BEGINNING: Gennady Vatsak: The Alcohol Wars of the Smuggling Barons of Vinnytsia. PART 1
Gennady Vatsak | Petr Brovko
It should be noted that during that election conflict, the names of people from clans competing with the Brovko family appeared in the media for the first time: in addition to Mykhailo Savolyuk, the "KUN" member Mykhailo Losenko and the "unifier" Mykhailo Petrovsky (both have now joined Groysman's party) were mentioned , as well as the young former SBU officer Yuriy Makedon, who had resigned from the security services.
New troubles awaited Petro Brovko in the 2012 parliamentary elections. He was to blame for them: Petro Petrovich Brovko had reached an agreement with Petro Poroshenko , then Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Azarov government and head of the National Bank's Supervisory Board, to ensure the victory of the oligarch's father, Oleksiy Poroshenko, in single-member constituency No. 16. However, this and neighboring constituencies were targeted by the influential Vinnytsia family clan, the Kaletniks, the most notorious and odious of which was the then head of the Customs Service, Ihor Kaletnik . This 16th constituency, in which the family wanted to elect Oksana Kaletnik to the Rada, sparked a serious inter-clan war , in which Petro Brovko almost became the scapegoat. In the end, the Kaletniks won, the Poroshenko family retreated (and, offended by the Party of Regions, decided to join the opposition), and Petro Brovko escaped with a scare, albeit a serious one. And it could have been worse, judging by the note that Party of Regions faction leader Yefremov handed to the elder Kaletnik in the session hall:
In January 2013, shots rang out at a discotheque in a nightclub in Mogilev-Podolskyi . Local police gave the media a very brief account at the time: young men had gotten into an argument, and one shot the other with a non-lethal pistol. The names of those involved were also not released. This is understandable, since the shooter was Sergei Shevchuk, nicknamed "The Chief," a well-known city hooligan and the son-in-law of Mayor Petro Brovko (married to his stepdaughter, Khrystyna). As the victim's mother, Svetlana Rudevich, later told reporters, the bullet was removed from her son's chest in the hospital. Apparently, it wasn't a non-lethal one! But the case was hushed up at the time, as the entire city feared the Brovko clan and its ruthless henchmen.
Sergei Shevchuk and his wife Khristina
Brovko's son-in-law (and Vatsak's friend), emboldened by impunity, became a true outlaw (and also a city council member, a member of the Solidarity faction). And so, on May 10, 2016, Shevchuk fired again: this time, his victim was Oleksandr Kolomoets, nicknamed "Kaban" (allegedly belonging to a clan of certain "farm dwellers"). The altercation was purely "boys'"; the wounded Kolomoets didn't report the incident to the police (nor did the doctors who operated on him), but his aunt, Tatyana Glushchak, did. Then journalists reported the incident, discovering that the day before the shooting, Kolomoets and his relatives had been among the organizers of an anti-mayor rally demanding an end to the lawlessness of Sergei Shevchuk and his brother. In short, family turned on family again, a Mogilev-style Hatfields and McCoys! This time, the incident could no longer be hushed up, and a few months later, Sergei Shevchuk found himself in pretrial detention, where he ultimately served about eight months. While he was in prison, a war raged between the families: cars were burned, and certain "authorities" from the region and Kyiv arrived to settle the dispute. Apparently, this war affected the interests of the liquor and drug mafias, who became concerned about the operation of their smuggling channels. And then, Petro Brovko's stepdaughter (the biological daughter of one of the "authorities") threatened to reveal the secrets of the Mogilev mafia to the press.
Meanwhile, in February 2017, near the Mogilev-Podolskyi military enlistment office, an assassination attempt was made on a local crime boss nicknamed Melya. Unfortunately, neither local police nor local residents dared to reveal his name, nor did they reveal any information about another Mogilev crime boss nicknamed Peps. The shot crime boss survived, and the incident was clearly a continuation of the war for control of the border town. And the Brovko family emerged victorious once again, judging by the fact that by the summer of 2017, passions had finally subsided, and the Vinnytsia court acquitted and released Serhiy Shevchuk. However, the latter is incapable of forgiveness, even when the "authorities" insist on it. And on New Year's Eve, January 1, 2019, Shevchuk, meeting Kolomoiets there, got into a violent fight involving a stabbing.
Meanwhile, Shevchuk's father-in-law, Mayor Petro Brovko, was so actively supporting President Poroshenko's policies that, in a fit of "tomos grace," he attempted to "squeeze" a church in the village of Solnechnoye from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, intending to transfer it to the newly created Orthodox Church of Ukraine and thus please Petro Oleksiyovych. As expected, Brovko's zeal was explained by his urgent need for Bankova's protection—after all, just a few days later, the prosecutor's office served him with a notice of suspicion of bribery . At the same time, the corrupt mayor began wearing an embroidered shirt to work and decorated his office with Maidan and ATO paraphernalia, thus confirming the adage that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels!
Petro Brovko: Changed into an embroidered shirt while awaiting investigators
Who does Vatsak serve?
Petro Brovko always needed his own MP in Kyiv. But it so happened that candidates from very influential clans ran in his district (as in 2012), while representatives of competing families won – as in 2014, when Yuriy Makedon won a parliamentary mandate . He is a rather interesting character from the Mogilev deck. From 2003 to 2008, he worked in the local SBU in the anti-smuggling department, then suddenly transferred to the anti-corruption department and, within a year, jumped from captain to lieutenant colonel. Then he resigned, allegedly of his own free will, and became a lawyer and activist. According to Skelet.Org , while positioning himself as an independent, Makedon began his career as a protégé of one of the smuggling clans, and his job at the SBU was to arrest the "cargo" of competitors. As a result, he overworked himself, got involved in some kind of scandal, was transferred to the anti-corruption department, but there, too, he did something wrong – and was forced to resign.
