Arutyunov Ruben
Last week, the Kyiv region was rocked by a peculiar scandal: in the village of Kotsiubynske, local residents, with the support of the Verkhovna Rada, dissolved the village council. The deputies themselves were in conflict with the mayor, 29-year-old Olha Matyushina, who is supported by the village's residents.
The fact itself is remarkable: it is practically an isolated case in modern political realities.
As a result, many interesting names and facts have surfaced. In particular, the shadow of Irpin Mayor Volodymyr Karplyuk looms large over the deputies. His name is involved in the scandal surrounding the logging of the Belichansky Forest.
But the name of our regular celebrity, Ruben Arutyunov, has also surfaced. It turns out he extorted money from and threatened the current mayor, Olga Matyushina, while destroying her relatives' business, Sital Glass!
An article by Ukrainska Pravda journalist Anastasia Ringis indicates that Arutyunov was protected by representatives of the Prosecutor's Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Ruben himself is practically the leader of the organized crime group terrorizing the residents of Kotsiubynske.
Unfortunately, there's a mistake in the article. Ruben Oganesovich Arutyunov is referred to as "Ruben Aratyunov." But that doesn't change the essence of the matter.
According to our sources, following the scandal, law enforcement agencies have launched a full-scale investigation into the situation in Kotsiubynske. Ruben Arutyunov has also been closely monitored. We hope they will bring their case to a conclusion. In the meantime, we present to you the article in Ukrainska Pravda and our previous publications:
The Adventures of the Petty Kyiv Swindler Arutyunov. Part 1 – General Information https://kraina.name/articles/aferi/183649-pohojdeniya-melkogo-kievskogo-julika-arutyunova-chast/
The Adventures of the Petty Kyiv Swindler Arutyunov. Part 2 – Sital Glass https://kraina.name/articles/reyderstvo/185921-pohojdeniya-melkogo-kievskogo-julika-arutyunova-chast
The Adventures of the Petty Kyiv Swindler Arutyunov. Part 3 – Olga Maltseva https://kraina.name/articles/aferi/186504-pohojdeniya-melkogo-kievskogo-julika-arutyunova-chast/
Matyushina and this community. Why were deputies dismissed in Kotsyubinsky
Last weekend, at a public meeting in the village of Kotsiubynske in the Kyiv region, local residents decided to ban the 21st deputy from running for office in the local elections.
A week earlier, village deputies seized the local council building and attempted to remove the village mayor, Olga Matyushina, from office.
Thanks to the intervention of the Verkhovna Rada, Kotsiubynsky's local deputy corps was dissolved.
260 Verkhovna Rada deputies voted in favor of the resolution to dissolve the Kotsiubyn deputies.
Thus ended the six-month standoff between the 29-year-old mayor of the village, Matyushina, and deputies of the "New Faces" party, which is associated with the mayor of Irpen, Volodymyr Karplyuk.
Previously, media outlets reported that Karplyuk's wife, along with the wife of the head of the village of Buchi, Anatoly Fedoruk, are co-founders of the construction company Budregioninvest, which had significant construction interests in Kotsiubynske.
Ultimately, local residents managed to defend their interests by uniting around the young mayor.
This story is a precedent for the Kyiv region.
Now the village faces two key questions: when will Matyushina's rights be reinstated (after the seizure of the village council building and the unlawful re-election of the head, the name of the current mayor disappeared from the Ministry of Justice register – UP), and when will the Central Election Commission schedule new elections to the local council.
Residents of Kotsyubinske are not sleeping.
They understand that this is not the last attack, so they are already preparing their plan for the development of the village.
A mom who can count
Olga Matyushina's family has lived in Kotsiubynske since the early 2000s. They run a small family business manufacturing automotive glass.
“I’m a third-generation glass engineer,” Matyushina boasts.
Her family is originally from Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk region. Her grandmothers worked at the first glass factory, inherited from the Belgians who launched production in the Donbas at the beginning of the last century.
