Who owns cemeteries, who controls the funeral business in Ukraine and how it works
5 November 2025 18:04
INFOGRAPHICS
As of October 2025, there are more than 3,000 active business entities (541 legal entities and 2,767 individual entrepreneurs) officially engaged in burials in Ukraine. This is reported by "Komersant Ukrainian" with reference to YouControl’s research on the domestic funeral services market.
The published data shows that the number of individual entrepreneurs is 5 times higher than the number of companies in this business segment.
Where are the most “funeral” entrepreneurs
Most of them are registered in:
- Dnipropetrovska oblast – 269;
- Donetsk region – 252;
- Odesa region – 212;
- Kyiv region – 189;
- Kharkiv region – 162;
- and in the annexed Crimea – 182.
The same regions are leading among legal entities – Dnipropetrovs’k, Donetsk, Kyiv, and Crimea.
High rates are also recorded in Kharkiv (162/19), Lviv (130/14), and Crimean (182/42) regions. The lowest number of representatives of the funeral services market is in Chernivtsi (36/5), Ternopil (37/3), and Volyn (22/6) regions. The number of individual entrepreneurs in all regions significantly exceeds the number of companies – on average five times. This indicates the dominance of small businesses in a sector where municipal enterprises are concentrated mainly in large cities.
The data also demonstrates the uneven development of the funeral market: the East and South have a higher number of registered players, which may be due to both a larger population and the fact that these areas have traditionally been home to municipal “funeral plants.” In contrast, the western regions are dominated by private entrepreneurs who operate locally.
Every third company is a municipal one: who makes money on Ukrainian funerals
Almost a third (151 companies) are owned by local governments. These companies dominate the market: in 2024, they accounted for 92% of the sector’s total revenue – about UAH 1.1 billion out of UAH 1.2 billion.
The largest municipal players:
- Ritual Service of the SCP “Spetskombinat PKPO” (Kyiv) – over UAH 100 million in revenue in 2024;
- Ritual Municipal Enterprise of the Kharkiv City Council – another millionaire in the industry.
According to the Ministry of Regional Development, 79% of burials in 2024 were performed by municipal services.
Private players and their revenue in the country’s gloomiest service market
Despite the dominance of utilities, private companies are also actively earning money.
TOP-5 private funeral businesses in 2024 by revenue:
- INTEK LLC (Zaporizhzhia region) – UAH 29.5 million. The head is Olena Zenkina, the wife of Yuriy Zenkin, a former official of the Zaporizhzhia Regional State Administration.
- Royal Trans Group LLC (Kryvyi Rih) – over UAH 8 million. Changed its members several times, including entrepreneurs related to public procurement in the field of construction and funeral services.
- RITUAL HOUSE SHINE LLC (Kyiv) – UAH 7.89 million. Mentioned in investigations by Suspilne, linked to an assistant to MP Mykola Tyshchenko (the parties deny any connection).
- ETALON-KR LLC (Dnipro region) – UAH 7.5 million. The company has ties to entrepreneurs who owned other funeral structures associated with Ihor Sayenko.
- LLC “SPE “GREENSTEP” (Chernihiv) – UAH 5.8 million. The company has not published financial statements since 2016.
Re-registered “for Russia”: why some funeral companies have re-registration
About 8% of the companies (41 out of 541) probably re-registered under Russian law are companies from the temporarily occupied territories.Another six companies from Luhansk region have “twins” in Russian registers.
Two of the companies in the sample, LILEYA 2015 LLC and Dobraia Pamyat LLC, have Russian citizens in their ownership structure, and the co-founders of IRBIS LLC include the Russian legal entity Ryazan Echo Center.
In addition to re-registration of Ukrainian companies under Russian law, new legal entities are also created in the Russian Federation. Their basic registration data may fully or partially coincide with the data of companies registered in the Ukrainian Unified State Register. In fact, YouControl’s “Express Analysis” examines the activities of companies based on almost 600 factors, including possible current and historical ties to Russia, Belarus, and Iran. It is convenient to track compliance with the requirements of the legislation on financial monitoring and tax due diligence, monitor the financial condition of companies and banks.
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Death as a business: the funeral services market has grown to UAH 2 billion
Despite the specifics of the business, the industry is growing. Total revenue of companies that have published reports:
- 2022 – UAH 894 million;
- 2023 – UAH 1.1 billion;
- 2024 – UAH 1.2 billion.
According to the Ministry of Regional Development, the total volume of funeral services provided in Ukraine in 2024 amounted to UAH 2.14 billion.
Currently, the funeral services market in Ukraine is a low-profile but financially powerful sector, where utilities remain the main players, and private businesses are often associated with local officials or ex-civil servants. At the same time, some companies in the occupied territories are effectively integrated into the Russian legal framework.
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