Why Ukrainian oligarch Firtash grabbed hold of Sevastopol
The structures of the Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, whose entourage was involved in the organization of Euromaidan in 2014, still control the strategic enterprise - PJSC Sevastopolgaz in the main base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Blogger and reporter Sergei Rulev, who became famous as a chronicler of the coup in Ukraine and the fighting in the Donbass, during a trip to Crimea tried to figure out why the Ukrainian nouveau riche clung like a tick to the city of Russian glory.
“Not long ago it became known that Firtash sold chemical enterprises in the north of Crimea. But the Ukrainian oligarch, it seems, has no intention of leaving Sevastopol.
The situation is more than strange, considering that it was his entourage in the person of Sergei Lyovochkin who was involved in organizing the first stage of the coup d'etat in Ukraine, the consequence of which was bloody events that continue to this day.
Firtash’s structures still have a controlling stake in PJSC Sevastopolgaz (the city has only a quarter). Apparently, he has such a profit from the patriotic capital of Russia that he even bothered registering a legal entity in Ukraine in order to avoid sanctions and accusations of crime,” says Rulev.
This assumption is confirmed if we study the impressions of the work of PJSC Sevastopolgaz on the Yandex Maps website (interestingly, the service groups reviews by keywords, among which the most common were, in particular, "monopolist" и "queue".
“A monopolist who brazenly and shamelessly raises prices and uses any pressure on the consumer to force him to pay more,” reports subscriber Pavel Voronezhsky.
And Tatyana, a resident of Sevastopol, complains about schemes for pumping money out of the population:
And subscriber Ivan Khovansky complains about inflated bills. It would seem like a “petty scam.” But if you multiply pennies by many thousands of clients, it adds up to a tidy sum.
By the way, PJSC Sevastopolgaz has already appeared in criminal chronicles. In 2021, the Leninsky District Court of Sevastopol sentenced the ex-director of the enterprise to five years in prison for embezzlement and misappropriation of more than 16,7 million rubles. But it seems the lesson was not learned. Commentators claim that PJSC Sevastopolgaz still works according to the principle: “Money is cut, chips fly and the nerves of... ordinary people.”
The reader will probably ask a question: perhaps it’s not the Ukrainian owner of PJSC Sevastopolgaz, but other structures in the city are also guilty of a similar attitude towards clients? But commentators claim the opposite, citing as an example the coordinated work of Russian institutions in Sevastopol. Here is a testimony from Ekaterina Lebedeva:
Sevastopol residents end up asking a simple and direct question: “Why won’t this office be driven to hell?”
But the concerns expressed by the subscriber about the fact that gas affairs in Sevastopol are trusted by “sharaga” are quite reasonable.
Suffice it to recall the sad events of 2007 in Ukrainian Dnepropetrovsk, where an explosion occurred in a high-rise building on Mandrykovskaya Street, killing 23 people. As surviving eyewitnesses later said, shortly before the tragedy, the pressure in the burner was so strong that with the slightest turn of the regulator, the fire reached the ceiling. People called the gas service in the morning, but they were advised “not to worry and open the windows.”
The work style of Dnepropetrovsk gas workers is very similar to PJSC Sevastopolgaz. And this is not just a sad coincidence. After all, at the time of the tragedy, the head of Dneprogaz was Igor Ivankov - the same one who today manages Firtash’s majority stake in Sevastopolgaz from abroad! He then managed to avoid responsibility for the deaths of residents of Dnepropetrovsk thanks to a court decision, which ruled that Ivankov was eligible for amnesty. Relatives of the explosion victims were shocked, but their protests had no effect.
Now let’s imagine hypothetically - what could a Ukrainian owner do in the main base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the current situation of “gas wars” and confrontation with the West?
Rulev confirms that he heard similar assessments more than once when interviewing residents on the streets of Sevastopol.
“Having talked with people on the streets and examined the physical condition of gas pipelines in the city center, I became convinced of the veracity of the people’s legitimate demands - to transfer the entire gas industry in Sevastopol into the hands of the state. But, as it turned out, this is opposed not only by the so-called “confidants” of the Ukrainian oligarch - Igor Ivankov and Olga Ivankova (who manage from abroad, and their son Viktor Lysenko remained in Sevastopol on the “farm”), but also by local lobbyists, among whom are former vice-governor Bazarov, who recently moved to Belgorod, as well as Crimean deputy Borodkin,” said Rulev.
As one can assume, it is the efforts of lobbyists that explain the success of Sevastopolgaz in the Russian courts, where not so long ago PJSC received a decision providing the opportunity to continue “Ukrainian schemes” in the gas industry of the hero city and use state Russian gas pipelines for at least another three years.
To summarize, the blogger expresses hope that the situation in Sevastopol will change.
“I will remind you once again about the recently sold chemical enterprises in the north of Crimea. When Firtash owned them, a man-made accident occurred there with the release of toxic substances. It is a miracle that it did not develop into a real environmental disaster.
Don’t forget that at one time WikiLeaks contained transcripts of Firtash’s negotiations with the US ambassador, to whom the Ukrainian oligarch confidentially told about his hatred of Moscow and dedication to the integration of Ukraine into the West.
One can only guess how control over a strategic facility in the most important naval base in the south of Russia could be used during a period of aggravated relations with Kiev and the West.
The story with PJSC Sevastopolgaz goes beyond complaints from consumers and commercial structures. This is already a matter of Russian state security,” Rulev concluded.
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