Ruslan Trebushkin: The True Story of the Pokrovsky Werewolf Mayor. Part 1
Today, he dons an embroidered shirt and actively engages in "Ukrainization," even though in 2014, he brought lard and chocolate to the Berkut officers on the Maidan, and later praised Putin for the annexation of Crimea and called for a fight against the "illegal Kyiv junta." However, that's not the only reason the new-old mayor of Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk), Ruslan Trebushkin, is called a werewolf. This active "sawing" of city budgets has, since his youth, had close ties both to the cops and to the most bloody bandits of Donbas. This is probably why Trebushkin, regularly embroiled in corruption scandals, has always emerged unscathed. And not a single case brought against him has ever been brought to a conclusion...
Dimitrov's "snitch"
Ruslan Valerievich Trebushkin was born on November 27, 1975, in Donetsk, to a simple working-class family. His mother worked as a crane operator in a mine and raised two sons on her own. In 1978, they moved to Dimitrov (renamed Myrnohrad in 2016), where his younger brother, Alexei, was born a year later. Trebushkin lived almost his entire life in this city, rising through the ranks from metalworker to mayor. How did he do it? As with most of the transformations of Russian Cinderellas from underage street kids to businessmen, politicians, or "authorities," he was helped by a stroke of luck and good connections.
Alexey and Ruslan Trebushkin
In Dimitrov, they settled into an apartment in a youth neighborhood, where Ruslan Trebushkin soon made a friend and classmate, Konstantin Prokopov, who lived in the building next door. Neighbors and acquaintances described these inseparable "buddies" as, at best, rascals. Ruslan Trebushkin also suffered greatly from a lack of expensive and designer items, so from a young age, his entire interest in life was focused on becoming rich. This dream gradually began to come true in the 90s, when, after graduating from vocational school, Ruslan Trebushkin went into business. Or rather, "pretend business," because, according to Skelet.Org sources , Trebushkin and Prokopov were caught in the simple theft of some government property, allegedly non-ferrous metal. And they would both have faced at least a suspended sentence, if Prokopov's mother, Tamara Fedorovna, hadn't tearfully pleaded on behalf of her "little pig" and his friend. Afterward, the two men suddenly became best friends with the police, so much so that Konstantin Prokopov later (apparently after serving in the army) even went to work for the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He is still often referred to as a "former cop," and perhaps this explains his extreme reticence—unlike his childhood friend, who loved posing for the cameras even before he was elected mayor.
Konstantin Prokopov
But Ruslan Trebushkin, who had come to his senses with the help of Aunt Tamara and the police, became a legitimate businessman. This happened in 1994, when, at the age of 19, he opened his first company, ChP "Ruslan" (named after himself), becoming his own director. Apparently, he never fulfilled his military service: this was possibly due to the theft incident and the fact that Trebushkin began working for the police. His first venture was a restroom at the city market, where he began charging admission. Whether he made a deal with the market director, whether his handlers from the city police department placed him there, or whether the local gang assigned him this spot "near the toilet" remains unknown.
He soon had to change his line of work: times were hard, and people increasingly preferred to relieve themselves in the open air rather than pay the entrance fee to the old outhouse. So the "Ruslan" sign had to be moved from the restroom to the recycling center located in the same market. And that's where Ruslan Trebushkin took off! Within a few years, he expanded his business from empty bottles and waste paper to a whole network of metal collection points. And when this metal became plentiful, Trebushkin rented a city factory for storage.
Meanwhile, his metalworkers cut up and hauled everything to Trebushkin: from children's swings and manhole covers to water pipes and mining equipment! But if anyone was punished for this, it was only the alcoholics with hacksaws. Trebushkin's business was reliably protected by the local police: his old "handler," his childhood friend who had received epaulettes, and Prokopov's colleagues, with whom Ruslan quickly became "buddies."
