Igor Dvoretsky's team is returning to a leadership position in the Zaporizhzhia region and could become a serious counterweight to Rinat Akhmetov, who dreams of building a second Donbas in the region.
Grigory Samardak
Today, the president signed a decree appointing Hryhoriy Samardak as head of the Zaporizhzhia Regional State Administration. Prior to this, the newly appointed governor served for almost a year as first deputy governor, first under Valeriy Baranov and later under Valentin Reznichenko. However, rumor has it that Samardak's main boss has always been Igor Dvoretsky, the former owner of Zaporizhstal and owner of Industrialbank. The leader of one of the formerly most influential local financial-industrial groups, the "Indusy," as it was known, was forced to moderate his political ambitions and leave his native region after the Party of Regions came to power in 2010. However, judging by the fact that his loyal ally has been entrusted with such a responsible post, Dvoretsky has received a chance for revenge. His team's main opponent will be Akhmetov's group, which decided to settle in Zaporizhzhia after losing control of the Donbas.
Until 2010, Igor Dvoretsky was considered one of the masters of the Zaporizhia region. His bank was tied to almost the entire public sector, former mayor Yevhen Kartashov was on his team, and companies controlled by the "Indus" were said to often have an advantage in various municipal property auctions and tenders. Dvoretsky's group was not a power monopoly, and the "Indus" had to compete with other financial-industrial groups, such as the teams of former governor Boris Petrov, alcohol magnate Yevhen Chernyak, and Motor Sich owner Vyacheslav Boguslayev. Nevertheless, a significant portion of the regional financial and political pie was always under the control of Dvoretsky's people. Everything changed after 2010, when the "Party of Regions" (Parliament of Regions), who came to power, began to seize all the country's lucrative assets in every region without exception.
It is known that the team of the former “master” of Donbass has already taken under its wing one of the influential local groups of former “regionals”, headed by the Kaltsev brothersAkhmetov also launched a new party in the region for the upcoming local elections – the Industrial Party.
As a result, Igor Dvoretsky first moved his Industrialbank headquarters from Zaporizhzhia to Kyiv, and later lost his long-standing right to service the accounts of most of the region's public sector organizations. Then, his associate, Yevhen Kartashov, was forced to resign as mayor in the fall of 2010 and sent into honorable exile to parliament. That same year, Dvoretsky was forced to sell his stake in Zaporizhstal to Rinat Akhmetov and leave Ukraine, rumored to be headed to Switzerland. From there, the businessman sold the Metalurh football club in 2012. Since then, the leader of the "Indus" has virtually disappeared from the national media.
Throughout this period, from 2009 until April 2014, his loyal protégé, Hryhoriy Samardak, served as First Deputy Chairman of the Board of Industrialbank. It was from this position that he ascended to the position of First Deputy Chairman of the Zaporizhzhia Regional State Administration. Therefore, there is no doubt that the new leader of the frontline region belongs to the "Indians" team. Moreover, such an obvious connection between Samardak and one of the region's former rulers indicates that Igor Dvoretsky is seriously interested in regaining his former influence in Zaporizhzhia. And such ambitions align perfectly with the plans of the presidential team, which is interested in preventing a full-fledged political migration of the "Donetsk people" from the Donbas they lost to Zaporizhzhia.
It is known that the team of the former “master” of Donbass has already taken under its wing one of the influential local groups of former “regionals”, headed by the Kaltsev brothersAkhmetov also launched a new party in the region for the upcoming local elections: the Industrial Party, led by Rostyslav Shurma, the head of Zaporizhstal, a company he controls. The company employs approximately 16 people, all of whom have families, which could double, if not triple, the potential electoral base of this political force. Furthermore, judging by the recent parliamentary elections, Akhmetov managed to tame Igor Dvoretsky's former ally, former mayor Yevhen Kartashov, who is running for the Verkhovna Rada with the active support of Zaporizhstal's management. However, this didn't help Kartashov, who only finished second in District 76. Nevertheless, Kartashov could pose challenges to any democratic candidate in the upcoming mayoral elections. Therefore, the threat of a revanche by pro-Russian forces in the region is very real. Therefore, it is quite possible that the appointment of Dvoretsky's man, Grigory Samardak, to the post of head of the Regional State Administration is precisely the personnel decision that should prevent such a scenario from coming to fruition.
The only question is what approach Igor Dvoretsky's team will take to create a counterweight to Akhmetov's group. The fact that in 2011, the leader of the "Indus" sold his stake in Zaporizhstal to a close associate of Viktor Yanukovych (preferring the Donetsk oligarch over Russian state capital) and then helped him gain operational control of the enterprise may indicate that the two businessmen struck a mutually beneficial deal. If so, their coexistence in Zaporizhzhia could well be peaceful. On the other hand, Dvoretsky sold his stake to Akhmetov for almost half the price his partners, Eduard Shifrin and Alexander Schneider, paid for a similar stake to Russia's VEB. So, it seems the sale was more of a forced move. Given this, the appointment of Dvoretsky's man to the post of regional governor could be bad news for Rinat Akhmetov.
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