Vitaly Grushevsky
In recent days, the spirited face of the odious MP Vitaliy Hrushevskyi, who until recently was widely known only in very narrow circles, has been constantly appearing on newspaper pages and television screens. Now, however, he has become embroiled in a series of scandals, the most important of which is the story of a receipt found in Mezhyhirya, according to which Mr. Hrushevskyi received a substantial advance payment to persuade some members of the Svoboda party to cooperate with Bankova. This was done with the full and comprehensive support of Viktor Yanukovych's vizier, the invincible Serhiy Lyovochkin.
Moreover, the people's representative became famous for the fact that in a very short time he managed to: speak on the Maidan, leave the Party of Regions several times, create his own political bloc and tire the entire internet with "denim" about it, and also travel to Moscow as part of a delegation of Verkhovna Rada deputies—in other words, betray the Motherland.
On social media, the MP is being called a weathervane deputy, leading activists to "lustrate" the official by shoving his face into a ballot box. He, of course, took offense, called a press conference, and tried to blame everything on his competitors, but it came off rather unconvincingly.
However, the public has become interested in Hrushevsky, albeit not quite as much as he would have liked. However, there's very little publicly available information about Vitaliy Anatolyevich. So we decided to take a trip to the sites of his military glory to see with our own eyes how the future MP buyer grew up and matured.
Where was born, there was not useful
Vitaliy Hrushevskyi's official biography states that he was born in the village of Lepetikha in the Bereznegovatsky district of Mykolaiv Oblast. However, residents of Lepetikha were quite surprised when we called the village council and inquired about their distinguished fellow villager.
"This is the first time I've heard of a Vitaliy Grushevskyi being born in our village," said Larisa Savitskaya, head of the village council. "We don't even have a surname like that among the locals. Perhaps someone visiting or visiting gave birth here. He definitely never came to Lepetikha."
Other websites indicate that Grushevsky was born in the village of Aleksandrovka in the same district – but no such village was found in the Bereznegovatsky district.
Vitaly Anatolyevich himself admitted in an interview that his parents loved to travel – so the future MP's birthplace can easily be attributed to his traveling parents.
Vitaliy Hrushevskyi's early years also remain a closely guarded secret. The MP himself claims he spent his childhood in Zaporizhzhia, where he received three degrees: two technical degrees and one in finance and economics.
However, Vitaliy Anatolyevich himself prefers not to disclose which universities the case involved. It's also unknown what the future MP did before 2010. We tried to learn at least something about Vitaliy Anatolyevich's early years, but his aides flatly refused to provide information, citing that Hrushevskyi no longer trusts journalists after the so-called "lustration through the ballot box."
Observer from Lozinsky
In 2010, the future MP surfaced in the Kirovohrad region. And not somewhere close to the regional administration, but in the 101st rural electoral district, centered in Golovanevsk. Besides Golovanevsk, it includes the Gaivoronsky, Malovyskovsky, Novoarkhangelsky, Novomyrgorodsky, and Ulyanovsky districts.
Now let's remember that it was Golovanevsk that became famous throughout Ukraine in 2010 because of the odious Tymoshenko-aligned MP Viktor Lozinsky.
Former crime boss Lozinsky served as a representative of the Party of Regions in 2006, then gained a seat in parliament on the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc list. Since March, Lozinsky has been under arrest, charged with aggravated murder and illegal possession of weapons. In the summer of 2009, this gangster, who held a parliamentary card, murdered local farmer Valeriy Oliynyk in the forest.
In Golovanevsk itself, people still shudder at the memory of "sugar daddy" Lozinsky and his dealings, which he managed to pull off thanks to Golovanevsk's advantageous location—far from Kyiv and Kirovohrad, the area is quiet, and the people are mostly rural, and therefore disenfranchised. As a monument to Viktor Lozinsky, the former MP's four-story palace, behind a huge fence, still stands in the very center of Golovanevsk.
The question arises: why did the “patron and philanthropist” Vitaliy Grushevsky appear out of nowhere in this particular district in 2010?
In Golovanevsk itself, this question is answered with a question: “Do you really think that two rich people in the same area can not know each other?”
