Druzhkovka Mayor Valeriy Gnatenko has once again managed to resolve his family's criminal problems. For several days, the city council discussed the news of a traffic accident involving his daughter, then Gnatenko left for Kharkiv and disappeared. Rumors spread that Valeriy Sergeyevich had "fallen amidst much fanfare." He had intended to "settle the matter," but something went wrong. They hoped the SBU had finally gotten to the separatist mayor. But Gnatenko returned from Kharkiv victorious and assumed control of the city, declaring, "You're all lying."
Major road accident in Kharkiv
This accident occurred on May 5th. According to Kharkiv websites, the driver of a 2013 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque veered into oncoming traffic and struck a taxi carrying a passenger. What wasn't reported was that Karina Gnatenko was driving the luxury white SUV.
While driving along Vesnina Street at 2:00 a.m., a rich woman veered into oncoming traffic and rammed a Daewoo Lanos traveling in the opposite direction. A local website, citing the patrol police press service, reported that the driver of the SUV, as well as the driver and passenger of the Lanos, were injured in the accident. However, the woman responsible for the accident was only sent to the hospital to determine whether drugs or alcohol were the cause of her erratic behavior. The taxi driver and his passenger, whom Karina happened upon on the deserted street that night, were less fortunate: they face lengthy treatment.
Karina, a young justice department employee and graduate of the Yaroslav the Wise Law Academy, plans to work in the prosecutor's office. Her father rightly judged that a traffic accident would not enhance her budding career and did everything he could to get his daughter off the hook.
The girl received a car worth more than a million hryvnia from him.
The mayor of Druzhkovka spent money on this gift in March 2014. It was then, when Valery Sergeyevich was telling the city's residents about the "bestial and demonic masks of the Maidan," about the "slackers who jump around while we work," and about the "Banderites we feed."
Karina Gnatenko's VKontakte page is a model of a life of leisure. The country's difficult times haven't touched the "prosecutor's wife." Restaurants, nightclubs, the hustle and bustle, and luxury goods—that's the beauty's exhaustive list of interests. Only on September 6, 2014, did war appear outside the window of her luxury car: Karina posted a selfie with tanks in the background on her VKontakte page. "Went home," she commented with a cheerful smiley face.
Valeriy Gnatenko, the "breadwinner of slackers," provided the young lawyer not only with an expensive car but also with other trappings of the rich: a beautiful apartment in Kharkiv, expensive accessories, and money for drinking. And this is a true miracle—after all, according to his income declaration, Valeriy Gnatenko earned only 226235 hryvnias over the past year!
Donbas Vradiivka
We'll return to the mayor of Druzhkovka's astonishing declaration a little later. For now, here's another dramatic addition to the family portrait.
The Gnatenko family has experienced even more horrific emergencies. One of them still haunts the provincial town. The murder of 40-year-old Marina Sergienko, with whom the mayor was having an affair, remains a cold case. The deceased is remembered fondly, and is said to have been a warm-hearted person. Her colleagues at the city's Accident Insurance Fund knew that the Druzhkovka mayor was planning to leave his family for Marina's sake. These plans were changed by a tragic incident: on May 27, 2011, Sergienko was stabbed 22 times. Those who visited the apartment where the woman was killed concluded that the deceased knew the killer (or killers) well. She had let the guest in, and at first they had a peaceful conversation, but then an argument erupted.
The Gnatenko family immediately became the prime and only suspects. The mayor's home was immediately searched, and his wife was questioned. They were planning to question his student daughter as well. But the mayor urgently evacuated Karina to Turkey. For several months, the future lawyer waited out the troubles at her father's private hotel in Kemer. She didn't return until her father had sorted everything out.
Incidentally, he never dared attend his beloved's funeral. They say Gnatenko deployed every resource to thwart the case, which had every chance of being solved. The "fix" cost a staggering $500 for the province. And his friend, Sergei Novikov, the former chief of police in Druzhkovka, helped the mayor get off scot-free.
