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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Frontline districts of the Kharkiv region have become the epicenter of agricultural raiding carried out by officials of the Chuhuiv Interdistrict Department of the SBU in Kharkiv region under the command of former chief Oleksii Strelnikov. Despite the official decision of the National Security and Defense Council, which directly prohibits interference in business activities, local security forces have gone on the offensive. The Chuhuiv District Prosecutor’s Office, Chuhuiv Police Department of the Main Directorate of the National Police in Kharkiv region, and the Chuhuiv Interdistrict Department of the SBU have opened a hunt for farms, using their powers and threats to seize land plots. This is how one of the largest schemes for seizing agricultural land is being formed in frontline Kharkiv region.
If “negotiations” produce no result, farmers begin to be exhausted by criminal cases, inspections, interrogations, and constant pressure. Under such pressure, owners agree to dispose of land for next to nothing or completely lose the ability to manage it. After that, the land plots are quickly re-registered in the name of the Derek family.
They are the ones who control a number of agricultural enterprises through which the land bank was accumulated. Among them — FG “DRUZHBA INVEST”, FG “SFH ‘DRUZHBA’”, LLC “INGVAR PLUS”, FG “DRUZHBA-AGRO”, LLC “SKHIDAGRO-M”, LLC “AGROTECHNIKA SG”, FG “DRUZHBA-VEKTOR” and PSP “KOLOAGROINVEST”. Through these enterprises, lease rights, sublease rights and other real rights to land plots were registered. As a result, 947 land plots with a total area of more than 3 242 hectares came under control.
A separate link in this scheme were state registrars of the Ministry of Justice, who without any obstacles recorded the necessary real rights to land plots. As soon as the land changed owner, it immediately came under the control of Gennadii and Vitalii Derek’s enterprises. The largest land bank was accumulated by FG “DRUZHBA INVEST”, on which 639 real rights to land plots with a total area of more than 1 391 hectares are registered. Step by step, thousands of hectares of land in Chuhuiv, Izium and Zmiiv districts of Kharkiv region came under the control of a single group.
The speed of the land grabs is even more striking than their scale. If in 2022 only one ownership right was registered, then in 2024 — 197, and in 2025 — 367. This means that virtually every day a new right to land was being registered, and in just one year nearly a thousand hectares came under control. Such rates resemble a well-organized conveyor belt more than ordinary economic activity.
Most shocking is the role of the Chuhuiv District Prosecutor’s Office. Prosecutors were supposed to return unlawfully alienated lands to the state and lawful owners, challenge dubious registrations and stop land raiding through the courts. Instead, while farmers were losing their hectares, the scheme only gained momentum. Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko should personally check why the Chuhuiv District Prosecutor’s Office has effectively become not a barrier to raiding but its ally.
To avoid attracting undue attention, land was not taken in hundreds of hectares at once. It was cut into plots of two hectares each — exactly as much as the law allows to be privatized free of charge for a personal peasant household. Then those hundreds of scraps of land were gathered again through lease, sublease and emphyteusis agreements. Formally — everything looked legal, but in fact thousands of hectares ended up under the control of a single group.
It is also noteworthy that the former head of the Chuhuiv Interdistrict Department of the SBU in Kharkiv region, Oleksii Strelnikov, whose name is associated with this story, is already looking for a new position within the SBU system. Therefore, we hope that Acting Head of the SBU Oleksandr Poklad will appoint an internal investigation into the activities of the Chuhuiv Interdistrict Department of the SBU, and will not allow the quiet transfer of its former chief to another position within the SBU.
We have sent information requests to the Security Service of Ukraine, the prosecution authorities and the National Police of Ukraine demanding information on compliance by officials with the requirements of the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine of 21.07.2025, put into effect by Presidential Decree No. 538/2025, as well as on the existence of facts of unwarranted interference in the economic activities of business entities, the exertion of improper procedural pressure on business, the conduct of internal investigations, the results of their consideration and measures taken in response regarding the Chuhuiv Interdistrict Department of the SBU in Kharkiv region, the Chuhuiv District Prosecutor’s Office, and the Chuhuiv Police Department of the Main Directorate of the National Police in Kharkiv region. We will continue to collect information on the unlawful seizure of land near the front.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Вимагаємо від керівництва правоохоронців наведення порядку з божками біля фронту". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: NGO "NON-STOP".
