According to publicly available data, 48-year-old Serhiy Koretskyi is originally from Lutsk. He graduated from the local technical university with degrees in mechanical engineering and business economics, as well as from the Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas with a degree in oil and gas production.
Sergei Koretsky
In an interview with the Ukrainian edition of Forbes, published in November 2022, Sergei Koretsky said that he began working part-time while still in his first year at the technical university.
Koretsky Sergey Fedorovich was born on March 14, 1978.
"My parents separated, my mother was left with two children—I had to make ends meet somehow ," he recalls. One day, a friend offered him a job as a security guard at the office of Continuum, a company founded by Igor Eremeev and Stepan Ivakhiv . After a year of working 24 hours on and 34 hours off, Sergei Koretsky was on the verge of being expelled from university and transferred to a correspondence program. He asked Continuum's HR department to find him another job. "Watching my colleagues in accounting and commerce, I knew I could do the same ," he said. The 19-year-old student was tasked with reconciliation reports and structuring accounts receivable documents. Within two years, he had become deputy director of the analytics department, then financial director, and in 2007, CEO of the Continuum Group's management company, the article says.
At that time, based on the time of his appointment, he was either 28 or 29 years old.
His closeness to the Continuum Group's beneficiaries isn't only evidenced by his relatively rapid career advancement. From 2002 to 2006, SerKoretsky was one of the volunteer assistants to MP Yeremeyev, elected from the For a United Ukraine electoral bloc. He also held this position for two years under Yeremeyev, who was elected to the Rada in 2012 in a single-member constituency.
In 2012, he became head of the Western Oil Group joint venture, which is affiliated with Ivakhiv and Yeremeyev (the latter died in a horse accident in 2015). Translated into English, the name becomes West Oil Group, or WOG, a well-known chain of gas stations.
Sergey Koretsky led WOG until 2018, when he left the company, which, according to his comments after Yeremeyev's death, had diminished opportunities for growth.
According to the Ukrainian edition of Forbes, around the same time, he and Ostap Nekhoda founded a trading company in Switzerland, Centurion Group SA, which was intended to sell petroleum products, natural gas, all types of fuel, as well as agricultural products and fertilizers. The company is still registered to Koretsky.
According to sources in the energy market, the goal may have been to create an intermediary for clients from Ukraine, including a recent employer, Continuum.
At the same time, Koretsky began building a coffee business—a chain of coffee shops under the Idealist Coffee Co brand and a full-cycle coffee production facility for retail. Essentially, this was the project of a mid-level businessman.
Serhiy Koretskyi, the head of Ukrnafta, which was seized from Kolomoisky.
A fundamentally new stage in Koretsky's life began at the end of 2022, when he received the position of director of the companies Ukrnafta and Ukrtatnafta.
Shortly before this, these companies had been effectively nationalized by the state—control over them was wrested from the Privat Group of Igor Kolomoisky and Gennady Bogolyubov . They owned approximately 42% of Ukrnafta's shares, with the state, represented by Naftogaz, holding another 50% plus one share (the remaining shares were held by minority shareholders).
Kolomoisky de facto controlled the company. It was, in fact, the heart of his business empire. Selling petroleum products through Ukrnafta, the largest gas station chain before the Great War, brought Privat billions of hryvnias.
A year later, Kolomoisky ended up in pretrial detention, where he remains to this day. In prison, he gave an interview in which he described the seizure of his assets as a "corporate raid ordered by Zelenskyy, with corrupt motives."
"In his speech to the Verkhovna Rada, dedicated to the 'Sustainability Plan,' Zelenskyy stated unequivocally and unambiguously that Ukrnafta had undergone the nationalization process, although official documents indicate otherwise. According to the documents, the shares were 'temporarily alienated' by the military during martial law. In his speech, the president let slip—revealed, as they say, 'Freudianly,' the true motives behind the incident, admitting that in the case of Ukrnafta and Ukrtatnafta shareholders, the authorities had indeed attempted to carry out an illegal nationalization, using the needs of the military and the existence of martial law as a cover. The Presidential Office used the military to achieve its goal—a corporate raid to seize control of Ukrnafta and Ukrtatnafta ," Kolomoisky said in an interview with UNIAN in December 2024.
