"Ukraine Must Nationalize Its Most Important Enterprises": Key Points From Kolomoisky's New Interview

Oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky has given another interview, this time to the Censor.net website.

About Himself and Zelensky

"I — a free radical, a "toxic" personality. Although I have always been in opposition, I have always been toxic."

"Zelensky's efficiency coefficient will have to be measured by how many people return to Ukraine. We are starting now with 35 million residents in the country — this is the result of independent analysis. The return of people is his KPI. If there are 38 million (+10%), then Zelensky should be elected for a second term. And if there are 35, then — auf wiedersehen."

On a Possible Amnesty for Capital

"It's all rubbish — an amnesty for capital. Because when people have nothing to eat, and someone says he earned millions and is ready to pay some pittance for it, like stealing a million and being willing to pay 50 thousand. People won't accept such morality. Whether you earned it illegally or legally, you still stole it. Or you took advantage of a difficult situation — it's still theft. No matter how little you paid for an enterprise during privatization back then, it's still theft. If you bought a computer for 100 dollars and sold it for a thousand — that's theft."

On the Conflict Between the SBU and Kryvorizhstal

Ihor Kolomoisky
Ukrainian oligarch

I not only support [the SBU criminal case over Kryvorizhstal]; I believe that enterprises with poor environmental records should be taken away, handed over to the state and cleaned up. In the Soviet Union they fought this, and there you could not buy your way out of having failed to do something.

"They are simply robbing the country when they save money on cleaning up emissions. There was a president in Kryvyi Rih. After that, I got a call asking me: 'Do you want to buy Kryvorizhstal?' Is that normal at all? They call in the morning. In the morning I don't think clearly. They call and ask: 'If you're interested in Kryvorizhstal, Mittal is ready to sell it to you.' I ask: 'What led you to make such a call?' 'Well, the president was there.' They don't even understand that the president is himself from Kryvyi Rih, he doesn't need to be told what bad ecology is, he breathed it himself."

"I am ready to sign that I will not buy anything for the next five years. I won't buy any enterprises, I won't take them, I won't seize them. I'm not interested in any assets. Right now I want one thing — for tariffs to drop in the country. That will save the economy and keep people from leaving. Because if that doesn't happen, then we're finished. We, as a country — in the broad sense. Everyone will say that if he talks like this with his wealth, what should we poor people do? I can say even more: if, in order for Ukraine to survive, it has to become not just social democratic but communist, I am ready for that too. I am ready to give everything up and become, say, a simple factory director, as the Bolsheviks did under the NEP."

Ihor Kolomoisky
Ukrainian oligarch

To save Ukraine, a general nationalization of large state-forming enterprises is necessary, plus nationalization of subsoil development, that is, in several sectors we need state capitalism.

On Oligarchs

"The theft under the 'Rotterdam+' scheme alone, over three and a half years, I estimate at 4.2 billion dollars."

"They've already eaten it all, squandered it, spent it on Brazilians and football. There are no oligarchs left — we're dead! We need to look ahead. We have big goals and tasks. There is a new government, a new president. I am sure he has no and will not have his own newly minted Akhmetovs, Kolomoiskys, or Pinchuks."

"We drank vodka at Vadim Novinsky's house and snacked on caviar. I ask: 'Is everything all right? Good? Do you want to hear the truth? Your official report for 2018 says you earned 1.3 billion dollars from selling ore and 1.3 billion dollars from selling steel. A total of 2.6 billion dollars last year — that's the official Metinvest report. 80 dollars per ton of steel. That means you smelted 16 million tons of steel. Well done — no questions at all. Pay your taxes and go on boldly."

But with the ore, Vadim, it will be different. The report says you earned 80 dollars per ton of concentrate. It could be pellets, could be sinter, could be just concentrate. We get 16 million tons of iron ore raw material that you sold for export. The cost of iron ore raw material, let's say, is 30 dollars per ton. Although at our neighboring enterprise in Nikopol it's 20-25, but for you, let's say, the costs are 30. Total: 30+81 = 111. Because you sell for 111, so your net profit is 260%. Isn't that a bit much for you and Rinat Leonidovich? Won't your face crack?"

