On March 29, 2015, the Odessa internet was ablaze with headlines about an "assassination attempt" on the life of Sergei Yatsuk, a businessman well known in certain circles and overseeing part of the illegal trade in southern Ukraine. Who wanted to kill this notorious businessman, and whether anyone wanted to kill him at all, we'll try to explain below.
To better understand the situation and the reasons for the "assassination attempt," it's necessary to begin with Serhiy Yatsuk's occupation and connections. He is one of the founders of Pospolita Service, a company active in the illegal passenger transportation market in southern Ukraine. Yatsuk oversees illegal transportation from Odesa to Kherson and Mykolaiv, and back. Yatsuk has a business partner, also well-known in certain circles, Oleksiy Morozov, who oversees the Odesa-Kyiv route and back.
But despite these two being the founders of the enterprise, they have an unofficial leader, a puppeteer pulling the strings: Anatoly Petrovich Zuev, a member of the Yenakiyevskie criminal group. Zuev isn't interested in the illegal transportation itself; the main thing is that the monthly payments come from his underlings.
A certain hierarchy has developed within this trio, according to which Yatsuk reports directly to Zuev, while Morozov remains in a supporting role, despite overseeing his own department. Naturally, Morozov doesn't recognize Yatsuk's intellectual and leadership abilities, leading to constant conflicts between them, including financial ones.
Illegal trafficking is interesting because it's a source of cash, a gigantic flow of which the state, in its current state, is unfortunately unable to control. After the sudden death of another founder of Pospolita Service and the leader of the illegal trade, Kakha Getia, who couldn't bear life in a jar with spiders, this entire flow ended up in the hands of Sergei Yatsuk.
Yatsuk, who took over after the death of the previous leader, took control of all the shipping flows and, according to available information, has stopped sharing honestly not only with Morozov but also with Zuev himself. Zuev is currently on the run and naturally unable to monitor whether he is receiving the full amount of funds from the business. But Morozov hasn't fled, is in the loop, and knows that not only is he being disregarded and deprived of a large share of his "legally" owed cash, but there are plans to force him out of big business altogether.
Now that we understand how Yatsuk made his living and who his connections are, we can apply a two-thousand-year-old proverb that is still relevant today, and will remain so for many centuries to come: “cui prodest,” which translates from Latin as “who benefits?”
And really, who benefits from Yatsuk's murder? Zuev or Morozov? Perhaps, but the former would be left without a money supplier, and the latter without a link to his superior, patron, and protector. Essentially, no one benefits from a dead Yatsuk. Therefore, the obvious conclusion is that no one wanted to kill Yatsuk; they simply wanted to intimidate him, because everyone knows that if they want to kill you, they will, and a company of bodyguards won't help.
Zuev didn't even need to scare Yatsuk; a phone call or a message from a trusted source about the lack of profits would have been enough, and the issue would have been immediately resolved.
The only person who stands to gain from intimidating Yatsuk is Morozov, who, as mentioned above, doesn't take him seriously, has begun depriving him of a large share of the cash "legally" due to him, and is planning to force him out of big business altogether so as not to share.
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