He also claims that Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Rostyslav Shurma approached him with a proposal to sell his Ukrnafta shares back in the summer of 2022. According to Kolomoisky, Shurma claimed to be acting on instructions from Zelenskyy and Head of the Presidential Office Andriy Yermak . Kolomoisky also claims that the stripping of his Ukrainian citizenship in the summer of 2022 was an attempt to pressure him regarding the Ukrnafta issue.
Kolomoisky claims that after the company came under government control, it became a source of corrupt income for its representatives.
"The supervisory board was formed from individuals, most of whom were directly connected to the Office of the President of Ukraine. Formally, they were called representatives of the Ministry of Defense, but in reality, they had no ties to the military. Since then, Ukrnafta has become a feeding trough for corrupt officials," Kolomoisky claims.
The authorities have not commented on any of these accusations.
However, it is obvious that the confiscation of such a large asset as Ukrnafta could not have been carried out without the knowledge and consent of the head of state and his inner circle.
Accordingly, logically, they should have also formed the company's new management, replacing those appointed by Kolomoisky. According to a widely circulated, but unofficially confirmed, story, Koretsky was brought to Ukrnafta by Timur Mindich.
"In the market, Koretsky is considered Mindych's man. More broadly, he's considered a manager of Zelenskyy himself and his inner circle, which, in addition to Mindych, also includes Yermak, Shefir , and Chernyshov , " said a source in the fuel market.
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Serhiy Koretskyi later stated that under his leadership, Ukrnafta had managed to emerge from the crisis and become "a profitable state-owned company with record financial results in recent years." This refers to the company's 20 billion hryvnia profit in 2023, while under its previous owners, it had previously posted losses.
This fact is constantly mentioned by Sergey Koretsky and his support team in numerous publications as proof of his success as a manager.
However, market sources are skeptical about these figures.
"Ukrnafta's profit growth was driven by three factors. First, Ukrnafta's sales of gas from underground storage facilities, previously blocked by legal disputes with the Naftogaz and government agencies. The gas was unblocked, sold, and the company posted a profit. Second, the transfer of the profit center to Ukrnafta at the expense of Ukrtatnafta, which had been financially drained. Third, the seizure of control over Ukrnaftoburenie, with its modern equipment and new well stock, and its consolidation into Ukrnafta ," the source says.
In fact, the story of Ukrnaftoburenie, a company formerly owned by Kolomoisky, is cited by Koretsky's detractors as one of the main pieces of evidence of his connections to Mindich and other members of Zelensky's so-called "Family" (the president's inner circle).
In August 2025, MP Oleksiy Honcharenko stated that recordings made by the NABU in Mindich's apartment contained discussions of a "raider takeover of Ukrnaftoburenia." This refers to the 2023 incident, when Ukrnaftoburenia's corporate rights were first seized by the court, and then transferred to the management of Ukrnafta, which had already been nationalized by Koretskyi.
"The tapes from Mindych's apartment captured a step-by-step plan to seize Ukrnaftobureniya. The main executor was Serhiy Koretsky. He was 100% Mindych's man. Control of the company was transferred to him. All of Koretsky's actions were coordinated with Mindych. This means Zelenskyy knew everything about it. Surely we don't believe the 'presidential wallet' operates without his knowledge? Koretsky literally lived in Mindych's apartment—he visited it almost every day. This is about how profitable assets are being turned into a private feeding trough for Zelenskyy's people ," Goncharenko stated.
Sergei Koretsky himself has not commented on these accusations of his ties to Mindich. However, he has recently launched a massive PR campaign. Numerous publications (including those affiliated with the grant circles waging an information war against the "Family") have published numerous articles portraying him as an effective "crisis manager."
In the spring of 2025, Serhiy Koretskyi assumed the position of Chairman of the Board of Naftogaz Ukrainy. He replaced the aforementioned Chernyshov.
Market participants speak briefly about his short-lived activity there: “almost nothing has changed.”
"NAK, like other state-owned companies, is a corruption trough for a wide range of people. Primarily in procurement. Moreover, corruption there isn't just systemic, where they steal with the permission of higher-ups and then pass on a small cut to the top, but also spontaneous, grassroots corruption. This existed before Koretsky, and continued under Koretsky," says a source in the gas market.
