Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The prosecution lost the battle for the capital’s “Dacha with a Mezzanine”: the court did not recognize the historic estate as a monument
The Court of Cassation put an end to the case in which the city prosecutor’s office had demanded that Jupiter Finance LLC, owner of the century-old “Dacha with a Mezzanine” on Beresteiskyi Avenue, sign a protection agreement with the Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of the Kyiv City State Administration (Kyiv City State Administration — KSCA). The judges officially found that this was unnecessary because, in fact, the building is not a monument. The reason was that shortly after the city authorities granted protective status to the building, the Ministry of Culture refused to include it in the Register of Immovable Monuments of Ukraine — because it had been repeatedly “reconstructed,” its architect is unknown, and no notable persons had lived there. Thus, the efforts of Kyiv’s civic community, which accused the company of deliberately destroying the historic building, produced no result. And in the near future, the area of the “Dacha with a Mezzanine” will likely be developed — a construction fence was already noticed there about five years ago.
As KV has learned, on 10 August 2026 the Cassation Commercial Court closed case No. 640/8240/22, in which the Kyiv City Prosecutor’s Office sought to compel the signing of a protection agreement for the “Dacha with a Mezzanine” on Beresteiskyi (formerly Svobody) Avenue in the Sviatoshynskyi district of the capital.
The prosecutors were denied opening cassation proceedings, in which the prosecution had tried to appeal the adverse rulings of the first two instances. The cassation court’s ruling is final and not subject to appeal.
The prosecution unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the panel of judges that the lower courts had not properly examined certain pieces of evidence. The cassation court also noted that the prosecutors did not provide specific circumstances showing that the case had special public importance warranting consideration by the Supreme Court. The prosecution relied on the general public importance of protecting cultural heritage, the need for the state to fulfill relevant constitutional and international obligations, and the significance of the disputed object for Kyiv. But, in the judges’ view, that alone does not demonstrate exceptional public importance.
Background
The Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of the Kyiv City State Administration (KSCA) on 2 April 1998 by its order No. 15 registered the “Kyivo-Sviatoshynske Bureau of Technical Inventory” (“Dacha with a Mezzanine” or “Sergienko Estate”) on Peremohy Avenue, 130/1, as an object of cultural heritage. Open sources do not indicate who owned the building at that time. But about a decade and a half later, in December 2012, the building became the property of Jupiter Finance LLC, which still owns it today.
On 12 December 2019 the Kyiv City Council, by decision No. 383/7956, agreed to lease a land plot on Peremohy Avenue, 130/1, with an area of 0,43 ha to Jupiter Finance LLC for 10 years for operation and maintenance of a non-residential building. The basis for this land allocation was cited as the company’s acquisition of ownership of the building. The approved draft decision clarified that the land is not part of a green zone and, according to Kyiv’s General Plan, is designated for public buildings and facilities.
On 27 December 2019 the Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of KSCA, by its order No. 109, reapproved the order to register the “Dacha with a Mezzanine” as a cultural heritage object, describing it as an exemplar of early 20th-century original dacha development in Kyiv. Accordingly, Jupiter Finance LLC was obliged to sign a protection agreement with that KSCA department. However, the next day, on 28 December, the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, by its order No. 975, declared the “Dacha with a Mezzanine” an object not subject to inclusion in the Register of Immovable Monuments of Ukraine — due to its noncompliance with the criteria defined by the Law of Ukraine “On the Protection of Cultural Heritage” and incompatibility with the characteristics set out in the Procedure for Determining Monument Categories.
In the documents on which the Ministry based its decision (including historians’ reviews and the building inspection report prepared by the State Research Institute of Building Structures), it was specified that the house is located outside the historic areas, protection zones, and regulated development zones of Kyiv as defined by applicable legislation and regulatory documents. The documentation also noted that although the building largely preserved its authenticity, it did not influence the development of the capital’s culture, architecture, or urban planning. It stated that the building’s architecture is typical for the dachas of the historic Sviatoshyn area of the early 20th century; no prominent Kyiv figures lived in or operated from the building; the object is not associated with significant historic events in the city; it is not the work of a known architect or other artist, since the project’s author is unknown; and the house does not belong to the cultural heritage of a national minority or regional ethnic group.
The documents also specified that the technical condition of the foundations was assessed as unfit for normal use and that other structural elements were damaged. Experts further determined that part of the building’s courtyard facade had been destroyed and rebuilt in the postwar period — meaning substantial changes were made to the building’s structural solutions.
