After starting them the purges in the Security Service and the Prosecutor's Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi began to deal with political and parapolitical structures in the country.

Serhiy Vlasenko, a Ukrainian representative from the Batkivshchyna party (the party led by the famous Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko), published a document on his Facebook page. It is a (secret) decree to revoke the Ukrainian citizenship of several high-profile people, namely the oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, the businessman and politician Gennady Korban and the representative of the pro-Russian party Opposition for Life Vadim Rabinovich.

On July 19, similar information appeared in numerous Ukrainian media, citing intelligence sources. The confirmation itself did not come from the president's office because it is a secret decree. Also, although several unrelated sources have confirmed the signing of the decree, its content is unclear. Since the decree mentions confidential information of people, such decrees are not made public. However, the events that followed this announcement showed that the citizenship of several high-ranking Ukrainian officials, including the mentioned three, was indeed revoked.

Gennady Korban, who learned about the news while in London, tried to return to Ukraine. According to the police, they seized the "Mercedes" he was driving at the Smilnica border crossing. The border police informed Korban that by presidential decree his citizenship was revoked and he was not allowed to enter Ukraine.

What happened?

Since Korban was out of the country, this decree prohibited him from entering the country, but this is not the case with Igor Kolomoisky, and in this regard, Ukrainian politician Boryslav Bereza asked several questions. "If Kolomoisky does not have citizenship, and Korban is not allowed to enter Ukraine, then I have three questions: on what basis is Kolomoisky in Ukraine?" When will he be deported? And where?

Since the opposition politicians are already talking about this issue, and this is already supported by the situation at the border crossing, it seems that President Zelenski has indeed signed a secret decree to revoke the citizenship of high-ranking officials. The question arises why. Since Vadim Rabinovic is the founder of the pro-Russian party Opposition for Life and a close friend of Viktor Medvedchuk, it is clear why his citizenship was revoked. With Korban and Kolomojski, the situation is much more complex and deeper.

The formal reason for depriving the citizenship of all of the above would be the voluntary acquisition of the citizenship of another country. According to the law on citizenship, such a procedure is a sufficient reason for revocation of Ukrainian citizenship. All three mentioned above, apart from Ukrainian, also have Israeli citizenship, and Kolomoisky also has Cypriot citizenship.

Since Ukraine has the fifth largest Jewish community in Europe and the twelfth largest in the world, it is not surprising that it has such a large number of influential people of Jewish origin. In 2012, the Menorah Center, probably one of the largest Jewish community centers in the world, was opened in Dnipro, where Kolomoiskyi and Korban are from.

Igor Kolomojski

The most famous name on the list is the oligarch Igor Kolomoyski. Kolomoisky is a typical symbol of the oligarchization of Ukraine in the nineties. In the transition from socialism to oligarchic capitalism that hit the post-Soviet areas, Kolomoisky became one of the richest men in Ukraine. He is one of the founders of the conglomerate "Privat Group", based in Dnipro, which owns Privat Bank - the largest commercial bank in Ukraine.

In addition to being the largest commercial bank, it is one of the few remaining banks in Ukraine that is not foreign-owned. In addition, "Privat Group" controls almost the entire metallurgical industry in Dnipro. It has 42% (making it the largest shareholder) of UKRNAFTA, the largest oil and natural gas extraction and processing company in Ukraine. According to Forbes, Kolomoisky is worth a billion dollars. However, he is estimated to have had the highest fortune in 2010, when he had $6,2 billion.

For years, he used his influence in political struggles in Ukraine. After the end of President Kuchma's second term, Kolomoisky opposed Viktor Yanukovych and his Party of Regions. They gave some support to the then pro-European option led by Victor Yushchenko. However, Kolomoisky mostly looked after his own interests, and in the later conflict between the two camps in the Orange coalition, he sometimes supported Yushchenko and sometimes Tymoshenko.

