Vladimir and Sergey Kaltsev: the long-rotten pillars of the Opposition Platform – For Life party in Zaporizhzhia. Part 1
To win over the Servant of the People's dwindling electorate, opposition parties need more than just criticizing the government on television and calling for a return to the good old days. Life moves forward, after all, and requires new solutions implemented by new people. After all, trust in many old-school politicians dried up long before Zelenskyy even considered running for president—which, in fact, is what secured his landslide victory three years ago. A striking example of this is the story of the Kaltsev brothers, who are struggling to stay afloat in the political world, jumping from one sinking boat to another. Moreover, they themselves contributed to the sinking of these boats.
Will the same fate befall the Opposition Platform — For Life? It's entirely possible, especially if the party continues to rely on people like the Kaltsevs in the regions. After all, these supporters have long been rotten with corruption and intrigue, and they not only compromise the Opposition Platform — For Life in the eyes of voters but could also destroy it from within, as they once did with the Party of Regions.
Sergey Kaltsev and Vladimir Kaltsev: Family Secrets
On April 20, 1960, in Berdyansk, the first son, Sergei Kaltsev, was born to Fyodor Aleksandrovich Kaltsev, a cafeteria director, and his wife, Evgenia Petrovna. His younger brother, Vladimir Kaltsev, was born there on June 16, 1966. Soon, Fyodor Aleksandrovich was transferred to the privileged position of deputy director of the city department store, but he didn't last long. As his sons later claimed, he was a fantastically honest man who decided that retail was unethical and therefore quit and went to work in a factory. However, rumors suggest that their father simply got into a very nasty mess, either with shortages or with selling illegal goods. It's not certain that he was guilty, however, as the OBKhSS (Department of Socialist Property, or OBKhSS) was ripping off almost the entire department store staff. Fyodor Alexandrovich supposedly extricated himself from this situation and stayed away from the trade sector for several years (let's hope it wasn't because the criminal code prohibited it). Again, according to these rumors, he didn't get a job at the factory as a simple machine operator, and therefore worked there until his old age. But in their biographies, the brothers stubbornly write that they were born and raised in a "working-class family."
The eldest brother was a worker: Sergei Kaltsev graduated from the Berdyansk Machine-Building Technical School in 1979. After serving in the army, he worked for a year as a mechanic, and then, until the early 90s, as a mechanic at the Berdyansk Road Machinery Plant and the Pilot Plant for Lifting Equipment. He also graduated from the Rostov Institute of Agricultural Engineering by correspondence and was preparing to become a production manager.
Sergey Kaltsev
His younger brother, Vladimir Kaltsev, decided to pursue a more interesting life. After graduating from Berdyansk Secondary School No. 16 in 1983, he didn't join his father and brother at the factory, but stayed at his school for almost a year (until the spring draft of 1984) to work as a senior Pioneer leader. He then dutifully enlisted in the army, joining, according to him, some special forces unit—though he didn't specify which one. Vladimir Kaltsev often emphasized that he served in Afghanistan, during the most turbulent period of 1984-86, and his biography includes a claim to having been awarded the "Internationalist Warrior, 2nd Class" medal and the "Order of Merit." But in fact, the aforementioned medal doesn't exist! There is a commemorative (not an award) medal "To the Warrior-Internationalist from the Grateful Afghan People" and a commemorative chest badge "To the Warrior-Internationalist," without degrees, which were awarded to all service members who served in Afghanistan. As for the Order "For Merit," it is actually a Ukrainian award (established in the 1990s), received by Vladimir Kaltsev in 2010 on Unity Day "for the restoration of the state."
Vladimir Kaltsev
After serving in the army, Vladimir Kaltsev enrolled in Zaporizhzhia State University (now National University, ZNU), choosing the history department. After receiving his diploma in the summer of 1991, he transferred to graduate school in the Department of Pedagogy and Psychology. However, Vladimir Kaltsev's future as a carefree history teacher was thwarted by the "wild 90s."