Locals say Grushevskyi had been visiting his old friend Lozinskyi even before the elections. And when things got tough, and Lozinskyi realized he couldn't shirk his punishment, he handed over all his affairs to his good friend Grushevskyi. He didn't object.
So, out of nowhere, Grushevskyi became the "supervisor" for the "sugar daddy" in the region. And there's plenty to oversee—businesses, land, farms, and agricultural holdings. Residents of Golovanevsk admit that nothing has changed for them since Lozinskyi's imprisonment—the same functions are now performed by Vitaliy Grushevskyi's men.
"There's a walnut forest here not far from the district center," says Golovanevsk resident Alexander. "Lozinsky used to own it. They jailed him, shouted about his private lands to the whole country—and so what? Nothing happened. The watchman is still there. We'd go nut-picking on the weekends—we'd sell the nuts to make a little money. The watchman is a decent guy—if you negotiate, he'll let you pick nuts, but when you leave, he demands bribes in the same nuts—which is understandable, he's an hired hand, he needs to survive too. He didn't even hide the fact that Grushevsky is the boss here now. From Lozinsky to Grushevsky."
Bags made using innovative technologies
Vitaliy Anatolyevich's career as a deputy began rapidly. He struck up a friendship with then-Governor Serhiy Larin, a member of the Party of Regions. In the village of Pobugskoye, he quickly built a plant for the production of polypropylene yarns and products, officially christened Metservis Group LLC. For several years afterward, Grushevskyi boasted that the enterprise, using innovative technologies, was built from scratch in a greenfield field.
"At first, we planned to locate the plant elsewhere, but after speaking with Kirovohrad Oblast Governor Sergei Larin, we chose the Kirovohrad Oblast," Grushevsky modestly noted in an interview, praising Governor Larin and his new regional program, "Central Region."
Where the boy from the village of Lepetikha, fascinated by technical professions, got the money for an entire factory? Grushevskyi again modestly remained silent. Or rather, he used the proverbial "we built it." Rumors quickly spread through the media that Grushevskyi was a man of the oligarch Boris Birshtein.
The newly formed Metservice Group LLC didn't even have a website online, so we had to head to Pobugskoye to see how polypropylene threads are made in an open field.
The village of Pobuhskoye in the Golovanivka district has a population of just over 6,000. However, it is home to the Pobuh Ferronickel Plant, a key employer for the entire district. The plant employs over 2,000 people. The plant is the only one in Ukraine and the former Soviet Union to produce ferronickel on an industrial scale from low-grade oxidized nickel-containing ores.
The plant itself is right at the entrance to the town. Smoke from the giant chimney in Pobugskoye can be seen from anywhere in town. Signs indicate that Vitaliy Grushevskyi's "Metservis Group," a company built from scratch, is also located here. However, access to the site is blocked—the land is considered the plant's property.
Olga, a local resident who has a vegetable garden right under the plant, explained that Metservice Group does indeed exist – they sew bags for the plant's products.
"They built it at the factory as an auxiliary facility," says Olga. "And before the elections, they gave it to Grushevsky."
In the town itself, people are hearing about innovative technologies in sewing bags for the first time.
“They’re just bags,” local residents note.
While the chimney is smoking
Anyone with a camera in Pobugsky is viewed with suspicion. The problem is that the plant used to run on gas. Now, due to the lack of gas, production has switched to coal and fuel oil. When burned, the enormous chimney emits a pungent black smoke, the smell of which is everywhere.
Local residents insist it's a good thing there's smoke—as long as there's smoke coming out of the chimney, it means people will have jobs here. This hasn't been to everyone's liking, and some have filed complaints against the plant with the local environmental inspectorate and even the prosecutor's office. That's why people with cameras in the village are afraid of people—what if they start investigating the air pollution and then shut down the plant?
Locals are quite worried about the plant—the owners are in Moscow, and the plant's specialists are periodically sent on business trips to Guatemala, where owner Boris Birshtein is building a similar facility. This means the Pobugsky plant could soon be closed.
The problem is that the plant relies on imported ore, mostly from Indonesia. Building a plant in Guatemala is much more cost-effective than transporting ore to Ukraine, processing it here, and then shipping it—the plant's main market is Europe.
