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Son of Ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych Makes Billions Selling Coal From Occupied Territories

Coal goes to Turkey and other countries, and money goes offshore

Доступно на русском
Date
4 Feb 2025
Author
Maria Zholobova
Son of Ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych Makes Billions Selling Coal From Occupied Territories
A miner at work at the Lutuginsky coal mine in occupied Chistyakovo (Torez), August 9, 2023. Photo: Alexander Yermochenko / Reuters / Scanpix / LETA

Coal mines in the occupied territories of Ukraine are now facing bad times. Almost all of them are closed; those that are still capable of generating profits have been given to private owners who hide by registering the business on nominees. IStories found out that former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s son, Oleksandr Yanukovych, is behind the largest exporter of coal from the occupied territories. 

A company close to him, which is registered in a shabby building on the outskirts of Rostov-on-Don, has shipped nearly half a million tons of coal abroad over the past two years — mostly to Turkey. The scheme is simple: The scheme is simple: coal is sold to an offshore company at a low price, which saves on duties. Then the offshore can sell it anywhere and at any price — all the money will remain in its accounts. 

Oleksandr Yanukovych and his wife at a banquet in Kyiv, February 18, 2012
Oleksandr Yanukovych and his wife at a banquet in Kyiv, February 18, 2012
Photo: Maks Levin / Reuters / Scanpix / LETA

The ghost station

Uspenskaya railroad station used to be a border station between Russia and Ukraine. Now it divides Rostov Oblast and occupied Donbas. The front line is about a hundred kilometers away.

At this station, according to customs declarations, wagons with coal are loaded and sent to the West. 

Ukrainian journalists from Inforpost dubbed Uspenskaya station the “Bermuda Triangle” in their article. According to the internal Russian Railways system, which they accessed, records sometimes showed that several thousand railcars were supposedly stationed there at once — an impossibility.  

In reality, Uspenskaya is a small station with only four tracks and no coal-loading equipment.

The coal listed in customs declarations as “Russian” is, in fact, mined not in Russia but in coal mines in the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk. It is then exported abroad by entities linked to Oleksandr Yanukovych, the son of the former president of Ukraine, as IStories has uncovered. In 2023–2024, these entities exported nearly half a million tons of anthracite, officially routed through Uspenskaya and the nearby Gukovo station.

Power and coal

Before the war, Donbas was the coal heart of Ukraine. In 2013, coal production in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions was over 60 million tons — roughly three-quarters of all of Ukraine’s coal production (by comparison, roughly one-fifth of Russia’s). 

Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych also hails from the Donbas. The mining region was Yanukovych’s stronghold — he was traditionally supported in elections there. When Yanukovych took the presidency in 2010, the business of his eldest son Oleksandr, nicknamed the Stomatologist (Yanukovych Jr. is a dentist by first education), was booming. It was Yanukovych’s firm that exported coal from state-owned mines abroad, to Europe, through the Swiss Mako Trading. In 2013, local Forbes listed Oleksandr Yanukovych as one of the richest Donbas citizens with a capital of half a billion dollars. 

Viktor Yanukovych with his son Oleksandr, April 2010
Viktor Yanukovych with his son Oleksandr, April 2010
Photo: Reuters

After fleeing the country in 2014, Yanukovych Jr, like his father and former associates, found asylum in Russia. He is wanted in Ukraine, and the European Union has imposed sanctions against him for supporting Donbas separatists. Yanukovych’s Swiss assets have been frozen. 

Little is known about Oleksandr Yanukovych’s life in Russia. Reports suggest that he obtained Russian citizenship, and his Mako Holding was re-registered in the Russian corporate registry. The investigative project Schemes found that a company linked to Yanukovych owns part of a business center in Moscow — but that’s about it.

The situation in Donbas has also changed a lot since the Russian occupation. The new authorities closed most of the mines, which were subsidized even before the war. On the Russian scale, the current Donbas mining volumes are nothing — 5 million tons a year — but even these modest volumes have attracted businessmen to the occupied Donbas. At different times, Ukrainian businessman Serhiy Kurchenko, Russian businessman Yevgeny Yurchenko, and Putin’s cousin Viktor Medvedchuk had control over coal exports from the occupied territories. 