Over the following year and a bit, scandals erupted over the possible destruction of the “Dacha with a Mezzanine” and alleged development plans for the site. Kyiv’s civic community sounded the alarm and demanded that authorities at various levels protect the building. In April 2021, former Kyiv City Council deputy and activist Olena Tereshchenko urged then-Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko, KSCA Head Vitali Klitschko, and head of the Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of KSCA Oleksandr Nikoriak to restore the estate on Peremohy Avenue, 130/1, to the status of a newly identified cultural heritage object and to verify the legality of the property’s alienation from the territorial community of Kyiv.
She reported that the building had begun to be fenced off for future construction, although, as Tereshchenko clarified, multi-story construction is categorically prohibited in that area by the current General Plan. She also noted that while the mansion was registered as an architectural monument in April 1998, its inclusion in the State Register of Immovable Monuments of Ukraine was blocked by the Ministry of Culture for several years. Tereshchenko suggested that Jupiter Finance LLC had consciously allowed the monument to deteriorate and emphasized that the land’s designated purpose did not allow for new construction. She also said that in February 2021 the land had been listed for sale on OLX for 1,7 million US dollars (apparently referring to the sale of the company with the land lease rights, since a plot leased from the community cannot legally be sold).
About a week and a half later, at the end of April 2021, a similar appeal to KSCA apparently came from then-chair of the Kyiv City Council Commission on Culture, Tourism, and Public Communications Viktoriia Mukha (UDAR faction). She asked the director of the Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of KSCA, Oleksandr Nikoriak, to petition the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy to include the building in the State Register of Immovable Monuments of Ukraine. According to the deputy, since 2012 Jupiter Finance LLC had taken no measures to preserve the building and seemingly had deliberately allowed it to decay. Mukha also said a fence had been erected around the building, which could indicate planned construction works.
On the court dispute
In May 2022 the city prosecutor’s office filed the aforementioned lawsuit with the Kyiv District Administrative Court (KDAC) seeking to oblige Jupiter Finance LLC to sign a protection agreement for the “Dacha with a Mezzanine.” The prosecutors’ argument was simple — according to the KSCA Department’s order, the building had protective status, but the company had not signed an agreement obliging it to maintain the property in proper condition. The prosecution, citing the Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, reported that officials had carried out a visual inspection and issued a directive to Jupiter Finance to immediately stop works on the site and provide the relevant scientific-design documentation. Allegedly, the company avoided receiving the directive and did not supply the documentation to the department.
Jupiter Finance LLC, for its part, objected to the need to sign a protection agreement. The company’s main argument was precisely that the Ministry of Culture had not included the “Dacha with a Mezzanine” in the State Register of Immovable Monuments of Ukraine. That was enough for the prosecutors to lose in the court of first instance — on 5 May 2025 the Kyiv Administrative Court of Appeals (which replaced the liquidated KDAC) dismissed the prosecution’s claim.
The court concluded that “the plaintiff did not prove that the real estate object on Peremohy Avenue, 130/1, meets the characteristics of an object of cultural heritage of national or local significance within the meaning of the current legislation, and therefore there are no legal grounds to oblige the defendant to conclude a protection agreement with the Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of KSCA.” The court also emphasized that the building’s presence in the List of Cultural Heritage Objects of Kyiv was unfounded precisely because the Ministry of Culture had refused to include it in the Register of Immovable Monuments of Ukraine. Moreover, the court noted that, under the law, the Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of KSCA should have decided to remove the object from the List within 15 days from receiving such a refusal.
Both the prosecution and the Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of KSCA attempted to appeal that verdict, but without success — on 22 June 2026 the Northern Commercial Court of Appeal denied their complaints. And, as noted above, the Supreme Court effectively determined that the first two-instance rulings “were correct.”
Interested parties
According to the YouControl analytics system, Jupiter Finance LLC was registered in September 2012 — shortly before the company became owner of the building on Peremohy Avenue, 130/1. Its current director is listed as Liudmyla Volodymyrova; the founder and ultimate beneficiary is Akshin Yusifov, who is registered in the village of Sofiivska Borshchahivka, Kyiv region. He owns Mostobud Invest LLC, which, according to YouControl, is linked to the Prodovus family corporate group, which includes more than thirty companies engaged in construction and real estate, hotel and tourism business, transport, financial services, and trade. Key figures in that group are former VII convocation MP from the Party of Regions and current head of the Boxing Federation of Ukraine Volodymyr Prodovus, and his wife Svitlana Prodovus.
It is also notable that Akshin Yusifov was or still is an assistant to People’s Deputy from Servant of the People Bohdan Torokhtii.
Previous owners of Jupiter Finance LLC, in 2016–2021, were two Azerbaijani citizens — Iftikhar Faradjov (registered in Almaty, Kazakhstan) and Murad Kasumov (registered in Kyiv). These same two individuals are the ultimate beneficiaries of the scandal-ridden Druzhba narodiv SND LLC — the company that commissioned construction of an aparthotel on Kurganivska Street, 7 in the Pecherskyi district of the capital.