Koretsky also failed to resolve the pressing issue of the enormous debt for gas supplied to his subsidiary, Gazmerezhi, which was created at one time to manage regional gas companies that had been "squeezed" from private owners.
As we've already reported , Gazmerezha has accumulated over 5 billion hryvnias in debt, despite the fact that most private regional gas companies pay for gas more or less regularly.
Incidentally, as head of NAK Naftogaz, Sergei Koretsky published his income declaration at the beginning of this year.
In it, he stated that he would receive a salary totaling UAH 28,7 million in 2025, meaning that he would receive an average of UAH 2,4 million per month.
He also declared UAH 14,4 million as his salary at Naftogaz. Considering that he took over the company on May 14, 2025, he received his salary for 7,5 months. This means his average monthly salary was UAH 1,9 million. It's worth noting that as prime minister, he will earn more than ten times less. Svyrydenko, the previous prime minister, declared UAH 109,000 in May.
In 2025, Koretsky received royalties from two companies of the Saneco Group (Saneko Trade and Saneco Retail) totaling 2,3 million hryvnias. The group is directly linked to his wife, Iryna, who, according to her income declaration, received a salary of 272,4 hryvnias from Saneco Trade last year. She also earned even more through her entrepreneurial activities—3,2 million hryvnias.
Irina Koretskaya is the owner or co-owner of three Ukrainian companies: Fortex Energy LLC, Molprom-Reserve LLC, and Novaya Kofeynaya Kultura LLC. Sergey Koretsky owns two companies in Cyprus: Unigo Holdings Limited and Sungroup Invest Ltd.
Sergey Koretsky reported more than two dozen deposits in Ukrainian banks totaling:
- 6 million UAH;
- 485,3 thousand dollars;
- 31,6 thousand euros;
- 838 pounds sterling.
He also has three accounts in European banks: in the Swiss Cite Gestion with $157,7, and in the Spanish Banco Santander with €467 and CaixaBank with €29,3.
Koretsky declared cash amounting to €1,1 million and $275 thousand.
At the same time, the head of Naftogaz declared 10 pairs of luxury watches from Breguet, Rolex, Patek Philippe, Ulysse Nardin and Opus, 12 pieces of jewelry from Cartier, Tiffany and Van Cleef & Arpels, as well as 6 bags from Chanel, Hermès and Chopard.
The Koretsky couple owns 17 plots of land, but rents a residential building in the village of Kozin (Kyiv region), as well as two non-residential premises in Kyiv and a 233,9 square meter apartment in the Ukrainian capital, listed for 2,5 million hryvnias.
Why did Zelensky decide to make Koretsky prime minister?
After working at NAK for just over a year, Sergei Koretsky has been rapidly promoted and could now become Ukraine's Prime Minister.
Given his ties to Mindich and the Family, many in political circles were confused as to why the Family-controlled Sviridenko would be replaced by the similarly controlled Koretsky.
"Many explanations are being offered. For example, that Sviridenko can't take a single step without instructions, while Koretsky is a more independent manager, albeit under the president's control. They also say the country faces enormous challenges this winter due to Russian attacks on the energy sector, and therefore a fuel market specialist should be appointed to head the government. This last argument is being made publicly, but it sounds odd. Sergei Koretsky has never worked in electricity generation and distribution. He has experience in the oil and gas market, which is a somewhat different matter. If the goal is to strengthen the energy sector, an energy specialist should have been appointed prime minister. Or at least the current Energy Minister, Shmygal, who at least has experience navigating the winter under extremely difficult conditions," says a political source.
In his opinion, there is much to indicate that the real reasons for the change of government are not directly related to the desire to make Koretsky prime minister.
"The explanation could lie in two areas: it could simply be a PR stunt to show the public a 'renewal of power.' Or it could be an attempt to use the Cabinet change as a cover to resolve some other issue pressing for Zelenskyy. For example, removing Fedorov as Defense Minister. But we'll see the validity of this theory today or tomorrow, depending on whether Zelenskyy nominates Fedorov. Speaking of PR, although Serhiy Koretskyy is considered 'Zelenskyy-Mindich's man,' he clearly has a penchant for PR. And this is a sure sign that if control over him is relaxed or if the political situation changes, he could start playing his own game, quickly forgetting who brought him into the government and to whom he owes his post as prime minister ," the source says.
Skelet.Org
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