That same "law enforcement officer," insolent with tyranny, through whose fault, on the eve of the "Russian Spring," Druzhkovka was in a fever similar to Vradiivka in Nikolaev.
Novikov rose to fame in January 2014. A four-time convicted repeat offender and drug dealer nicknamed "Kleshnya," he terrorized residents for a year. He slashed, beat, and raped. The local police turned a blind eye. Few dared to file a report, considering it futile. And if they did, the examination concluded there were "minor bodily injuries." Until Kleshnya killed a local woman, Kristina Agudalina. He disfigured her face, raped her with a bottle, and cut off her head. When outraged friends and relatives came to Sergei Novikov, the chief police officer said Kristina had provoked the killer with her reckless behavior: "There was no point in hanging around at three in the morning." It later emerged that Kleshnya not only served as a personal informant for the Druzhkovskaya police chief but also shared his ill-gotten gains with him.
Anti-state activities
Sergei Novikov is currently under house arrest in Konstantinovka. The former chief of the Druzhkovka police department is charged under Article 365 of the Criminal Code ("Abuse of power, resulting in grave consequences"). In the spring of 2014, he removed firearms from the city police station, which were later obtained by terrorists.
Valeriy Gnatenko, however, even avoided house arrest, although he has been formally under investigation since February 2015 on suspicion of organizing an illegal referendum—he is charged under Article 110 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (“Encroachment on territorial integrity”).
According to the SBU, since February 2014, the mayor has been instructing the "elite local militia" right in his office. The municipal newspaper "Druzhkovsky Rabochy," financed by the local budget, has been actively misleading the population.
Gnatenko personally gave orders to remove state flags and hold a "referendum." Right under his nose—in the courtyard of the executive committee (where the "NKVD DPR" was located)—pro-Ukrainian activists were tortured! On May 11, on Valery Sergeyevich's orders, school and utility directors opened their facilities for the "referendum."
The only time Gnatenko didn't lie at anti-Maidan rallies was when he lobbied for the Druzhkovka Gas Equipment Plant. He claimed that it was more profitable for Druzhkovka's business to focus on Russia. But he kept silent about the reasons: no one in Europe wants Greta gas stoves, and the plant that produces them was privatized and sold to Russians by his friend Viktor Annenkov, a regional council member from the Party of Regions and another patron of the militants.
From May to early July 2014, Druzhkovka was under the control of the so-called "DPR." That summer, a new police chief was appointed, and the militants fled, along with some of the deputies. Novikov was replaced by a new chief, but Mayor Gnatenko remained in office. He was elected to a third term.
Embezzlement and concealment of income
Valery Gnatenko has reigned in Druzhkovka for 15 years. He had previously held lucrative jobs, heading the tax police in several cities. But the mayoralty was truly a golden age for the Gnatenko dynasty. During these years, everything of any value was removed from municipal ownership, appropriated, and sold. The city had a decent children's clinic: a two-story, freestanding building—Gnatenko found a buyer, and the clinic was evicted. There was a state-of-the-art blood transfusion station—during Gnatenko's tenure, it was converted into his private sauna, "Vodoley." An excellent kindergarten was sold to a company, which dismantled the building for its bricks.
In Druzhkovka, Valery Gnatenko owns two enormous houses, which locals call "palaces." He built one mansion on the land of a tuberculosis dispensary he closed. He likely figured that Koch's bacillus wouldn't catch on to a contagious figure like the "Regional" mayor, so he allocated himself 20 acres of land right on the dispensary grounds. The second house was built in a park area. Three plots of 10 acres each were allocated for construction, and another 40 acres were supposedly set aside for the mayor's mother to graze her cattle.
The mayor has a beautiful dacha in the village of Rubtsy in the Kharkiv region. He built another one in the resort village of Shchurovo, on the banks of the Seversky Donets River. Moreover, he built it during the war, when conscientious Ukrainians were tightening their belts and donating to the army.