That development drew repeated attention from law enforcement. In particular, the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), in a criminal proceeding opened in 2019, preliminarily established that the works were being carried out contrary to the land’s designated purpose — only a private house could be erected there. The SBI declared that officials who did nothing to stop the construction should be held responsible. It is also known that the developers had to obtain court permission to carry out the work, but later the courts deemed the construction unauthorized. Meanwhile, another criminal case in this story, investigated since 2019, produced no results — despite law enforcement temporarily managing to secure an arrest on the land.
As KV has repeatedly reported, city authorities have clearly failed in recent decades to protect Kyiv’s historic buildings and structures. KSCA officials and Kyiv City Council deputies regularly promise to work on their preservation and stress that such objects should not be demolished and replaced by yet another residential or commercial high-rise. However, such statements usually lack practical implementation.
For example, in August 2021 the Kyiv City Council, at the KSCA’s request, “imposed a moratorium” on construction and reconstruction in Kyiv that could affect 119 historic buildings. The city presented this decision as revolutionary. Experts, however, called the moratorium mere populism and an attempt to conceal the city’s failed policies on protecting valuable historic buildings and the practice of designating historic objects as newly discovered cultural heritage sites. Instead of practical preservation mechanisms, the city only recommended that owners refrain from construction work and advised officials to take relevant provisions into account.
State authorities also appear not very interested in preventing further losses of monuments and cultural heritage sites in the capital. For example, in May 2021 Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko accused the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of facilitating the destruction of monuments and cultural heritage objects in the capital. He made the statement because over the previous three years KSCA had proposed that the ministry include 1509 objects in the State Register of Immovable Monuments, but the ministry actually decided only on 23 of those objects.
In the capital, cases of destruction arise both for objects already recognized as monuments and having protection status, and for those that the city has not yet managed to include in the relevant lists. When “stateless” buildings are demolished, activists often accuse city leadership of favoring developers, since developers in such cases do not need to coordinate urban planning changes with heritage protection authorities.
In mid-2025 a scandal erupted over the destruction of the Moshchynskyi House (built 1879–1880) on Andriivskyi Descent, 18, where “restoration” was being carried out on paper. Activists say those works have already led to the loss of interior elements of the monument, and heritage protectors allege that KSCA illegally approved changes to the walls. Despite an order to stop the works, developers appear to be continuing their plans.
Back in 2012 the city prosecutor’s office unsuccessfully tried to return a historic building to municipal ownership — prosecutors told the court that city authorities had effectively “evicted” the artists who were based there and then, under the pretext of reconstruction, transferred the building into “private hands.” The companies associated with the building and the works are linked to well-known entrepreneur Mykhailo Brodskyi.
Additionally, Corporate Solutions LTD continues attempts to cancel the protection status of the old building on Naberezhno-Khreshchatytska Street — the former baths of merchant Mykhailo Bubnov (approx. 1822). The company argues that KSCA in 2023 violated the procedure for adding the structure to the List of the city’s cultural heritage objects, that the building lacks historical value, and that because of officials’ actions the owner cannot use it as wished — to reconstruct it into a business center or an aparthotel. The company lost in the first two rounds, but the cassation court recently returned the case to the court of first instance, finding that previous judges had not established all the circumstances. The company belongs to the orbit of notable businessmen and former officials Volodymyr Drobot and Ihor Plachkov.
Since 23 August 2023 the Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of KSCA has been headed by Maryna Soloviova (pictured in the collage). She replaced Iryna Chernenko, who had been acting director since 10 June 2023. Earlier, from 7 September 2018 until 9 June 2023, the department was led by the aforementioned Oleksandr Nikoriak, who is now head of the NGO All-Ukrainian Association for the Protection of Cultural Heritage. The department’s activities are overseen by KSCA Vice Head Hanna Starostenko.
Reference. The “Dacha with a Mezzanine,” also known as the Sergienko estate and the Kyivo-Sviatoshynske Bureau of Technical Inventory, was built between 1897 and 1919. There is information that it was constructed according to a “standard project” — in a style reminiscent of villas at European resorts. In 1922 the building was nationalized by the Soviet authorities, who used it for various administrative institutions for a long time. At the beginning of the current century it housed the Kyivo-Sviatoshynske BTI, from which the building got one of its names.
Author: Oleksandr Hlazunov
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Прокуратура програла боротьбу за столичну «Дачу з мезоніном»: суд не визнав історичну садибу пам’яткою". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: ANTIKOR.