In the mid-90s, when the state-owned enterprise closed, Olga's father, an engineer, designed the first heating furnace himself and found his niche – producing glass for foreign cars.
A little later, it became clear that Kyiv was the largest market. So the family moved closer to the capital. Initially, the business operated in rented premises in Kyiv, and a little later, it relocated to Kotsiubynske.
By 2013, the entrepreneurs had acquired imported equipment and built an additional workshop. At the same time, Olga, having graduated from Kyiv Polytechnic Institute with an engineering degree, was launching a solar panel manufacturing company in Iran.
Together with her husband, they took out a loan from the state and built their own factory.
Matyushina had no plans to return home, if a certain Ruben Aratyunov hadn't visited her parents one day. According to Olga's parents, he extorted 6 million hryvnias or a share in the company from them.
The entrepreneurs had no intention of negotiating with him.
A couple of days after the attempted raid, the Sital Glass workshops were demolished.
Olga Matyushina with activist Iryna Fedoriv. Olga returned to Ukraine to help her family during their difficult time. Having gathered all the evidence of the crime, she began representing the family business in court.
While the Matyushin elders were rebuilding the business from scratch, since most of the equipment and materials had been lost, Olga went to the prosecutor's office as if it were her job.
"The prosecutor's office immediately made it clear to me that they intended to cover for Aratyunov. But I persistently went through all three levels of court, and after the third, the case materials were returned with the statement 'no verdict in the criminal case,'" she says.
Life circumstances presented yet another reason for the struggle. While enrolling her child in a nearby kindergarten, Matyushina again encountered extortion. She refused the offer and threatened to file a complaint with the kindergarten administration.
The child was accepted into the kindergarten, but six months later, the director demanded 18 hryvnias from the group at a parent-teacher meeting to repair the toilets, explaining that the cost of repairs in the childcare facility falls on the parents' shoulders.
Olga Matyushina, guided by the law on access to public information, wrote a request to the village council and learned that 500 hryvnias had been allocated from the local budget for kindergarten renovations.
By joining forces with several other parents, Matyushina not only secured the repairs, but also secured the initiation of a criminal case for extortion.
The story with the kindergarten ended with this episode.
One day, Olga's 3-year-old son Dania went home for lunch, to, as he later explained, go to the store for bagels.
"I noticed early on that he'd changed his eating habits—he'd eat twice before kindergarten, but then come home hungry. They explained to us that the kids had to be picked up before 17:00 PM because there weren't enough groceries," his mother says.
To sort out the food supply at the childcare facility, Matyushina once again sent a request for information about the kindergarten's budget and suppliers.
Obtaining documentation on food supplies was easy. But some interesting details emerged: the kindergarten purchased 1,5 tons of salt annually. The main supplier was a municipal enterprise founded by the village council, which was also registered there. The director of this enterprise, Anna Kaskova, purchased food products from the business run by her son, Kashchuk, from her first marriage.
Orienteering before the FB party. IRYNA FEDORIV. This is how a food resale scheme was uncovered. The information was published on the Irpen community website.
Following this investigation, a report was drawn up against Kaskova, and ultimately she, like the head of the kindergarten, was fired.
"Once the food issue was resolved, the working day was extended until 19:00 PM. The situation at the kindergarten returned to normal. As a mother, it was important to me that the kindergarten was run by a decent and professional manager," says Matyushina.
Following the incident with the Svetlyachok kindergarten, parents at another kindergarten in Kotsyubinske raised the issue of supplying the facility and were able to improve conditions for their children.
"I live here!"
Having learned to read documents and write requests, Olga Matyushina began to understand the schemes and tricks local officials use to deceive village residents.
Thus, attending meetings of the village council has become a habit for this active resident of Kotsyubinskoye.
"One time, the village head brought his son-in-law to a meeting and demanded that he be given 12 acres of land for free for a parking lot. And then, while reading documents, I discovered that he had privatized the only dormitory in the village for his family's benefit. And while reading the school budget, I suddenly discovered that 1500 brooms are purchased annually," Matyushina recounts.