In the spring of 1992, Vladimir dropped out of university, Sergey dropped out of the factory, and the Kaltsev brothers became businessmen, establishing the Iveco Cooperative Production and Manufacturing Company in Berdyansk. The elder became its director, and the younger, the head of the advertising and marketing department (advertising at that time consisted of newspaper ads). What their cooperative did remains unknown, but the Kaltsevs managed to raise a substantial amount of money in just six months, allowing them to move to Zaporizhzhia and start a large-scale business there.
The Kaltsev brothers are historians and businessmen from "Alexander"
So, two brothers, one of whom a year ago was just sitting around at university and the other was a mechanic in a workshop, move to the regional center, settle in successfully, and create Alexander LLC (EDRPOU 13639821). Vladimir Kal'tsev serves as the company's director, and his brother, Sergei, as the commercial director. All this can be read in the brothers' biographies and the history of the Alexander Group of Companies! However, if we look at an earlier version of Vladimir Kal'tsev's biography, we'll read that he:
"...in 1993, together with his fellow students, he founded a manufacturing and commercial enterprise and was appointed director of Alexander Ltd. LLC. In 2001, due to the company's expanding scope of activities, it was renamed Alexander Company LLC, and Vladimir Kal'tsev was elected chairman of the board of directors..."
This changes the situation somewhat: it turns out that "Alexander" wasn't the brainchild of the Kaltsev brothers, but a joint project of several ZNU history graduates, including Vladimir Kaltsev, who later invited his brother to join "Alexander." Who were these almost mysterious classmates whom Vladimir Kaltsev never mentioned? Skelet.Org Only two brothers were found: Yuriy Konovalenko (born 1964), who studied history at ZNU at the same time as Kaltsev Jr., and Andriy Konovalenko (born 1969), who studied there a year later (he did not serve in the army). However, according to the registers, Andriy Konovalenko is still a co-founder of Alexander, and he has held positions there from 1993 to the present day, ranging from senior manager and head of sales to director. However, Yuriy Konovalenko, Kaltsev's classmate, never worked at Alexander: until 1999, he headed educational institutions in the Polohovsky district of the Zaporizhzhia region, and then held leadership positions in the District State Administration.
Andrey Konovalenko
But how did these would-be history teachers manage to so quickly build such a large international business in an industrial sector completely foreign to them? After all, in its first two years, Alexander wasn't just buying and transporting non-ferrous scrap metal to the port (though perhaps that was also the case), but acting as an intermediary between companies producing abrasives and cutting tools. They bartered coal, petroleum products, electricity, electrical cables, and mining equipment. By 1995, Alexander had become the official representative of the Berdyansk Cable Plant, the Zaporizhzhia Abrasive Plant, and five other similar companies in Ukraine and Russia, as well as the Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Plant (Uzbekistan).
By the late 1990s, the Alexander company was already a co-owner of the Volzhsky, Zlatoust, and Luzhsky abrasive plants (all in Russia), opened branches in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and partnered with the German company OSBORN International GmbH. In the early 2000s, it began acquiring subsidiaries in various fields: trading, construction, and agriculture. Among them were: Alexander-Development LLC and Alexander-Stroy LLC, Alexander-Stal LLC, Alexander Trading House, and Alexander-Market. Furthermore, in the first half of the 2000s, Sergey Kaltsev earned a second degree in absentia, not from a Ukrainian university, but from the Moscow Presidential Academy of National Economy. His brother, Vladimir Kaltsev, managed to defend his dissertation and receive a PhD in economics in 2002, even though he hadn't been seen at the university since 1992.
If we take the Kaltsev brothers at their word that they allegedly started from scratch, it sounds like the well-known tale of the "apple millionaire"! And if we look at this oil painting from the perspective of a typical business development during that very difficult time, a number of crucial details are missing. The entrepreneurial energy and commercial talent of the "historians" alone would not have been enough to successfully launch such schemes, especially so quickly. They also required large sums of money and even greater connections, as well as protection from those who would profit at the expense of these extremely successful businessmen. However, the Kaltsev brothers have kept all their dealings and connections from the 90s a closely guarded secret! Perhaps because some of these secrets literally smelled of blood.
