Vladimir Prokopiv
Vitali Klitschko is no longer Kyiv's mayor! And this is only the beginning of a major "anti-corruption operation" launched by Zelenskyy's team against the capital's authorities. Following him, those Klitschko "cherished" during his five years of incompetent leadership of Kyiv, allowing them to embezzle the budget and plunder land, may lose their positions in the city administration and on the Kyiv City Council. And among the very first to be dismissed, not just dismissed, but also arrested, is Volodymyr Prokopiv, the deputy mayor and secretary of the city council, who has long since earned himself a reputation for this. And now you'll find out exactly why...
How "patriots" became corrupt
The future Kyiv City Council Secretary, Volodymyr Volodymyrovych Prokopiv, was born on August 21, 1983, in Ivano-Frankivsk, to Volodymyr Vasilyevich Prokopiv, a teacher at the Ivano-Frankivsk Pedagogical Institute. This pedagogical institute is now called the Carpathian National University, and Volodymyr Vasilyevich heads its Department of Solid State Physics and Chemistry. Our "hero's" mother, Zinovia Mykhaylivna, previously worked as an engineer and technologist.
It's worth noting that the spelling of this "family of scientists" sometimes causes confusion, raising questions among readers. First, which is correct—Prokopiv (Ukrainian pronunciation) or Prokopov (Russian)? The correct spelling is "Prokopiv" in both languages, because this particular surname was formed not as a common noun in the genitive case from "Prokop" (whose names are Prokopov and Prokopiv), but as a proper name, in the noun case. This explains the second question regarding the spelling of the surnames of the women in this family (Zinovia Mikhailovna Prokopiv, Vera Andreyevna Prokopiv), which are written in the common gender (in this case, it is confused with the masculine) and are not declined.
In 2000, after graduating from high school, Vladimir Prokopiv went to his father's university, but enrolled in the Radio Physics and Electronics department, believing it to be more promising than physics and chemistry. He was mistaken, and in 2005, the young graduate went to work all the way to Kharkiv, as the director of a representative office withinsurance company "OSTRA" in the region. At the same time, he "dropped in" to Ternopil and enrolled there at the National Economic University (formerly a branch of the Kyiv Institute of National Economy), where he earned a correspondence degree in administrative management in 2007.
Anatoly Matvienko
By this time, Vladimir Prokopiv had already made two important friends who would ensure the unsuccessful radiophysicist's further successful career: they were the people's deputy Anatoly Matvienko and his nephew. Sergey BerezenkoHow did this happen? They came together on the political front.
Prokopiv Sr. introduced his son to social and political activism practically from childhood. Rumor has it that the professor remembered well the benefits one could derive from the Komsomol in his day: wagging his tongue at meetings and making useful business connections! Already in 1999, he created the social movement "Ekosvit" for his 16-year-old son, enlisting him as its founder and director—to hone his "leadership skills" and, at the same time, teach him how to "go from office to office." In 2002, as a 19-year-old student, Volodymyr Prokopiv ran for the Ivano-Frankivsk City Council and was already considered a local leader of center-right youth movements (national patriots). He met the "Orange Revolution" in Kharkiv, where he headed the coalition's "youth election headquarters." "The Power of the People" created As a united alliance in support of Yushchenko. Incidentally, it was rather strange why a student from Ivano-Frankivsk University was hanging out in Kharkiv with Yushchenko supporters instead of studying for his thesis at home. But it does explain why, after receiving his diploma (I wonder if he even wrote it himself?), Volodymyr Prokopiv found his first job on the other side of the country.
Sergey Berezenko
Serhiy Berezenko, however, began his public career in 2004 when he became the head of the youth organization of the Sobor party, whose permanent leader was his uncle, Matviyenko. And during Yushchenko's election campaign and the subsequent Orange Revolution, Prokopiv and Berezenko found each other—not by the fires of the first Maidan (such people didn't freeze on the streets), but in his headquarters.
At the beginning of 2006, Berezenko left the Cathedral and joined the ranks ofLeonid Chernovetsky Bloc" , on whose list he was elected to the Kyiv City Council and immediately became an advisor to the new mayor. At the same time, Berezenko invited his friend Prokopiv, who had quit the Kharkiv branch of OSTRO, to Kyiv and arranged for him to work as an assistant consultant to his uncle, MP Anatoliy Matviyenko. And when Berezenko was appointed head of the Main Department for Family and Youth Affairs of the Kyiv City State Administration, he immediately recruited his friend Prokopiv to his department.