What most outraged Matyushin was that the majority of deputies were people with low competence.
At one of the meetings, the activist heard that local deputies wanted to vote to annex Kotsyubinske to Irpin, citing the fact that the majority of residents would support such a decision.
Olya Matyushina with the Center for Social Development's chief communications officer, Tata Peklun. "In fact, everyone in the village knows that the only one who would benefit from such an annexation would be Irpin Mayor Karplyuk, who has designs on our land. Such an annexation could worsen our situation because it would deprive us of any chance to influence decisions about land allocation in the village. Irpin has numerous unresolved infrastructure issues. And annexing another village with 15 residents would only exacerbate them and worsen our situation," Matyushina explained to Kyiv journalists at the time.
For many years, the Kotsiubynske community has been fighting against developers, whose interests have been represented by the parliamentary majority in various terms, to preserve the Bilychansky forest (this issue is regularly covered in the blog of UPaktivist Iryna Fedoriv).
This forest is located right between Irpin and Kotsyubinske. Construction fences have been erected there several times, and residents have torn them down.
In 2014, local activists insisted that Oleksandr Turchynov (then acting president) sign a decree annexing the Bilychansky Forest to the Holosiivskyi National Park.
However, this status didn't stop local councilors from pushing through the forest zone zoning project. Residents of Kotsiubynske filed a lawsuit against this decision.
Realizing what fate awaited the village, Olga Matyushina decided to run for mayor. She says it was a necessary step.
Over the course of a year and a half of active civic engagement, she managed to unite with other active residents and form her own team.
For example, her team included several strong lawyers and financiers.
"We immediately realized the fight would be serious. Our main opponents were candidates from the New Faces party. Karplyuk's protégé, Serhiy Danish, who has a very controversial reputation, was running for mayor," says Matyushina.
Last October, when a team of civil activists held meetings in courtyards, they were obstructed by young men in tracksuits.
Olga Matyushina understood that even if they won, defending the result would be difficult.
Thanks to the intervention of BPP MP Olha Chervakova, activists and the mayor managed to register a bill to dissolve the parliamentary corps in Kotsiubynske. The activists tried to secure the support of the Samopomich party, but were unsuccessful. Then, a proposal came from the BPP.
Matyushina explains that party affiliation helps protect the election results. Because there are no quotas for independent candidates in the territorial election commissions and precinct election commissions.
“We were confident that we could get the votes, but we weren’t sure that we could defend them,” she explains to DVK.
Danish and Matyushina had different electoral strategies.
He covered the village with billboards, while his deputies painted benches and entryways. Olga, meanwhile, personally visited three thousand apartments, saying, "We have a small budget. I can't promise you that I'll open new kindergartens or schools. But I promise audits and transparency."
Matyushina calls the work of the mayor and deputies volunteerism.
The mayor's salary of 3 thousand hryvnias cannot be any kind of motivation.
She believes that politics should be pursued by successful people with wealth, a good education, and expertise in finance and the legal field. She receives financial support from her parents.
"I plan to live here, so I'm forced to get involved in politics, and it's important to me to restore order," Matyushina says of her motivation.
In October 2015, she won the elections. Five of her allies were elected to the local village council, against 17 deputies from Novye Oblich, who were joined by four more independents.
"It was clear from the first meeting that Karplyuk's deputies wouldn't accept the new mayor. We're simply driven by different motives," says deputy Natalia Kolomiets, an ally of Matyushina.
Olga Matyushina, realizing she couldn't overcome Karplyuk's lobby, made a bold move: she moved the council's meetings from the small village council hall to the central club, which seats 300 people. She also changed the meeting times from daytime to evenings so that village residents could attend.
The deputies regularly attended sessions, but did not vote after the New Year.
At the same time, activists were working on a financial and legal audit. Members of parliament from Novye Oblich filed a police report against them.
The audit revealed that Matyushina inherited a village with debts several times greater than the budget and 20 lawsuits from various organizations.