Sergey Kaltsev and his brother Vladimir: the water utility, waste dumps, and the "bald gang"
On the evening of April 28, 2006, Vladimir Razgulyaev, the commercial director of Alexander LLC, was attacked in Zaporizhzhia. He died from his stab wounds on May 2 in the hospital. Vladimir Kaltsev, who by then chaired the board of directors of Alexander, announced an unprecedented reward for the killer's capture—a full million hryvnias ($200,000). However, law enforcement seemed in no hurry to claim the jackpot, as the investigation had seemingly reached a dead end. It was only in June 2007 that the perpetrators were announced, after which Kaltsev presented the promised reward, intricately dividing it into four parts: 600,000 to the city police and prosecutor's office, and 400,000 to the regional police department and prosecutor's office. "An official payoff," Zaporizhzhia residents said at the time, implying that the money had been "appropriated" by police and prosecutorial officials without any accountability. They verbally claimed they were used to purchase cars for law enforcement, but who knows! However, the bonus wasn't the issue at all.
The "solving" of the crime itself raised questions. As the local police department later rather clumsily recounted, in February 2007, a security guard for the "Alexander" company, who was in pretrial detention for armed robbery (!), went and told his cellmate about his complicity in the murder of Razgulyaev. Either the "hen" forgot to immediately report this to his "godfather," or the chief of the operational unit was busy (and didn't need a bonus), but the "splutterer" was only interrogated four months later! After which, two more of "Alexander's" guards were detained, as well as a certain Roman Gordiyash, a former Berkut officer, who was named the organizer of the murder. It's noteworthy that as soon as information released Regarding the arrest of the perpetrators, Sergei Kaltsev and his brother, Vladimir, went to great lengths to ensure that the press would refer to them not as "Alexander's" security detail, but simply as employees of an unnamed private security company hired to protect... the Party of Regions election headquarters in Zaporizhzhia (headed by Kaltsev and Razgulyaev). And the regional police, represented by the head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Alexander Shmitko, played dumb and put forward the following version of the assassination attempt:
"They were trying to intimidate Vladimir Fedorovich Kaltsev through Razgulyaev. They didn't want to kill Razgulyaev—they were supposed to attack, stab him, and stage a robbery, stealing his briefcase. The killer was armed with two knives, missed once, and the second blow struck him in the back, hitting vital organs."
One of the attackers brandished two knives? Just some Hong Kong militant! The police were clearly trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes. However, just a month later, the independent press trumpeted the truth: that the local Party of Regions leadership had hired security from its own firm at party expense, and that among those accused of Razgulyaev's murder were not just employees of his own private security company (who moonlighted as robbers), but also Vladimir Kaltsev's head of security, a certain Romanchuk (possibly Mikhail Romanchuk, whom MP Sergei Kaltsev had hired as his assistant). Immediately afterward, Vladimir Kaltsev fired Romanchuk "for negligence in the performance of his duties," and he vanished into thin air—no one ever heard of him again. Moreover, some media outlets then reported that Romanchuk had allegedly been arrested as well, but Kaltsev "bought him out" for a large sum (in addition to the promised bonus). In particular, about the detained security guards wrote the following:
"One of them was even jailed, though afterward his family unexpectedly acquired new property—an apartment and a nice car, which the father of the convicted murderer drove around the city. The second one was a completely strange story: he was released from custody on the guarantee of a respected young politician, and soon the defendant disappeared from his homeland, and what's more, no one really looked for him."
According to other publications, Kaltsev initially hid Romanchuk from arrest, allegedly offering him a deal. He was supposed to confess (receive a minimum sentence and then be released on parole) and name the Zaporizhzhia underboss Yuri Sakvarelidze (aka Yura Gruzin), who had also been killed, as the person who ordered Razgulyaev's murder, meaning he could be blamed for anything. The killer shot Sakvarelidze on June 12, 2006, and the people who ordered it were named. local Armenian organized crime group, although there were other unofficial theories, including some that linked back to the Kaltsevs. The fact is that Yura Gruzin, among other things, oversaw the development of metallurgical waste dumps in Zaporizhzhia, in which "Alexander" companies were also involved.