"Gnatenko has created a feudal system in the city; everyone fears him—both allies and enemies," one local deputy told ORD. "His parents and older brother are also connected to law enforcement. His father was the deputy chief of police before retirement—he owns all the markets in the city—the central one, the market in the residential area, and the central market in Konstantinovka. The family owns a manufacturing plant that makes paving slabs and European-style fencing, which Gnatenko profits from local budget orders. The business is very profitable, as the slabs are of such high quality that they've survived the winter and need replacing. The asphalt is also laid with public funds, and Gnatenko's company specializes in asphalt. There are eight properties registered to other people, including the restaurant "Magnat" (Gnatenko's mother). All retail businesses of any significance are also connected to the mayor."
Regarding the declaration, the feudal lord Gnatenko disregards the law. Instead of the 2015 declaration, the mayor's website features a parody. As someone who started out as the head of the department for combating criminal tax evasion, Valery Sergeyevich surely knows that concealing income is a criminal offense. And these days, you can also be charged for submitting false information in a declaration. Therefore, he's committing the crime knowingly.
Instead of a handwritten report with a date and signature, the official handed the community a runaround, complete with information typed by an unknown source. He ignored the columns that required expenses, including the maintenance of a 400-square-meter home, which Valery Sergeyevich deemed necessary to include in the report. He "forgot" to declare a fleet of several SUVs. He "forgot" to list income received from sources abroad. And this, as already mentioned, is a hotel in Kemer, registered personally to the mayor. Information about this property surfaced in a court filing by his ex-wife, who was seeking a division of property. And this, according to sources close to the mayor, is not the only property he is concealing.
The so-called declaration states that the mayor earned 226235 hryvnias over the year, the majority of which was his salary (11600 hryvnias per month). Gnatenko also indicated that he owned two plots of land, one of which was 3160 square meters, and a house in Druzhkivka. He also claimed to have 400,000 hryvnias in his bank accounts, half of which he deposited this year. The source of this 200,000 hryvnias of "extra cash" is not specified. The declaration contains no gifts, businesses, or information about the property of close relatives. The declaration should be publicly available, but finding Gnatenko's financial report on the official website is virtually impossible.
Why isn't Gnatenko in jail?
"It's hard to find a city as corrupt as ours. When Euro-optimist deputies from Kyiv came to Druzhkovka, we took a city map and marked with black Xs everything that had been city property that had been transferred to private ownership. The entire map turned black," says pro-Ukrainian activist and volunteer Irina Kirikova, whom the mayor recently tried to sue for calling him a separatist on live television.
Information about Gnatenko's anti-Ukrainian activities is not limited to the Myrotvorets website. Residents of Druzhkovka have written dozens of appeals to the Prosecutor General's Office, the Presidential Administration, and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), demanding that the scoundrel be imprisoned for the harm he has caused to the state. Local SBU officials are convinced that the investigation is being stalled somewhere in the corridors of power in Kyiv. And they're probably "having a radio."
This became clear when the notorious Ukraine-hater Gnatenko, from a member of the Party of Regions, transformed himself into a representative of Poroshenko's "Our Land" party (which we covered here: Separatism is Striding the Country. "Our Land" and Other Transformations of the Party of Regions (Part 1)). And the leader of this political project at the local level became his right-hand woman, Valentina Lugovaya, the director of the local "Intellect" school, who, together with the wives of militants, held protests against the "Ukrainian punitive forces."
There's no doubt that Gnatenko and his cronies remain enemies of Ukraine. They don't even try to hide it.
"We hid children and old people in bomb shelters. When they started killing children and women, I asked for the war to stop," the head of Nashe Krai says in this video, justifying her participation in anti-government protests:
Although there was no shelling in Druzhkovka, and all the killed women and children are a figment of Lugova's sick imagination, who continues to cripple students with Kremlin propaganda...
Unfortunately, many residents of Druzhkovka still haven't realized that the only parasites they have to feed are Valery Gnatenko and his pro-Putin gang.
Tatyana Zarovnaya, ORD
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