First, in April 2007, Prokopiv was appointed chief specialist of the Department of Health, Labor, and Social Work (under the Main Directorate for Family and Youth Affairs). At the same time, Vladimir Prokopiv, together with Pavlo Tarasyuk, became the founder of the Kyiv city branch of the Ukrainian Youth Council. Incidentally, in 2016, Tarasyuk would also become the founder of the Kyiv city branch of Solidarity.
Having settled into the Kyiv City State Administration, Prokopiv was appointed deputy head of his department just a month later. He held this position until December 2009, when he resigned (or was fired) for some reason he refuses to disclose. It's indeed odd, considering his friend and patron, Berezenko, continued working at the Kyiv City State Administration until 2012.
Perhaps then Prokopiv again got involved in some kind of scandal, similar to the one that broke out during scandalous development A plot of land at 6 Gordienko Street. The Institute of Pedagogics decided to build a residential high-rise on the land granted to it by Kyiv City Council Resolution No. 68/3532 of 2005. Varlen LLC was chosen as the contractor. However, the construction threatened to damage neighboring buildings, whose residents began protesting. A lengthy standoff ensued (including fights between residents and "titushki"), which ended in victory for the developers. Media outlets reported that Prokopiv was involved in this conflict (covering for the developers), but someone removed detailed information about this from the public domain. However, it is available. Skelet.OrgBesides this scandal, Prokopiv was also implicated in a controversial development on Leonida Pervomayskogo Street...
Before his dismissal, Volodymyr Prokopiv founded VP Group LLC (EDRPOU 36884378) and then served as its general director for several months. However, in 2010, he transferred the company to his wife, Vera Andreevna Prokopiv (née Shturmai), and appointed his old friend Oleh Ruzhilo, whom he brought from Ivano-Frankivsk and arranged for in Kyiv, to manage it. Volodymyr Prokopiv himself again found employment as an assistant to MP Anatoliy Matviyenko. In the 2012 elections, he served as his authorized representative and the Sobor party representative in single-member constituency No. 17 in Vinnytsia. But then Matviyenko withdrew his candidacy in favor of the Udar member Zabolotny. This was evidence of more than just an alliance between Matviyenko and Klitschko, but also the beginning of their business relationship: “you to me, I to you.”
That same year, 2012, Prokopiv found time to travel to his native Ivano-Frankivsk and defend his PhD dissertation in chemistry at his father's department. Apparently, this was "for the sake of credibility," as he never found any practical application for his degree.
Volodymyr Prokopiv was immediately drawn into the second Maidan. However, he didn't throw stones at the Berkut or risk his life at the barricades. Instead, in the warm comfort of his "headquarters," he actively negotiated with the right people about the future distribution of power and perks. And so, by the end of February 2014, Volodymyr Prokopiv was appointed a specialist in the Land Legislation Control Department at the State Agricultural Inspectorate (SAI). Three weeks later, he was appointed deputy director of the SAI's Department for Control of Land Use and Protection. According to independent journalists, Prokopiv's appointment was aimed at seizing and plundering certain land plots in the Kyiv and Vinnytsia regions.
After the successful completion of this operation, Prokopiv was reinstated in the Kyiv City State Administration. First, Serhiy Berezenko, then head of Poroshenko's Kyiv election headquarters, included his friend and protégé on the UDAR party list for the Kyiv City Council elections, giving him the 29th seat. Thus, in May 2014, Volodymyr Prokopiv became co-chair of the UDAR-Solidarity faction and chairman of the Commission on Urban Development, Architecture, and Land Use. Readers Skelet.Org, familiar with our publications about Kyiv construction mafia, are well aware of the importance of this position in the capital's real estate corruption schemes. Thus, the Prokopiv-Berezhenko-Matvienko chain is yet another tentacle of the capital's mafia octopus, which has been sucking billions out of the Kyiv budget for years.
In the October 2015 local elections, Volodymyr Prokopiv was re-elected to the Kyiv City Council, not on the party list, but as a majoritarian candidate for the Petro Poroshenko Bloc in the Holosiivskyi district. And almost immediately, on December 1, 2015, he was elected secretary of the Kyiv City Council and one of the deputy mayors. Clearly, his appointment was a combination of clan interests, including those of the Matviyenko-Berezhenko family, Klitschko's friends, and Poroshenko's inner circle.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
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