But another local organized crime group, the so-called "bald gang", created by former senior lieutenant of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Alexander Seredin (San Sanych) from similar former and current law enforcement officers (including Berkut, Titan, and the UBOP). It was the "bald ones" who were accused of ordering and carrying out a series of high-profile murders that shook Zaporizhzhia in 2006: those of Vladimir Maliar, Razgulyaev and Sakvarelidze, Viktor Savkin, and others. Or rather, they worked hard to make the public believe exactly that. In fact, that's why "bald" Roman Gordiyash was named the official organizer of Razgulyaev's murder! However, this story had another trail, one that led directly to the city's water utility.
In the 1990s, Zaporizhzhia was served by two wastewater treatment plants, the oldest of which (TsOS-1) was unable to cope with the load and required reconstruction. To raise the necessary funds for capital repairs, they decided to seek funding from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which, after four years of negotiations, granted the Gorvodokanal a $28 million loan (for 15 years) in 1999. At that point, its former chief engineer, Vladimir Razgulyayev, became the general director of the water utility, appointed by order of Zaporizhzhia Mayor Oleksandr Golovko, a close friend of the Kaltsev brothers. Moreover (according to Skelet.Org With the assistance of Mayor Golovko, the company "Alexander Ltd." was appointed as the "guardian" of the water utility, and its employees became Razgulyaev's deputies, heading the press center and the water utility's security. Part of this information can be found in surviving press archives, but unfortunately, more detailed information was simply destroyed.
A $28 million loan plus budgetary appropriations were received, and some work began on paper, but in reality, no reconstruction took place, and the fate of the funds remained unknown (part was used to purchase foreign cars and a luxurious renovation of the administration office; the rest disappeared). A fierce battle for the funds unfolded. When Golovko was forced into early retirement in 2000 and his main rival, Interior Ministry General Alexander Polyak, was elected mayor, the new mayor's first act was to fire Razgulyaev. He fired him twice, in fact: Razgulyaev tried to reinstate himself through the courts. Ultimately, Razgulyaev left to work for Alexander, Anatoly Shinkar became head of the water utility, and to repay the loan, Zaporizhzhia residents' water tariffs were raised several times. The story of the funds became increasingly complicated, and in early 2006, Kyiv became interested in the fate of the loan. A major investigation was being prepared, and Razgulyaev, who had signed for the money, became a very dangerous key witness. Therefore, the fact that the story of the embezzled EBRD loan was closed with Razgulyaev's death proved to be quite advantageous for Vladimir Kaltsev. Just as it would have been equally advantageous for him to pin the murder on Yura Gruzin or the "bald gang"...
The Eternal Battle for Zaporizhia
The brothers simultaneously ran for power in 1998: Vladimir Kaltsev was elected to the Zaporizhzhia City Council, where he formed a close partnership with Mayor Golovko (who won thanks to a combination of political resources and fraud), while Sergei Kaltsev ran for the regional council from a district in his native Berdyansk. From 1998 to 2006, the regional council was headed by Vladimir Berezovsky (a former instructor for the regional Communist Party of Ukraine committee), who also served as the chairman of the regional state administration in 2003-2004, controlling both branches of government. It seemed they were on the brink of unprecedented success, but then the unexpected happened: a major upheaval erupted in the region, sparked by yet another redistribution of power. Those seeking to dislodge the region's frankly arrogant leadership were able to secure support from Kyiv.
It's important to understand that the struggle for control of the power pyramid in this region has always been extremely complex: different groups fought for every "floor," and rarely did anyone manage to take over the entire building at once. Moreover, their party affiliations were always rather arbitrary; groups and clans simply aligned themselves with the most advantageous political force, and then engaged in internal party squabbles. So, it's quite difficult to understand who was for whom and who against whom!
Mikhail Shpolyansky, for Skelet.Org
By topic: Alexander Starukh: How a Zaporizhzhia swindler became governor twice. Part 2
Vitaly Bogovin: An agrarian raider at the head of the Zaporizhzhia region. Part 2
A former Party of Regions member is building a shopping mall in Zaporizhzhia.
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