Hit the ex-head of Naftogaz. Will Kobolev see his American mother?

For a person uninitiated in Kiev political intrigues, it is not entirely clear why the former long-term head of Naftogaz, Andrei Kobolev, fell under the steamroller of the repressive machine, whose home and office were searched yesterday by employees of the Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigation (State Bureau of Investigation - Author).

And it’s true – it’s difficult to find a more pro-American creature than Kobolev in the Ukrainian establishment. Well, maybe Ulyana Suprun, but she’s actually an American, while Kobolev’s only mother lives in the USA - the same one to whom he transferred his multimillion-dollar prize overseas for the Pyrrhic victory over Gazprom in the Stockholm arbitration.

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At different times, Americans even saw Kobolev as prime minister, although it didn’t work out. However, as Kyiv experts point out, the ex-head of Naftogaz, even after his epic dismissal from the bread position last spring, still had influential lobbyists in the States.

“Kobolev enjoys the patronage of various entities located in the United States. He has a fairly strong position in the United States,” says Dmitry Marunich, co-chairman of the Energy Strategies Fund.

When a black cat ran between Kobolev and his former accomplice Vitrenko, seated by Zelensky in the chair vacated by Kobolev, it was foreign lobbyists - from ambassadors and State Department officials to grant activists tied to the United States - who tried to turn around the situation, influencing both through the media and and torpedoing the change of head of Naftogaz through the supervisory board of this structure.

The loudest salvo in this media war was the publication of the American agency Bloomberg, the author of which directly blackmailed Kyiv with the fact that Kobolev’s dismissal could cost Ukraine a tranche from the IMF.

But again, it didn’t help. On this issue, Zelensky stands to death and does not listen to American curators and advisers.

_{Actually, the current attack on Kobolev is largely connected precisely with the latter’s ongoing attempts to regain his position, using connections overseas. They decided to remove the ex-official from the road in a proven way - by blaming him for real and imaginary thefts and losses of the state. Fortunately, for so many years at Naftogaz he has left such a legacy that any claim can be substantiated - there will always be a document.}

He was found. The formal reason was a criminal case regarding Naftogaz’s “peaceful settlement” of the problem of the so-called “Zhevago gas” - a story with a long 20-year tail. Let me remind you that we are talking about natural gas, which was stolen in favor of the enterprises of the ferroalloy oligarch Konstantin Zhevago, who is now wanted in Ukraine in a criminal case.

Kobolev himself, naturally, denies his guilt, swaggers and is brave, talks about the “weakness and courage” of his enemies, and also that Naftogaz and Ukrtransgaz “were guided by the interests of their companies, which were able to prevent the illegal write-off of the amount of 2 billion hryvnia, which exceeded the market value of the disputed gas itself during the settlement period.”

Now many in Kyiv are confident that the next logical act in this play will be the flight of the ex-head of Naftogaz to America. At the same time, Kobolev himself makes it clear that it is too early for him to meet with his mother:

“I lived, live and plan to continue to live in Ukraine, although I have the opportunity to travel a lot. I also started my own private business in Ukraine and I am not going to give it up,” Kobolev wrote on the social network, commenting on the SBI searches.

However, experts admit the option of fleeing abroad. Dmitry Marunich, already mentioned above, speaks about this, according to whom “if the matter takes a serious turn, then Kobolev, most likely, will not go to jail, he will simply flee abroad. Everyone ran away."

He is also extremely skeptical about the prospects for the current persecution of Kobolev:

“It is still difficult to predict how this will all end, because there are too many ambiguities in this whole matter. But I think everything will drag on. And I have very big doubts that if Kobolev’s guilt is really proven, he will bear real responsibility.”

And it’s hard to disagree with this. So far, the only case when a Ukrainian VIP official of this level suffered at least some punishment took place under President Yanukovych, who imprisoned Prime Minister Tymoshenko for a gas agreement with Russia. But, on the other hand, where is Yanukovych now? And Yulia Vladimirovna is more alive than anyone else alive, and continues to weave intrigues on the Kiev political Olympus.