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Ministry of Defence, as all five companies are strategically important and supply essential military products. Ukrainian Minister of Defence Oleksii Reznikov commented that this transfer is not a nationalization but a wartime decision, and the entities will be returned to their owners once martial law is no longer in place. The total value of the assets of the companies seized by the state is estimated at $956.5mn.
All five companies are associated with controversial Ukrainian oligarchs, namely Ihor Kolomoisky, Kostyantyn Zhevago, Konstantin Grigorishin, and Viacheslav Bohuslaiev. About 42% of Ukrnafta reportedly belongs to companies associated with Kolomoisky. Kolomoisky and his business partner Gennadiy Boholyubov also reportedly own nearly 60% of the shares in Ukrtatnafta. Ukrtatnafta’s key asset, the Kremenchuk oil refinery, was hit by Russian missiles in April.
AvtoKrAZ is a truck-producing factory owned by Zhevago, who faces embezzlement charges after allegedly siphoning $113mn from the now-defunct Finance & Credit Bank he used to own. Zhevago’s location is unknown, but he still owns a majority stake in a mining firm Ferrexpo.
Zaporizhtransformator is the oil-immersed power transformers and electric reactors manufacturer that belongs to Grigorishin. Grigorishin holds Russian citizenship and, in 2016, he admitted that he had financed the Communist Party in Ukraine.
Until recently, the aircraft engine manufacturer Motor Sich was owned by Viacheslav Bohuslaiev, who, in 2017, sold 56% of the company's shares to the Chinese holding company Beijing Skyrizon Aviation Industry Investment Co Ltd. However, in 2021, the Ukrainian government seized all property and shares of Motor Sich due to non-compliance with anti-monopoly legislation, and the company was transferred to the Asset Recovery and Management Agency of Ukraine. In October 2022, the Security Service of Ukraine published Bohuslaiev’s phone conversations in which he offered Russian helicopter manufacturing companies Ukrainian-made engines for attack helicopters and suggested shipping them to Russia through Croatia, Kazakhstan, or Kyrgyzstan. Bohuslaiev was arrested on charges of treason.
Despite the former owners’ bad reputations, the decision to transfer control of the companies to the Ministry of Defence has alarmed those in the business community. Some argue that this move creates a dangerous precedent and that the Ukrainian government should be cautious so that it does not move towards a Soviet economy.
2.8 Politics - misc
NATO has open doors for Ukraine's membership in the alliance on November 30. The consensus that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance remains in place. Currently, the main focus is to support the country's struggle for liberation against the Russian military, said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg during the GMF Bucharest Forum. At the same time, Stoltenberg emphasized that the alliance pursues an open-door policy not in words but in deeds. "We demonstrated this with the recent acceptance of Montenegro (2017) despite Russia's protests. This demonstrates that Russia does not have the right to veto. Thirty allies and the candidate country decide
15 UKRAINE Country Report December 2022 www.intellinews.com