"And now there's no gas," says Nikolai Vladimirovich, a plant worker. "It's unclear what we'll be using next. I have a feeling our production will soon be shut down. It's a shame; the wages may not be high, but at least they're there. And we've always paid our taxes to the state budget regularly. What's next—nobody knows."
The Secret Life of MP Grushevsky
MP Hrushevskyi's biography states that he lives in the village of Pobuzke. Local residents point out the building where Hrushevskyi lives—a brand-new five-story building built by the plant, practically in the center.
Initially, this was housing for the plant's employees. In reality, apartments there were given to senior management. In the top entrance, on the ground floor, is the MP's reception office, and on the third floor, his apartment. Everything is enclosed by a high fence—you can't get past the reception area. A security guard stands at the entrance to the second floor. However, Grushevskyi is being disingenuous, as his neighbors in the private sector say the MP and his family don't live there.
"Either in Kyiv or near Kyiv," says a neighbor. "He shows up here from time to time. Comes to relax. Sometimes with friends."
In his interview, Hrushevskyi claimed to be a simple man, even movingly describing how he, his wife, and children shopped for groceries at a regular supermarket. But in Pobuzke, no one had ever seen the MP in the local shops or markets.
Locals say the MP comes to Pobugske to let loose and relax. His men also find local girls for the Moscow deputy for the night. People in Pobugske are afraid of Hrushevskyi and talk about him mostly in whispers.
"Do you want me shot in the woods somewhere, like a dog? We're all potential 'Oleyniks' here (Valeriy Oliynyk, the farmer shot by Viktor Lozinsky – Author's note)," Evgeniya asks. But then she agrees to talk on camera, refusing to allow her face to be filmed.
"They're always looking for young girls before he arrives—for the night, so to speak," Evgeniya says. "They say the night pays well. There was even a scandal once—we have a girl, what they call a 'precocious one'—basically, she's got everything, but she's a bit underage. One time, they persuaded her to spend the night with Grushevsky. His people are everywhere here. The master arrives, his assistants are getting ready. Then there was a scandal, but it was quickly hushed up. The girl and her parents were given money; not a single local cop or prosecutor would go against a people's deputy. So it was all settled—amicably."
Bribed and robbed
Voters in his district are very dissatisfied with the people's deputy. Following a good old tradition, the single-member candidate, Grushevskyi, was given credit for everything that had been done in the district centers and villages before the 2012 elections. Plus, they brought in the full force of administrative resources.
"Almost everyone worked with Grushevskyi during the elections—every district head, every village council head, every police chief. They even brought in firefighters, who used fire trucks to put up billboards for him," shared a worker at the Haivoron district administration. "They practically donated money to everyone here. Each village council was allocated 50 hryvnias, and then they repaired and bought things in the villages."
However, according to tradition, local entrepreneurs paid for the generous gifts.
"Local authorities in Golovanivsk forced entrepreneurs to sign cooperation agreements with the authorities," Golovanivsk residents said. "They squeezed money out of the entrepreneurs for the needs of the villages; otherwise, they faced inspections, fines, and searches. It was especially difficult during the Maidan—Grushevskyi, after all, drove the 'titushki' around the Maidan protests—both in Kirovohrad and Kyiv—basically at our expense."
The titushka of the whole district
Local residents can't forgive MP Hrushevsky for bringing titushki to Kirovohrad in the winter of 2013. While the imported titushki were beating a peaceful rally in Kirovohrad with bats and hammers, the MP admitted on camera that he had brought people from Kryvyi Rih who, he claimed, had become disillusioned with the ideals of the Maidan.
Here's how Tarasova Pravda journalist Oleh Leshchenko describes the "titushki" in Kirovohrad: "On January 6, Kirovohrad residents gathered at what was then Kirov Square to protest the authorities' illegal actions to disperse peaceful demonstrations (it was then that the first deaths of Euromaidan protesters became known). The day before, former Governor Andriy Nikolayenko appeared on television and warned residents of the region that unknown extremists were planning to seize the regional administration building. However, the protests held by local Euromaidan activists had always been entirely peaceful. As a result, as if acting preemptively, on the night from Saturday to Sunday, the homes of several protest coordinators were searched without any legal basis, and several were arrested without explanation. But the worst was yet to come."