With Kotsiubynske's budget at 7 million hryvnia, the village council had to pay 4 million hryvnia for the reconstruction of the sewer system to two contractors, Glosar and Krai-bud.
"The repair work took two days (December 24-26), and if you calculate the man-hours, it should have involved 300 people, but no one had ever seen that many repairmen there. And it became clear it was just a scheme," says Matyushina.
Matyushina recalculated the repair costs, realized the budget was overstated, contacted the State Property Management Office (KRU), and promised the contractor to excavate the sewer system together with experts and KRU representatives.
The trial in this case was lost only at first instance.
Local council members demanded that the village mayor grant power of attorney to lawyer Denis Kraynik, who has never won a single case in favor of the community and, moreover, had previously represented the interests of the village council, which had authorized the forest zoning, to represent their interests in court.
The scheme works like this: deputies lobby for the interests of crony companies that sell services at inflated prices. But to avoid any questions, they organize legal proceedings.
Olga Matyushina, having developed her "legal muscles," independently represented the interests of the community in court.
"In recent months, the village council has turned into the law firm of Matyushina and Partners," jokes Iryna Fedoriv, an activist with the Chesno movement and a resident of Kotsiubynske. She's referring to the fact that many residents have volunteered to join the resistance.
Over the course of six months, Matyushina navigated through documents, plans, and lawsuits, defended tariffs, raised the issue of the cost of key services for village residents, and prepared a road repair plan.
She persistently gathered deputies and tried to convey the plan of action.
Outright sabotage could not continue forever.
Before the New Year, deputies voted to make their meetings closed to the public. And in April, in violation of the law and the "no-confidence" procedure, an attempt was made to remove Matyushina from her position. But the mayor's team calmly explained that the decision was illegal.
We need an audit and a plan
On April 8, after the session, the nerves of local deputies and their Irpen patron, Vladimir Karplyuk, gave way.
On Friday evening, two dozen deputies, including those from Irpen and Bucha, seized the village council building.
"All of this took place under the supervision of the Irpen police," says activist Fedoriv. "They were only able to be removed from the building when officers from the regional police department were called to the scene."
On Saturday, it was discovered that the village council already had a new seal, and Matyushina's name was no longer listed. Former secretary Yulia Glavatskaya was listed as the head of the village council instead.
Overnight, enterprising deputies churned out decisions and orders—about Matyushina's dismissal, about the creation of a commission, and the confiscation of personal belongings from the office.
The investigation is currently looking into the legality of their actions and the consequences.
Thanks to the intervention of BPP MP Olga Chervakova, activists and the mayor managed to register a bill to dissolve the parliamentary corps in Kotsiubynske.
"We repelled this attack, but there's still a battle ahead," says Fedoriv. "Karplyuk understands that a new, healthy center of power is emerging here in Kotsiubynske, one beyond their control. They're afraid that activists can win and wage a strategic campaign. Otherwise, they wouldn't have brought in thugs from Bucha, Gostomel, and deputies from other villages."
"She's very consistent, systematic, and has a vision for the village's future development, and most importantly, she has a team of like-minded people," praises Alexander Solontai, a trainer at the Institute of Political Education and one of the founders of "The Power of People." Solontai coached Matyushina's deputies.
Olga Matyushina sees her village as a comfortable and promising place to live.
Together with her team, they're working on an economic development plan. She has no doubt that Kotsiubynske is attractive to investors, but first, the situation needs to be stabilized: "Investors come to places where there are clear and transparent rules."
But for now, she spends most of her working time in the courts.
"We can't be defeated; they can stall for time and churn out countless more unlawful decisions. But people have already united and understand that some deputies are tools in the hands of developers hiding behind their government positions. And then there are deputies who live in Kotsiubynske and want to work for the benefit of the village. After this scandal, it's unlikely that residents can be bribed with buckwheat or painted benches," says activist Iryna Fedoriv.
The situation in Kotsiubynske is being closely monitored from Kyiv. The local community's success is one test of the decentralization reform.
Anastasia Ringis, UP
The country's elite
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