Officials in the occupied territories: millions in salaries and budget waste amid the war
4 April 16:58
Member of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Anna Skorokhod discovered that Ukraine still spends money from the state budget on housing and communal services in cities that have long since become Russian. This money not only supports officials, but also utilities. And not only are they maintained, but they continue to spend on completely unnecessary equipment, machinery, materials, etc.
Given that Ukraine’s national debt, according to the Ministry of Finance, has exceeded $169 billion, and in February it increased by $90 million in equivalent, such wastefulness is striking.
According to MP Anna Skorokhod, the occupied territories continue to receive billions of hryvnias from the budget and international funds. “Mariupol receives almost UAH 1 billion a year, Avdiivka – UAH 132 million, Volnovakha – UAH 70 million, Lysychansk – UAH 658.5 million, Siverskodonetsk – UAH 544.5 million, Starobilsk – UAH 578 million, Vuhledar – UAH 205 million a year, and so on. And recently, Mariupol has been allocated $100 million to build a sports complex, Anna Skorokhod said.
Expenditures without revenues
Luhansk region, which has been fully occupied for three years, receives about UAH 4 billion annually from the state treasury, and these funds are used not only to pay salaries to military administrations but also allocated to utilities, which spend them at their discretion. For example, in addition to salaries of 100,000 UAH per month for their heads and deputies, they continue to make expensive purchases at the expense of the state budget, allegedly for the destroyed cities, says Anatoliy Ryzhkov, head of the Luhansk Human Rights Group.
The military administrations of the occupied cities live on state subsidies, as they have no income, but they are not modest in their spending – they use various schemes with signs of corruption.
“If we take the approximate budget of the Luhansk region at UAH 1.5 billion and the budgets of the cities of regional subordination at half a billion to a billion, it is about UAH 10 billion a year. Half of this amount is spent on unexplained expenses with the possibility of personal enrichment. And this money is allocated not only for the improvement of the occupied cities, but even for the purchase of the necessary equipment for the Armed Forces, which has its own schemes, kickbacks,” Anatoly Ryzhkov, a lawyer and human rights activist, tells [Kommersant].
“The problem with the occupied cities is that there is a military administration and its leaders are not under the control of the local community. And everything related to the management of funds is done by the head at his own discretion.
But most importantly, as the human rights activist emphasizes, no one checks where the money is allocated and how much. Activists found tens of millions worth of violations of budget legislation, but the competent authorities were not interested, and no one was punished. In 2023, construction equipment was purchased for 100 million, allegedly for the post-war restoration of cities. Medical equipment for 200 thousand for hospitals, which should then be rebuilt. About half a billion hryvnias were spent on unexplained purchases.
“There are four relocated utility companies in Lysychansk: a heating network, a water utility, a housing office 5 and a hospital. All of them are working and even opening new communal facilities. For example, for 70 million they bought an abandoned pioneer camp on the outskirts of the city and turned its buildings into a dormitory that now houses 70 people. For this money, each family could have bought a separate apartment, not a dormitory with one restroom per floor, a shower room, and a kitchen. But they continue to invest money there, it has already reached 100 million,” Anatoliy Ryzhkov notes.
Money should go to people
“All my appeals to suspend the powers of the heads of city military administrations and attempts to resolve this through petitions were doomed to failure. How can this be stopped? Suspend the powers of the military administrations and transfer their powers to the relevant ministry or transfer their powers to the host communities so that the money follows the people, the IDPs, and is not spent on who knows what,” Anatoliy Ryzhkov believes.
Moreover, as the activist emphasizes, today there is no reliable information on where these military administrations are located on the territory of Ukraine. They did not re-register, they remained at their old addresses on the territory temporarily occupied by Russia, which violates the law. Half of these leaders do not know where they are today, without direct communication with each other and with the residents of their communities. For example, the Luhansk military administration is in three locations: Kyiv, Obukhiv and Kamiansk.
Leaders of the occupied cities are millionaires
The main problem, as Anatolii Ryzhkov emphasizes, is that the heads of the military administrations of the Luhansk region are of no use, but the costs of their existence are enormous. And in the fourth year of the war, it has already become clear that no one is interested in the fate of IDPs, no one is concerned with them. And these bodies do nothing for people. They only do everything for themselves.
The head of the Luhansk regional state administration, Artem Lysohir, filed a declaration for 2024, where he indicated that last year his salary amounted to UAH 1,889,999, and his wife earned UAH 320,000 from the sale of a car. The official’s family had no other income.
Oleksiy Smirnov, deputy head of the Luhansk regional state administration, earned UAH 1,703,466. Another deputy, Natalia Romanenko, received a salary of UAH 1,302,670. Kateryna Bezginska, also a deputy of Lysogor, declared UAH 1,518,852 in salary.
And if we consider the whole of Donbas, the heads of military administrations in some cities even surpassed the regional ones in terms of salaries. Serhiy Dobriak, head of the Pokrovsk MVA, declared UAH 2 million 23 thousand for the past year. Roman Padun from Kurakhivska MVA, which was already occupied last year, received UAH 1.73 million. Oleksandr Zhuravlev, the head of the Lyman IA, declared UAH 1.56 million for 2024. Serhiy Chaus from Chasovoyarsk MBA received UAH 1.46 million last year. Serhii Boevskyi, the current head of the Department of Housing and Communal Services of the Donetsk Oblast State Administration, earned UAH 1.54 million in 2024 as the head of Druzhkivka Municipal Administration.
The salary of Oleksiy Reva, the head of Bakhmut MVA, amounted to UAH 1.45 million. Oleksandr Honcharenko from Kramatorsk declared UAH 1,313,000 for the year, while Volodymyr Rybalkin from Sviatohirsk received UAH 1,259,000 for the year.
In fact, this mess can be stopped, Anatoliy Ryzhkov believes, if the National Security and Defense Council or the Cabinet of Ministers stop allocating and directing money to these military administrations.
“In my opinion, even financing frontline cities at the level of peaceful ones is a crime. Pokrovsk allocates money and spends it on the maintenance of the heating network, despite the fact that there has been no heating in the city for a year. Or for road repairs. But at the same time, wounded civilians cannot receive proper treatment, no money is allocated for them and they are left alone with their problems,” the human rights activist noted.
Author: Alla Dunina