In addition, Kolomoisky was also the temporary governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, in 2015 he was dismissed by President Poroshenko.
Thus, in the last presidential elections, Kolomojski played an important role. He was far from a rival of President Zelenski and the current government. We are talking about a person who practically paved the way for the future president.

Huge media space

Kolomoski also owns the 1+1 television channel, which aired the series Servant of the People, in which Zelenski himself appeared in his presidential campaign. The support of Kolomoiski and the people around him was not limited to the vast media space. The cadres from that oligarchic environment were integrated into the campaign from the beginning, and later some entered the parliament.

The motivation of the oligarchs to support Zelensky was specific. Former President Poroshenko decided to nationalize Privat Bank in 2015, and Kolomoisky could not allow Poroshenko to become president once again. In addition, in April 2019, the FBI launched an investigation involving Kolomoisky and several other Ukrainian businessmen over their dealings in West Virginia and Ohio. The US court said and described how Kolomoisky used his control over Privat Bank to transfer money from Ukraine to the US through shell companies and offshore accounts.

Gennady Korban

Similar to Kolomoisky, Korban is also a "post-Soviet hybrid" of businessman and politician. While Kolomoiski was the governor, Korban was his deputy. But the connection with Kolomoiski still goes back a little further in the past. In the 1990s, Korban became Kolomojski's business partner. In 2005, Korban was appointed to the supervisory board of UKRNAFTA, a company majority-owned by Privat Group.

His fortune is estimated at 55 million dollars. In 2015, he founded the local UKROP party, which was the opposition to Poroshenko. At the national level, the party is not of great importance, but it won a majority in the local elections and Boris Filatov became the mayor of Dnipro. Korban, of course, is a close friend of Mayor Boris Filatov. Generally, both rule the city.

Not long after the election, he ended up in pre-trial detention after dramatic raids targeting UKROP offices across the country involving around 500 Security Service officers, which Korban blamed on Poroshenko, with whom he was publicly feuding at the time. Probably, Korban's arrest was a continuation of the conflict between Poroshenko and Kolomoisky. As part of the group gathered around Kolomoisky, he joined Zelenskyi's campaign, but he also did so for personal reasons, in order for Poroshenko to lose the next election.

The relationship between the president and the local government in Dnipro

Since Zelenskiy came to power, the local government in Dnipro has a rather difficult relationship with the president's office. In 2019, Filatov issued an ultimatum, threatening to leave the post of mayor if the Central Bridge in the Dnieper is not completed. This was followed by investigations in the town hall and inspections by police officers in order to control the budget funds.

The president's office and the local government eventually managed to find a common language. Since the beginning of the war, Korban and Filatov have been leading the defense of the area. As a result, they further strengthened their positions in that area. But that is not the main reason for this conflict.

Recently, the US congresswoman with Ukrainian roots, Victoria Spartz, called the chief of staff of the president of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, at the time of the intelligence crisis that occurred in Ukraine, when President Zelensky fired the head of the Security Service of Ukraine and his long-time friend . She called it a "long-term internal problem" and practically called for its resolution.

The president's office believes that the call came after Korban and Filatov falsely informed the congresswoman. The congresswoman is on good terms with Filatov, and this thesis was also expressed by the advisor to the chief of staff of the president, Oleksiy Arestovic.

Deprivation of citizenship

In an interview with the Ukrainian media, one of the members of President Zelensky's close circle said: "It's not about taking away citizenship. That procedure does not exist. It's about termination. In other words, there can be renewal."

Due to the complexity of the Ukrainian bureaucracy, the secrecy of the decree, as well as the possibility of an open conflict, the decree does not seem to be a completely open retaliation, because in addition to Kolomoisky and Korban, some other lesser-known people remained stateless. An example is the mentioned Vadim Rabinovich, who has nothing to do with this "revenge". It is also claimed that one representative from the ranks of the ruling party also fell into that circle without citizenship.

The text is taken from the Croatian "Index" is the comment of the journalist Ivan Covic.