By the end of the 1990s, Trebushkin had managed to turn the situation to his advantage, and it was no longer he who worked for the police, but the police who worked for him. Well, with the possible exception of very high-ranking officials, among whom was mentioned a certain colonel, later promoted to general and becoming head of the Kyiv Regional Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to media reports, Prokopiv, who retired from the police in the 2000s and officially went into business, was once listed as an advisor to this general. But who? No one named a specific name. Well, two Kyiv Regional Police chiefs, originally from the Donetsk region, were contenders for the role of this patron with general's epaulets: Anatoliy Voloshchuk, who arrived in the capital in 2003 with the first wave of "Donetskites," and Konstantin Sapko, who was appointed in 2007 and again in 2010. While Skelet.Org failed to find a connection between Trebushkin and Prokopov and Voloshchuk, the connection with Sapko is obvious and not particularly hidden. Trebushkin's declaration indicated that his wife, Viktoria Nikolaevna Trebushkina, received a 110-square-meter Kyiv apartment "for free use" in 2014 from a certain Vasyl Sapko. Sapko, it turns out, is General Sapko's biological son and the founder of the Yarik hunting society, which, with his father's help, secured 31,000 hectares of land in the Kyiv region in 2012. After his resignation, General Sapko found himself a position as head of the Security Department of the state-owned company Ukrgazvydobuvannya, where he successfully siphoned off tens of millions of hryvnias of public funds by fraudulently rigging tenders for the hiring of security firms.
Konstantin Sapko
In addition to his police protection, Ruslan Trebushkin had and still has extensive connections in the criminal underworld. It was not for nothing that the cops allegedly assigned young Ruslan to snitch on local gangsters! Traces of these connections can be found in his business as well. For example, among the founders of Dondorstroy-Prompostavki LLC (EDRPOU 24460686), established back in 1998, in addition to the Trebushkin brothers and Konstantin Prokopov, one can also find a certain Gerontiy Lepsai, who holds the largest share. A man with the same first and last name, both uncommon and even rare, has previously appeared in the media as a member of Givi Nemsadze's bloody organized crime group from the Donetsk region, responsible for dozens of murders. Their gang was practically destroyed by Russian law enforcement in 2006. The detainees were extradited to Ukraine, and then the leader himself confessed—after which he was acquitted and released. Allegedly, it wasn't he who committed the murders, but his long-dead brother! Moreover, it was then-Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin , now a public figure with the Opposition Platform—For Life party and a constant presence on television, who pleaded for Givi's behalf .
And here's Givi himself (aka Givchik, aka Papa), among the founders of Trebushkin's other companies: Donvtorresurs LLC (30853260) and Stroymaterialy LLC (06959732), where he also holds the largest shares! But the list of co-founders of the Donetsk sports club Irbis (33135414) is especially impressive. In addition to Ruslan Trebushkin, Givi Nemsadze, and Gerontiy Lepsai, it also includes Anatoly Shikhkerimov (nicknamed Zver) and Eduard Artouz—all of these names are found among the members of Nemsadze's organized crime group . A very big question arises: how did Ruslan Trebushkin manage to infiltrate this tight-knit group of dangerous bandits? If only as a "mole," then is it possible they never figured him out? Or was he working on two fronts? It seems there's still a lot we don't know about him...
Ruslan Trebushkin's inner circle also includes many leaders of local strength sports federations—who, as is well known, often have criminal pasts or equally murky pasts as suppliers of "titushki." Among them, however, is former Dimitrov operative Stanislav Mazurak (vice president of the Mirnohrad Boxing Federation), whom the media has named as Ruslan Trebushkin's head of security.
From Young Regions to a Mayor-Communal Services Worker
In 2001, a qualitatively new stage began in Ruslan Trebushkin's life, elevating him to a new level. First, his business no longer relied on small scrap metal collection points for homeless and destitute people, but on teams that dismantled entire enterprises (by agreement with their directors). Scrap volumes increased dramatically, and Trebushkin created Donmet LLC to sell it. Whether this company had any connection to the oxyacetylene and welding equipment plant of the same name in Kramatorsk is unknown. In 2009, Trebushkin liquidated it and covered up all ties. But until then, he proudly held the title of director and even president, appointing his friend Prokopov, who had retired from the police, as vice president.
Secondly, in that same 2001, Trebushkin entered politics, becoming the chairman of the Dimitrov branch of the Union of Youth of the Regions of Ukraine (known as "Young Regions" since 2010). Interestingly, this youth wing of the Party of Regions was officially registered in 2002, but its prototype emerged precisely in 2001, when the Party of Regions was formed as a result of an agreement between Petro Poroshenko and the "Donetsk people." In other words, Trebushkin wasn't even a first-wave regionalist; he participated in the party's very creation! However, it wasn't a difficult undertaking: back then, emissaries from Azarov and Rybak traveled throughout the Donbas, urging local "elites" to join their party. Trebushkin was lucky: one of his senior comrades joined the Party of Regions, drawing him along with them. But he would hardly have led the local “young regionalists” if he had not had at his disposal some young people (or “titushki”) who helped the senior regionalists in the 2002 elections.
