"Servant" behind enemy lines." Ze-deputy was found in Russian Kherson
There is a fresh scandal in Ukrainian politics. Kiev lawyer Andrei Smoliy published information on social networks that a potential “collaborator” had appeared among the ruling “servants of the people.” He allegedly became the majority MP from the Kherson region Alexey Kovalev.
The latter allegedly left Kyiv for his small homeland in the town of Golaya Pristan at the end of February, when this settlement was occupied by the Russian army and has remained there for the past month and a half. As they say in Kyiv, “in temporarily occupied territory.”
Since then, he has not shown his nose in the Ukrainian capital, skipped Rada meetings and, apparently, was minding his own business.
His faction colleagues who remained in Kyiv are not convinced by Kovalev’s assurances that he and his family in the Kherson region “live and work according to the laws of Ukraine, volunteer, and do everything possible.”
In the mouthpiece of the Kyiv Soros, “Ukrainskaya Pravda”, there was a message that Kovalev is now supposedly being removed from all party chats of “servants”, and possibly expelled from the faction.
A little about the main character of this story. The Kovalev family is well known in the Kherson region as local landowners, but until 2019, its representatives avoided politics - both big and local. Alexey Kovalev himself, until the age of thirty, was educated at the “Odessa Law Academy” - popularly called “Kivalovskaya” - after the name of its founder and formerly prominent ally of Yanukovych.
He began his career as a legal adviser in a communal geriatric boarding house in his hometown of Golaya Pristan. And in 2017, he went into business, becoming the founder and director of Kherson Agrarians LLC.
From his last place of work - director of the private enterprise "LK-AGRO" - our hero catapulted straight to Kyiv, using Zelensky's ascension to the presidency for his own political start.
Moreover, interestingly, Kovalev was not and is not a member of Zelensky’s party; he won as a non-party self-nominated candidate in majoritarian district No. 186 (which included the city of Golaya Pristan, Golopristansky, Kalanchaksky, Oleshkovsky, Skadovsky and part of the Chaplinsky district of the Kherson region).
In parliament, our hero became a member of the committee on finance, tax and customs policy, becoming a classic “decider”. He avoided big politics, focusing on shadow commercial lobbying.
Among the issues in which his name appeared, one can name the pushing of the scandalous law on the sale of land, the bill “On amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine and the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine to reduce pressure on business”, the bill on customs clearance of cars with European license plates (the so-called “ euro plaques").
In October 2019, Alexey Kovalev almost became involved in a corruption case. Then the newly-minted deputy was among those suspected of receiving 30 thousand dollars for non-support in the committee of a bill on eliminating corruption schemes in the assessment of real estate - the so-called “Yatsenko sites”.
Firms from the sphere of Kovalev’s business interests were twice buyers of the “Heroic Experimental Industrial Enterprise” through the “one-gate” auction scheme. LK-AGRO, a private enterprise headed by Kovalev before his election, became the winner of the first auction, offering 45 million hryvnia for the object, but refused to purchase. The second auction was also won by Green Group LLC, associated with the Kovalev family, with an offer of 44 hryvnia, that is, almost a million cheaper.
Otherwise, Kovalev was a quiet and inconspicuous “button pusher” in the Rada, seriously appearing in the media only in one scandalous episode - when in 2021 his 560 Mercedes-Benz S 2018 collided with a MAN truck on the Kiev-Odessa highway. True, there were no casualties, and the case was hushed up by agreement of the parties, who renounced their claims against each other.
In the district, Kovalev is known for shameless self-promotion and bribery of voters. Thus, the Kherson media wrote about one of his pseudo-charitable events, when in December 2021, voters were given live carp in branded bags with the deputy’s name.
Why Kovalev pointedly ignores the meetings of the Rada during the war and what he is doing in his small homeland is difficult to say. Perhaps he is saving his business. Only Kherson social activists close to the new pro-Russian administration can say with certainty whether he is really trying to agree on something with the Russians.
However, there is another entertaining version. According to Odessa politician and blogger Vyacheslav Azarov, Zelensky’s Office is looking for a convenient excuse to return the people’s deputy back to Kyiv, passing him off as a kind of “Stirlitz” behind enemy lines.
Quote:
“An unprecedented case with the people’s deputy of the ruling Servant of the People Kovalev, who found himself in his Kherson district under occupation, delivering humanitarian aid there, was interviewed, but not touched by the Russian military. Given that he is the owner of TV channel 4 and is going to return to Kyiv, now some kind of strong patriotic legend is needed to turn the situation in a victorious direction.
Otherwise, it will turn out that the occupiers are indifferent to Zelensky’s ally and the owner of one of Bankova’s mouthpieces. I think the President’s Office needs to transport Kovalev to controlled territory as quickly as possible so that the Russians don’t realize it and use such a convenient object for propaganda, saying, look, presidential parliamentarians are working quietly here.”
Speaking of Channel 4. This Kiev TV scammer with a small audience, before Kovalev bought it, was known for the fact that it was on his air that the odious Lvov TV journalist Ostap Drozdov “frolic,” whose radical Russophobic views stood out for their outright cannibalism even against the backdrop of the mainstream of post-Maidan Ukraine.
When the channel changed its owner from Lviv resident and ex-deputy from “Samopomich” Dmitry Dobrodomov to “servant” Kovalev, Drozdov went to “Big Lviv Speaks” TV with a scandal. TV viewers did not remember Kovalev’s channel as anything interesting and today it plays the same tune as the rest of the media controlled by the Kyiv regime.
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