Yuri Makedon
In 2010, Makedon and Vatsak were elected together to the Vinnytsia Regional Council, with Vatsak running for the crumbling Batkivshchyna party, and Makedon (in a different constituency) for the newly formed Front for Change. Then, in 2014, as a non-partisan candidate, he won the 16th single-mandate constituency with 21,61% of the vote, beating his main rival, Roman Stadniychuk, by just 0,03%. Naturally, many spoke of voter fraud, especially since turnout was only around 50%. However, Makedon capitalized on the anti-Brovko sentiments of the city's residents and was supported by forces opposed to the mayor.
As for Petro Brovko, he had to settle for securing Petro Poroshenko's support and holding on to his seat, being re-elected in the 2015 local elections. But then, as you might have guessed from the events described above, the situation in Mohyliv-Podilskyi began to escalate. Therefore, it was a huge stroke of luck for Brovko that he was able to secure the victory of his protégé, Gennady Vatsak, in the 2019 elections. His rivals included both Machedon himself and "Servant of the People" Taisa Tomlyak. Meanwhile, media reported that oligarch Yuriy Kosyuk invested in Vatsak's campaign , and immediately after his election, Vatsak joined Privat's "For the Future" faction, which he left in the summer of 2020 for the more pro-government "Dovira" faction.
Having become a member of parliament, Vatsak immediately drew journalists' attention to his extensive and luxurious fleet of cars , all of which bear the license plate "0001" (several cars share the same license plate, "AB 0001 IO" and "AB 0001 BI"). It seems the pastry chef-turned-kickboxer is still trying to prove to the world that he's "first in everything!"
By the fall of 2020, Vatsak was desperately trying to help Petro Brovko get re-elected. He resorted to everything from generous gifts and sweets to public garden renovations, to yet another appeal to the theme of "Maidan heroes" and ATO veterans. He also personally unleashed his wrath on the territorial commission, which refused to register Petro Boyko due to a number of violations, including falsifying his nomination from the European Solidarity party. But while he did manage to include Brovko on the electoral list, he couldn't claim victory. Gennady Glukhmaniuk won by a margin of just 23 votes , becoming the new mayor of Mohyliv-Podilskyi.
Now Vatsak needs, if not to make friends with the new mayor (which is doubtful, given the city's clan feuds), then at least to protect his interests with Brovko. And first, he needs to resolve the scandals Vatsak became embroiled in in 2020, when, intoxicated by his mandate and the certainty of eternal mayoralty, Petro Brovko, recalling the turbulent 90s, began to "squeeze out" other people's businesses. This primarily concerns the seizure of the river terminal building , which sparked those same numerous publications about Vatsak's "gangster methods" and the years of lawlessness that have plagued the city. Meanwhile, the entrepreneurs who rented space there were literally thrown out of the building.
What happened? Newly elected MP Vatsak decided to privatize the city's river terminal building, with the help of then-Mayor Brovko. As a result, Vatsak, a limited liability company with a charter capital of one thousand hryvnias (how can they even make cakes?), privatized the property. The privatization was carried out with violations, leading to a lawsuit filed against the Regional Department of State Property to invalidate the privatization, which was upheld by the regional Commercial Court (see documents). Vatsak then decided to illegally vacate the building from its tenants. For example, Nadezhda Moskalyuk's cafe has been operating there for 25 years! But Vatsak didn't care. He brought in workers and his "titushki" (from the Kickboxing Federation?), who forced the tenants out and took their documents, money, and personal belongings, then welded bars onto the building.
The entrepreneurs appealed to the police, who showed blatant indifference to the seizure. It was in vain that they showed the guardians of the law copies of documents and decrees, as law enforcement agencies in Mohyliv-Podilskyi have long been "in the pay of" the Brovko-Vatsak clan. This was confirmed by a comment by the head of the city police department, Vasily Obodovsky, to the publication "Krayany" (controlled by Brovko), who said that Nadezhda Moskalyuk was "blending the situation" and that the privatization of the station was legal.
The conflict didn't end there. The Brovko family clan, to which Vatsak belongs, is known for its vindictiveness. And so, they immediately began to do harm to the Moskaluk family. First, Vatsak's bodyguards and "titushki," who arrived in several jeeps, blocked the road for a Moskaluk tractor-trailer and excavator. Then they began demanding documents from the truck driver and accusing him of violating traffic laws—apparently imagining themselves to be the police. Incidentally, the police, upon arriving at the scene, failed to respond to the lawlessness of Vatsak's "brothers."
However, this was only a "warning." Then something much worse happened: someone damaged a motor ship moored at the city pier, belonging to the same Moskaluks, and it half sank—and fuel oil spilled into the Dniester. This constitutes property damage and a deliberate environmental disaster, which is quite tantamount to an act of terrorism! Therefore, the local press is raising the question of whether it will ever be possible to free Mohyliv-Podolskyi from the octopus of the Brovko criminal clan and his henchman, Vatsak. And law enforcement agencies in Kyiv (the locals are bought off by corrupt officials) should certainly investigate the information that Vatsak cakes are not the only thing that serve as a cover for smuggling schemes and money laundering. A number of Skelet.Org sources claim that Brovko and Vatsak's vigorous activity on the banks of the Dniester is linked to underwater "alcohol dumps" and even more sophisticated mechanisms for smuggling contraband across the Ukrainian-Moldovan border.
Mikhail Shpolyansky, Skelet.Org
Subscribe to our channels on Telegram, Facebook , Twitter , VK - Only new faces from the SKLEP section!