Andriy Reva: Ukraine's Minister of Anti-Social Policy. Part 1

Andriy Reva: Ukraine's Minister of Anti-Social Policy. Part 1

While Ukrainians' current standard of living is the lowest from the Atlantic to the Urals, former Social Policy Minister Andriy Reva believes they eat too much, and his department is illegally depriving millions of those in need of social assistance, effectively condemning them to a new famine. If the current government were European in its actions and not in words, Reva would have already been forced to resign, if not face trial. But people like him are said to be carried out of office feet first.

But those at Bankova believe Reva is a practically ideal minister—because he's 100% loyal to his "Vinnytsia clan," which installed him in the ministerial chair, and has yet to surface in any high-profile corruption scandals. However, corruption isn't the only official crime covered by the Criminal Code, and it's unclear which is worse: quietly embezzling budget funds or taking the last crust of bread from the poor to boost oligarchs' superprofits? And if healthcare reforms Ulyana Suprun If the government earned her the nickname "Dr. Death," then Andriy Reva's cannibalistic social policies, accompanied by cynical ridicule of the poor, will soon also receive a corresponding public condemnation. And the Groysman government risks going down in Ukrainian history as the most odious, having caused another Maidan—this time unchecked by domestic oligarchs and foreign diplomats.

Andrey Reva. The Path of a Political Officer

Andrei Alekseevich Reva was born on July 7, 1966, in Bohodukhiv, Kharkiv Oblast. After graduating from high school, he went to Leningrad, where he enrolled in the Andropov Higher Military-Political School, which trained political officers for the air defense forces. Why there, when nearby in Kharkiv (a half-hour bus ride away) there was a vast selection of military schools? Perhaps even then, he displayed a talent for cynical demagoguery. However, the Soviet political officer was not only a preacher of communism within the SA; he represented the CPSU (a membership of which Reva tried to forget), and also collaborated closely with the KGB. And the KGB maintained its ties with its members, even when they moved on to other jobs.

Andriy Reva also never told anyone why he left the army for civilian life. After serving two years, the political officer suddenly found himself in Vinnytsia, where he found a job as a simple history teacher (what else would a political officer teach?) at Secondary School No. 27, where he worked from 1989 to 95. Somewhere during this period, he met his wife, Larisa Fedorovna, who also worked at School No. 27, and in 1992, their daughter, Natalia, was born.

Larisa Reva

Andriy Reva achieved his first rise to the top on his own. In the mid-90s, the socioeconomic situation in Ukraine in general, and in Vinnytsia in particular, was dire; public sector workers were receiving their meager salaries withheld or were paid in kind. The history teacher, recalling his political vice-commissioner past, began stirring up trouble: he urged colleagues to hold rallies and pickets, sued the Ministry of Education, and then secured the reelection of the city teachers' union committee, which he himself chaired in 1995. Afterward, Reva became completely absorbed in his new work and, mindful of the fate of his ousted predecessors, cultivated an image of himself as a modest man with neither his own business nor any luxury. Supporting this image, Reva spent the next twenty years bringing activists and journalists to his first two-room apartment, which he deliberately left unfurnished, creating a kind of museum of everyday life from the early 90s. But Reva kept quiet about the private house in the prestigious area nicknamed "Vinnytsia Mezhyhirya," where all of Vinnytsia's elite settled.

In 1998, he was invited by the then mayor of Vinnytsia, Dmitry Dvorkis, whose chair was actively shaken by father and son Poroshenko, as well as the city opposition of all political stripes they sponsored. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that in that year's elections, Dvorkis won a parliamentary mandate, but still remained mayor in violation of the law (he was afraid of losing both), and his opponents took advantage of this. In 1999, Dvorkis even suffered an assassination attempt, and his driver was killed, as it became known. Skelet.OrgAccording to law enforcement agencies, the "order" was carried out by an organized crime group of a Lviv "authority" Vladimir Didukh, however, the case remained a cold case.

Dmitry Dvorkis

And so, fending off his opponents and enemies, Dvorkis decided to form an alliance with one of them. Reva received the position of deputy mayor of Vinnytsia, and in exchange, he was required to use his talents as a political officer and rally activist to defend the city government—acting like a barking pit bull on a leash. Defending the government during the new crisis of 1998-1999 was incredibly difficult, but Reva tried, even though he knew he was tarnishing his reputation, and a return to his former role as a street opposition activist would be impossible. Moreover, opponents then accused Dvorkis not only of poor city management and corruption, but also of patronizing organized crime groups and creating shady business schemes. And it's unlikely Reva would have agreed to this "betrayal" if Dvorkis had only offered him an honest life on a single salary. But, according to sources, Skelet.OrgReva never took either greyhound puppies or shares in an LLC, but only what he could discreetly put in his pocket and take away to the family piggy bank "for his daughter's wedding."