"Akhmetov has nowhere to run. Russia won't work. The Tereshchenkos, the Morozovs, the Tretyakovs — they also thought they were awesomely great. And how did it end? Recently I had a discussion with a man who said: 'By historical analogy, we are between February and October 1917.' And I said: 'No. October has already happened, except the Constituent Assembly wasn't dispersed by force, because the Bolsheviks got a majority in the Rada.' So where are we? Right now we are in a period like after November 1917 and before April 1918. And in April 1918 the Red Terror began."

On the New Cabinet

"I have no doubts at all that Avakov will be minister. First, there is no other candidate for this post, and second — the country needs some stable things. I think Finance Minister Markarova will also stay. These worthy people work worthily in their positions."

"Only one thing [could cause early parliamentary elections] — if the 'servants of the people' start to wh..ing around. And they will definitely wh..e around, the question is the scale. And this is a normal human process of realizing why you came to parliament."

On the Work of the Presidential Office

"The Presidential Office is doing everything competently for now, everything is fine. But they are still in a state of euphoria, they think the sea is knee-deep. I'm trying to get across to them that Petro Alekseyevich had a parliamentary majority of 303 people in November 2014. And a year later it all vanished like smoke over water. But so far they don't hear me."

On Andriy Bohdan

"People who live on the internet painfully perceive collisions with reality. But I know Bohdan, he's a normal person. Well, he has this disease with Facebook, with these phones, he sits in them. When a person sits and looks all the time, he becomes part of that phone. I absolutely forbid my children to bring phones, iPhones, any gadgets to the dinner table. What Bohdan let slip with journalists, I think, is a phenomenon. They used to say 'a man in a case,' and now 'a man from Facebook.' He came out of the virtual world, and they ask him something. He says: 'And who are you? Are you journalists? What do you want from me, like?' 'Public opinion, and so on, meaningful information.' 'I don't know, we communicate with the world completely differently, leave me alone, like.'"

Ihor Kolomoisky
Ukrainian oligarch

The man just jumped out of his computer. And then they pounced on him, so the reaction is absolutely normal. And when did they rush at Zelensky during the election campaign? They attacked Bohdan in the same way. And the man had just returned from Facebook, you have to understand, he has his own thoughts there, a big community there, right? They like things, and so on, and then those 'Svoboda members' suddenly bam him over the head: 'How will you explain this? What have you planned?' Nothing serious.

On Medvedchuk

"Someone once gave me a crude comparison: Zelensky and Kolomoisky are like Putin and Berezovsky were back then. I remember that in the press and on television it was said that Berezovsky handled prisoner exchanges for his own benefit. So, in our case the Berezovsky analogy is Medvedchuk and Poroshenko in the period after December 2017, when the last prisoner exchange took place.

That is, they weren't buying specific prisoners there, they were directly creating preferences. What would Medvedchuk be doing if the conflict ended? What would Kurchenko be doing? What would those who deal in coal mines, coal and so on be doing? For them, the war and the fate of prisoners is a screen for business. Medvedchuk trades in the Novohrad-Volynskyi pipeline. He supplies diesel, and he created a monopoly on liquefied gas in the style of Kurchenko, again."

"If Comrade Medvedchuk is conducting hostile activity inside Ukraine, there is Ukrainian law — please charge him with suspicion, prove his crime, charge him under the criminal code, and put him in prison. Or send him into long-term emigration and confiscate his property. If you can't do this under the law, then the state should not be engaging in nonsense."

On the Gladkovskys (Svynarchuks)

"Petro Alekseyevich is to blame for [the scarce aviation parts] being imported illegally and unlawfully, because there are parts for old military equipment that we need in small quantities, and which are produced for that equipment only in Russia. And perhaps these guys imported the needed spare parts that could not have been obtained through legal channels. Yes, they earned money on it. But how else do you organize such a complicated business? Let's see if journalists like Bihus tried to smuggle military equipment in from Russia themselves."

This situation is the same joke about the rat and the hamster — a matter of PR support. They were discredited, shown, people saw how they talk, what their correspondence is and how much they sent to whom, and this caused outrage. I'm not defending anyone. But the question here is not how they communicate, and not what the NABU did there. The question was this — were they importing equipment from Russia that we need, whether smuggled or not? If they were importing Russian dual-use goods into Ukraine, and this was used for our military industry on favorable terms, then they are heroes.

If they bought up junk and then sold it as new, pretending it was smuggled in, then they should be tried for that. If they inflated prices tenfold and handed out kickbacks, then yes, court, then everything is fair. But let's not hang labels on a case where things are not as clear as we were shown. Let's wait for the court."