beneficiaries of more than half of the legal entities registered in the Russian register are Russians, 40 companies are registered in the names of Crimeans, and 179 are registered in the names of entrepreneurs who received a tax number in the occupied regions.

Large companies with billion-dollar turnovers have already appeared in the occupied territories, the largest of which is YuGMK with a turnover of 79 billion rubles in 2023. It is managed by Moscow-based Soyuzmetalservis and former deputy governor of the Tula region Vitaly Sherin. In the occupied part of the Donetsk region, YuGMK took over seven factories at once, three of which were part of the holding of Ukrainian businessman Rinat Akhmetov before the war.

Another large group of companies is VTEK, the key figure of which is Ukrainian Vitaly Kolesnikov. In 2020, the businessman was caught in Ukraine trying to bribe the head of the State Property Fund , after which he fled to Russia. He was put on the wanted list in Ukraine, and in the Russian-controlled Ukrainian territories his career almost immediately went uphill: Kolesnikov became the owner of seven companies in the occupied regions and three in Moscow.

Another large group of industrial companies in the occupied territories is linked to Yaroslav Tibekin's family. His wife has controlled the Nizhnyohirsky Cannery in Simferopol, the Melitopol Dairy Plant, 40% of the Komsomolsk Stone Quarry, and 50% of the Sverdlovsk Machine-Building Plant in Dovzhansk, Luhansk Oblast, since 2017.

Legally, such a business has no legal basis, since under international law, Russia cannot impose its laws on occupied territories.