Kirovohrad residents who came to the main square of the regional center were met with a sight they had never seen before: the ground-floor windows of the regional state administration building were barricaded with sandbags, and the walls were doused with water (this in minus 20 degrees Celsius). All entrances and exits were blocked by police officers from the "Griffin" special forces unit. Young men of distinctive appearance, known colloquially as titushki, stood in front of them like human shields. These young men, fueled by massive amounts of alcohol, behaved aggressively, attempting to provoke clashes with the peaceful protesters. The police behind them, who did not react to their actions, further spurred the young men on. Eventually, armed with baseball bats and hammers, they attacked the Euromaidan activists. As a result, several participants in the peaceful protest were injured, including Viktor Chmilenko, who was shot dead by a sniper some time later on Hrushevsky Street in Kyiv.
Around three o'clock in the afternoon, as the standoff on Kirov Square reached its climax, another high-profile event occurred. In an attempt to distract the peaceful protesters from the events unfolding outside the Regional State Administration building, approximately seventy titushki (titushki), armed with bats and even machine guns, seized the Kirovohrad Arboretum. Feeling impunity, the thugs ransacked all the office buildings, destroying furniture and computer equipment. They blocked all entrances and exits from the park, resulting in peaceful passersby who, unfortunately, found themselves trapped within its grounds. The thermometer at the time, I repeat, showed minus twenty degrees Celsius (-20 degrees Fahrenheit). The police were called and merely recorded the violation, distancing themselves from their own obligations to maintain law and order and prevent crime.
Why did the aforementioned titushki behave so brazenly? The truth, as always, came out later. It turns out that Kirovohrad had become a training ground for the Party of Regions (POR) to practice dispersing the Kyiv Euromaidan. And the organizer of this operation was then Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration, Serhiy Larin. To curry favor with the criminal president, he personally ordered Kirovohrad POR MPs Vitaliy Hrushevsky, Stanislav Berezkin, and Serhiy Kuzmenko to bring in titushki from their districts.
They recruited local crime boss Rudenko and Vadym Volkanov, head of the Kirovohrad Oblast Consumer Protection Inspectorate. The preparatory work lasted several days – thugs and athletes willing to earn money without breaking a sweat were rounded up over several days, with promises of 200 hryvnias and complete impunity for this "work."
The goal was clear: the thugs were to provoke clashes and, ultimately, completely disperse the Maidan. Sergey Larin's longtime aide, Alexander Shatalov, "assisted" with the weapons, using his personal bank card to pay for several hundred baseball bats. The criminal elements' actions were coordinated by regional city council deputies Igor Volkov, Viktor Nikolayenko, Alexander Kovalchuk, Eduard Ivanov, and Artem Strizhakov. The local regional deputies operated under the strict control of Larin's protégé, Alexander Chernyavsky.
The Party of Regions' trial run of a dispersal of peaceful protesters in Kirovohrad was unsuccessful – the protesters did not succumb to provocations. Despite this, attempts were later made to replicate it in the capital. Serhiy Larin, who worked closely with then-Head of the Presidential Administration Andriy Klyuyev and Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko, was one of the masterminds behind the Berkut crackdown on Euromaidan. Every Ukrainian knows the consequences – the blood of those killed on the streets of Kyiv demands vengeance. Meanwhile, Serhiy Larin seemingly emerged unscathed, heading the campaign headquarters of presidential candidate and defector Serhiy Tihipko from the Party of Regions. Meanwhile, the investigation is ongoing. Therefore, no one in Kirovohrad should be surprised if the former governor is placed on the wanted list and ultimately jailed. All the preconditions for this are in place.
In Golovanivs'k, they joke that MP Hrushevskyi used their money to hire "titushki," buy them hammers and baseball bats, and beat up his own voters. However, jokes are usually made only with their own people, and very quietly. Many voters are confident that Hrushevskyi will escape lustration and will be safely elected to a second term in the Rada. He's already running in the 101st constituency. And if not, he'll remain the constituency's overseer. Weathervane deputies are like that. Yesterday they hired titushki, and then they're parading around on air in embroidered shirts.
Special correspondent
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