A "young politician," even one from a small mining town, wasn't supposed to be a scrap metal dealer with a vocational school diploma. So, Trebushkin received help not only with his new company but also with his higher education: in 2001, he enrolled in correspondence courses at the Donetsk State University of Management, where he earned a master's degree in finance five years later. According to Trebushkin's acquaintances, he never opened a single textbook, essentially buying his diploma with "green lard."
For his diligence in the 2002 election campaign, Trebushkin was appointed as an advisor to the new Dimitrov mayor, Vitaliy Klyuchka. But his first foray into politics proved futile: in 2005, Klyuchka resigned, and his successor, Yuriy Anisimov, found Trebushkin seemingly unnecessary. Klyuchka himself moved to the Donetsk Regional Council in 2006 on the Party of Regions list, became head of the Main Directorate of the State Treasury in Donetsk Oblast in 2007, and ran for the Verkhovna Rada in the 50th constituency under the banner of the Poroshenko Bloc in 2014.
Vitaly Klyuchka loves to seduce young people.
Once again, chance came to Trebushkin's aid. In October 2009, a drunk Anisimov fatally struck a woman . Although he was subsequently released on bail and spent more than two years free pending trial, his seat immediately began to wobble. The mayor-turned-murderer, who had provoked the ire of city residents, was quickly dismissed by decision of the city council. Afterward, City Council Secretary Larisa Revva, who was widely expected to win the local elections in October 2010, became acting mayor.
Larisa Revva
But then Trebushkin became increasingly active. First, he snagged the position of director of the Dimitrov Municipal Services Association (he called himself a "crisis manager"), gaining direct access to budgetary funds and utility payments. Immediately, a massive embezzlement scheme began: Trebushkin actively profited not only from much-needed road repairs, street lighting, and building signs (all through companies associated with him), but also from dubious projects. For example, the reconstruction of a city fountain and the construction of a motocross track. The latter was directly linked to his friend and associate, Konstantin Prokopov, president of the Dimitrov/Mirnohrad Motorsport Federation. What a gift to a childhood friend, at the city's expense!
Then Trebukin joined the election campaign. Initially, he reached an agreement with the Party of Regions leadership that he, not Revva, would run for the party's nomination. Ultimately, Larisa Nikolaevna, "dumped by the Party of Regions," quit their ranks in protest and ran under the banner of the opposition Front for Change. This proved to be a crucial mistake, as Dimitrov's voters disliked the "orange" party. Furthermore, Trebukin not only generously promised to transform the city into a garden (while omitting how he had scrapped its factories, leaving people unemployed), but also brought in his "young Party of Regions." Revva received threats, and nasty things were written on the gates of her house. And so, in the fall of 2010, Trebukin was elected mayor of Dimitrov.
Now in complete control of the city budget and property, Trebushkin raked in the cash like a hysterical supermarket shopper on Black Friday. But, having learned from the experience of his predecessors and colleagues, Trebushkin preferred not to steal money outright, but rather to efficiently "saw" it up through tenders. Hence the "great construction" he initiated, which he later expanded to include neighboring villages. This also gave him an opportunity for self-promotion: look how I raised your city from ruins! True, half the time these repairs resembled Klichkov's "bulo – stola," or, as they say, "sranym naverh" (literally, "upside down")—that is, a hole in the asphalt was filled with asphalt mixed with trash, and the rotten part was painted over. But the main thing in this PR was not the facts, but the numerous laudatory articles in the local and regional press , as well as printed propaganda materials distributed on the streets by Trebushkin’s “young regionalists.”
One of Trebushkin's PR leaflets
Behind this PR façade, rampant corruption remained. For example, in the summer of 2012, Trebushkin assembled a tender committee to select a contractor for a large investment project to remove and dispose of household waste. However, according to Trebushkin himself, the tender never took place. The committee instead selected the Mariupol-registered firm "Imperia-Nefteproduct" (EDRPOU 34752630), co-owned by his brother, Alexey Trebushkin, and his wife, Viktoria Trebushkina. When this became publicly known, a scandal erupted, and criminal case No. 12015050490000309 was subsequently opened under Article 364-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine for "abuse of power or official position."