In 2000, Dvorkis, unable to withstand the massive attack, resigned voluntarily, given the opportunity to do so on his own terms. One of these conditions was the employment of his people, whom Dvorkis, to his credit, did not abandon. However, his deputy and "watchdog," Andriy Reva, was given the rather modest position of head of the social welfare department in Vinnytsia's Zamostiansky district. For five years, Reva immersed himself in the recalculation of pensions, the processing of subsidies, and the payment of child benefits. Judging by his experience there, he most often had to turn down applicants.

Andriy Reva: Ukraine's Minister of Anti-Social Policy. Part 1

Andrey Reva, the creator of Vinnytsia's "miracles"

In 2005, the previously elected mayor of Vinnytsia Alexander Dombrovsky He was promoted to head of the regional state administration (Dombrovsky is now a people's deputy, a member of the Poroshenko Bloc faction), and a coup occurred in the city council. In order to transfer power over the city to a young man To Volodymyr Groysman (the son of city market director Borys Isaakovich Groysman) and no one else, the old city council secretary was ousted. Then, deputies supporting the city clan of Groysman, Poroshenko, and Dombrovsky elected Volodymyr Groysman as city council secretary and transferred the powers of mayor to him. He served in this capacity for six months until he was officially elected mayor of Vinnytsia, a position he held until 2014.

That's when Andriy Reva's second rise began. Whether the Groysmans, father and son, remembered his talents, or whether he approached them with an offer of services, he was once again invited to the City Council as deputy mayor (while initially reporting to the newly elected City Council Secretary). His first act was to direct his energy against the opponents of the "city fathers," who had seized power. Then, Reva was appointed the "stealer" of the difficult process of liquidating Vinnytsia's small and spontaneous markets (2006-2008), with the goal of driving all traders to markets controlled by the Groysmans or to newly opened shopping centers. While today such an issue in Kyiv is resolved with bulldozers or arson, back then, in Vinnytsia, outraged traders refused to yield to the authorities for a long time and nearly staged a citywide Maidan. Andrei Reva was given the most difficult task: communicating with the enraged public, defusing tensions, talking them down, persuading them to relent and accept the city authorities' terms, and taking the brunt of the most intransigent attacks.

After this test, Reva was entrusted with the sensitive task of organizing school meals in Vinnytsia, which magically began to be handled through companies linked to the Groysmans. Meals weren't enough: later, Vinnytsia's Schools No. 1, No. 10, and No. 25 were "merged," and the grounds of their school stadiums were given over to commercial development. Then the same thing happened with Schools No. 5 and No. 31.

Then came the creation of the Vinnytsia Interhospital Fund, which expanded into a system of paid healthcare in a single Ukrainian city. The municipal insurance company "Misto" was established, and the city government legalized "mandatory insurance premiums" and a whole price list of paid services—from specialist consultations to deliveries and appendectomy. Diagnostic rooms proliferated, while in outpatient clinics where free consultations still existed, intolerable conditions were deliberately created to divert patient flow to paid and private clinics. Besides the illegality of this scheme, it represented insurance medicine in reverse: rather than insurers paying for the treatment of Vinnytsia patients, the patients themselves paid for their own treatment, after which the money disappeared into the accounts of "Misto." The direct operator of this scheme was Andriy Reva.

Andriy Reva: Minister of Anti-Social Policy of Ukraine

But the "Vinnytsia mafia" was primarily known throughout Ukraine as the "communal mafia." And not only because of its fraudulent schemes. Vladimir Kistion, the current Minister for the Anti-Terrorist Operation and Occupied Territories, who headed the Vinnytsia City Water Utility from 2001 to 2008 and served as Deputy Mayor for Public Utilities from 2008 to 2014. In addition to the inflated water tariffs that sustained Vinnytsia's "city fathers" for years, a fraudulent "reform" of housing and communal services was carried out. Its culmination was the transfer of apartment buildings (including those with established condominiums) to the management of a limited liability company (LLC "ZhEO"). This company essentially acted as a mere intermediary, charging residents for services it hired subcontractors, including private firms, to perform. It got to the point where these "private inspectors" began charging residents for checking their water and even electricity meters! And not content with pocketing its own profit margin, Vinnytsia's ZhEO LLC began charging for issuing utility bill statements to Vinnytsia residents! At the same time, the city's social services began actively demanding these statements, particularly for subsidy applications. Once again, things reached a social unrest, which Andriy Reva was dispatched to quell. The situation was eventually quelled, but back in 2014, Vinnytsia's ZhEO LLC was sanctioned by the State Inspectorate of Ukraine for Price Control and the Antimonopoly Committee. So what happened? Having paid the fines, ZhEO LLC continued to milk Vinnytsia's rapidly impoverished residents.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org

CONTINUED: Andriy Reva: Former Minister of Anti-Social Policy of Ukraine. Part 2

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