The scheme

After the territories of the self-proclaimed DPR, LPR, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson Oblasts were annexed in September 2022, the border between these regions and Russia formally disappeared, as well as customs points. Analyzing customs export statistics, it is almost impossible to trace goods from the occupied territories. 

But IStories has come up with a way. First, using customs data, we compiled a list of the largest coal exporters from Russia. We were not interested in major coal companies from Kuzbass, Yakutia, or Khakassia — regions with the country’s main coal reserves. Instead, we were looking for obscure, little-known firms.

So we found Energoresurs, which exported almost half a million tons of coal from Russia in 2023 and 2024. 

Energoresurs is registered in an office on the outskirts of Rostov-on-Don, in a two-story building, where it neighbors a car service center and a building materials store. We managed to get a list of the company’s suppliers. They are located in the occupied Ukrainian regions: Torgovyy Dom “Donskiye Ugli”, RTK Vostokugol, Komsomolets Donbasa mine, Zhdanovskaya mine, Impeks-Don and others. But who is behind Energoresurs itself?

Its official owner is Alexei Ivanov. Before that, he was not a participant in the coal market. Ivanov has been working in various law firms associated with Oleksandr Yanukovych since at least 2016. 

The director of Energoresurs, Pavel Zemlyakov, may also be linked to Yanukovych’s structures. He is listed in phone books as “Pavel DRFC.” DRFC (Donbas Settlement and Financial Center) is a group of several mining and processing plants whose ownership has been attributed by Ukrainian media to Oleksandr Yanukovych.

Energoresurs’ annual report shows that in 2023, the company received a $7 million loan at a modest 1% interest rate from Sl holdings limited. The company of the same name is registered in Cyprus; it was previously owned by Eduard Slinko, former CEO of Yanukovych’s Mako holding company. Now the Cypriot company is indirectly owned by Daria Lavrynets. A woman with the same name is the director and owner of Tursiop.

Before her, Tursiop was owned by Tatyana Kotova, whose phone number is listed as “Tatyana Yanukovych’s House” in notebooks. Another loan was received by Energoresurs in 2021 from Serhiy Yermolchuk, then CEO of Praid M. A firm with the same name was mentioned in the article of the Ukrainian project Schemes — according to the publication, Yanukovych may own real estate in Moscow through Praid M

The route

Energoresurs buys coal from different suppliers in Donbas and transports it to Turkey by rail and sea. The recipient, according to customs data reviewed by IStories, is Energy Union from the British Virgin Islands. Energoresurs sells coal to it at a modest price — an average of 5.7 thousand rubles per ton in 2024. The low price saves on export duties, and then Energy Union can sell it anywhere and at any price it wants. Such a scheme makes sense only if these companies are affiliated.

In the Russian register of legal entities we managed to find a branch of the offshore company of the same name — Energy Union, registered in Rostov-on-Don in July 2022. The director of the company is named Artem Opolinsky. As IStories managed to establish, Opolinsky is an employee of the very same company Energoresurs. And in 2024, Nadezhda Opolinskaya, apparently Artem’s wife (in Ukraine they were registered at the same address, it follows from the leaks), acted as the assignee under the loan agreement Energoresurs

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Until 2022, Bulgaria, Estonia, Czech Republic and Romania were among the countries receiving coal from Energoresurs, among others. But in 2022, the European Union imposed a ban on the purchase of coal from Russia. Now almost all of Energoresurs’ coal goes to Turkey. Between 2021 and 2023, Energoresurs, closely linked to Oleksandr Yanukovych, generated 3.5 billion rubles in revenue — at a modest, transfer pricing rate.

Neither representatives of Energoresurs — Pavel Zemlyakov and Alexei Ivanov — nor Energy Union director Artem Opolinsky responded to IStories’ request for a conversation. “We do not give interviews or comments,” said Mykola Litvinov, general director of Yanukovych’s Mako Holding.

This story was supported by the Jim Hoge Legacy Fund of the International Center for Journalists

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