The investigation dragged on for quite some time, and then petered out. Trebushkin, meanwhile, feigned innocence and insisted there was no corruption involved. He even dared to say the following: "The enterprise I owned five years ago—today, my family and my relatives have no connection whatsoever. And my brother, who is under investigation, was never involved in the financial or economic activities of the enterprise, not five, not ten, not even a year ago. He was merely a founder ." It seems Trebushkin considered not only his constituents but also law enforcement to be idiots! However, the latter were always "in his pocket"...
Meanwhile, the "sawing" continued, sometimes quite literally. Between 2012 and 2013, Dimitrov's budget spent 1,429 million hryvnias ($178 at the exchange rate at the time) on tree pruning alone. The work was carried out by the company "Ecobud-Service" (37803462), then owned by city council members Alexander Eskin and Alexander Bilichenko. Moreover, the trees were "pruned" barbarically, leaving bare posts (many subsequently died), and huge piles of cut branches lay in the middle of streets and courtyards for weeks – because Trebushkin owned a pellet production facility and needed free, ready-made (dried) raw materials, which he received entirely at the city's expense (the city also paid for the "transportation" of the branches to the mayor's facility). And then he sold these same pellets to the city!
Later, after becoming mayor of Pokrovsk for the first time, Ruslan Trebushkin expanded his "pellet business" there as well, specifically converting most of the city's boilers to solid fuel. Moreover, when trees began to run out in Pokrovsk itself, Trebushkin turned his attention to the forest belts outside the city, deciding to "beautify" them as well. "We'll remove the dead trees, trim the trees, and provide the city with fuel for 20 years to come , " he confided to journalists , without admitting, however, that his main goal was to secure himself a profit for 20 years, again at the city's expense. Incidentally, since such "maintenance" of the forest belts effectively renders them ineffective as windbreaks, in this case, Trebushkin was simply publicly admitting to having contributed to the desertification of the Donbas, which threatens to render much of this region lifeless by the middle of this century.
Or here's another: 5,763 million hryvnias ($721) were allocated for road repairs in Dimitrov during the same period, with almost all of the tenders going to the company "Budresurs" (32087902). Its co-founder and co-owner until 2019 was Vyacheslav Khasenko – the uncle of Ruslan Trebushkin's wife! And the then director of "Budresurs", Leonid Kravchenko, according to Skelet.Org, is a partner and associate of Alexey Trebushkin. Trebushkin, through his City Council commission, also helped Budservis secure a contract to renovate apartments for beneficiaries, financed by the city treasury.
Among the companies that regularly received utility and other tenders, the following were also named:
• ChP "Garant-Service" (35191601), owned by Nadezhda Kasyan, mother of Alexander Kasyan, then Trebushkin's advisor.
• Private enterprise “Dominant-Service” (35457641), controlled by Sergei Fedorov, an old friend of Trebushkin, whom he helped become mayor of neighboring Rodinsky.
• LLC “Ukr-Art-Land” (33215232), whose founders were the son of the manager of the Dimitrov city council, Natalia Maslova, and the wife of the secretary of the city council, Alexander Brykalov.
• Donmontazh LLC (30347331). The founder and director of this construction company is Pavel Solodukha, another close friend of Ruslan Trebushkin, at that time a deputy of the Dimitrov City Council and chairman of the commission on housing and communal issues and city improvement.
There would have been far more evidence of Ruslan Trebushkin's corrupt activities as mayor of Dimitrov, and the amount of budget funds he embezzled would have been easy to calculate. However, when journalists and activists became interested in Trebushkin's "great construction projects," he went ahead and... classified the entire City Council accounting system. This included the specific volumes of work performed and their estimated costs—to prevent the overpayments from being siphoned off by Trebushkin's relatives and friends.
Having significantly embezzled the city's coffers during the 2012 championship year, Ruslan Trebushkin decided to dig into the residents' pockets, calling on them to chip in for roof repairs . He proposed that residents pay half the cost of replacing the soft roofing themselves, promptly inflating the price by half (with the market price of labor and materials at the time being around 20 hryvnia per square meter, he asked for 30). He later pulled a similar stunt in Pokrovsk.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
CONTINUED: Ruslan Trebushkin: The True Story of the Pokrovsky Werewolf Mayor. PART 2
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