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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
In the Kirovohrad region, “turncoats in uniform” are fabricating cases against state agricultural enterprises
For decades the agroholding Chervonyi Zemlerob in Kirovohrad region had been falling apart. Everyone who felt like it squeezed the last drops out of it without investing a single penny. But in 2025 year a professional crisis-management team finally took over the enterprise.
In one and a half years of leadership, Yuriy Nemykin raised it from ruins, restarted the production cycle, began paying taxes and repaying debts. Chervonyi Zemlerob ranked among the top three state agricultural enterprises in the country for yield in 2026 year. And then the law-enforcement machine suddenly woke up. A real hunt began for the person who was restoring the country’s economy amid war, crop failures and port blockades — as if he were an enemy. This is the story of how Yuriy Nemykin and the team of Chervonyi Zemlerob found themselves alone against a predatory clan structure that decided to “gut” the revived enterprise.
Why is success a threat to the system?
The state enterprise Chervonyi Zemlerob had long been a textbook example of what an unmanaged state asset becomes. For decades its resources were divided among all comers: local Kirovohrad “elites,” outright bandits and people in uniform closely tied to law-enforcement structures. The enterprise was looted, driven into multi-million debts. It changed hands, losses grew, the land went to ruin.
All those years the law-enforcement agencies that today are exerting unprecedented pressure on the enterprise saw no problems. They did not notice the squandered assets, the neglected fields, or the millions owed to the budget. Until in 2025 year a “rupture of the pattern” occurred: the competition for the leadership position was won by someone who, thanks to professionalism and reputation, began to actually develop the state asset rather than rob it and drive it to bankruptcy.
But it turned out that the system of power in Kirovohrad region was used to operating differently. A system that, unfortunately, is not result-oriented immediately recognized him as an “outsider.”
Yuriy Nemykin, who had substantial managerial experience and a reputation as a crisis manager, saw his appointment to the state enterprise as a professional challenge. By the way, he worked for 30 years in law enforcement, and after leaving served in private companies. Now he had to apply his anti-crisis experience in the public sector.
The legacy Nemykin inherited looked like this. There was not a single sack of seed in the warehouses. The fields were so overgrown with weeds that yield was out of the question: first the land had to be cleared for sowing. The machinery consisted of two broken tractors. The enterprise was a chronic debtor, and every penny that arrived in its accounts was immediately written off by the tax service against old debts.
Tax debt left by previous managers amounted to about 10 million UAH. Another roughly 40 million UAH related to obligations to other creditors, including those tied to bankruptcy procedures. In total — nearly 80 million UAH of debt accumulated over years that no one intended to repay.
Moreover, the enterprise was burdened with about three dozen criminal cases from the past. Because of them no elevator agreed to accredit the enterprise. It was toxic: no one wanted to deal with it. It seemed hopeless…
How to pull the state sector out of losses
Yuriy Mykolayovych Nemykin headed Chervonyi Zemlerob after winning a competition. For the enterprise’s staff, appointing an experienced agribusiness manager was, without exaggeration, a chance for salvation.
But what do you do when there’s no money, no resources, no machinery, and, most importantly, no trust from financial and business structures? Everyone shied away from it like from fire. Nemykin began visiting banks, traders, elevators, suppliers. Everywhere he heard the same thing — refusal. Yet one company agreed to help, where they knew Nemykin from his previous work and trusted him. They viewed his cooperation proposal as realistic given the anti-crisis technologies in his managerial toolkit.
Thus a model was born that the enterprise’s team regards as a positive example of public-private partnership. Unfortunately, such examples are rare in Ukraine: where, without pompous presentations and loud words, private business assumes the financial and production risks and the state enterprise gets a chance to survive.
This case should have been taken as a basis and scaled across Ukraine. The country clearly needs tax revenues, the revival of production, job creation and social stability. But the “masters” of Kirovohrad region, who have turned law enforcement into a baseball bat in the hands of racketeers, obviously think otherwise.
How to break the vicious cycle of debt?
Agriculture follows a simple rule: to harvest in autumn you must invest in sowing in spring. That means long before receiving the first revenue you must buy seed, fertilizers, crop protection, repair machinery, pay for fuel and labor.
Only then, months later, if the weather is favorable, these expenses turn into grain.
But Chervonyi Zemlerob had nowhere to get the money — debts prevented using incoming funds. One could once again pause the production cycle, skip sowing and lose another year without earning a single hryvnia. How to break this vicious circle?
Private partner structures took on financing the production cycle. Funds were provided to grow the future crop, materials were purchased and work carried out in the fields — from fertilizer application to crop treatment.
Since the state enterprise had no free money, it was agreed that Chervonyi Zemlerob would settle with partners with the future harvest. Such arrangements are common in agriculture; there is nothing unusual or criminal about them. But these arrangements, to the detriment of the state and contrary to economic logic, law and all legal procedures, are being attempted to be turned into proof of a crime that never happened.
If there is no corpus delicti and one is invented, then essentially we are dealing with a falsification clearly carried out in the interests of someone “above.” For ordinary law-enforcement officers would hardly dare so brazenly and cynically break the law on their own initiative.
From ruin to third place in the country
Nemykin’s team entered the enterprise in the second half of April 2025 year — when all normal agronomic windows had already been missed. In May and June they had to literally hack their way through weeds on neglected fields that had not been cultivated for years. Although late and in extremely difficult conditions, the sowing was nonetheless completed.
A new problem then arose: 2025 year was one of the driest in recent decades. Yields fell across the region at all agricultural enterprises. Chervonyi Zemlerob, which hadn’t had time to prepare properly for the season, produced an even more modest result. Still, the enterprise held on.
For the first time in many years it began not to accumulate debt but to repay it. During 2025–2026 years about 5 million UAH of tax debt was returned to the budget. Management set a goal to repay virtually all the tax debt of 38 million UAH by the end of the current year, which before had only been growing.
And in 2026 year what the workforce of Chervonyi Zemlerob calls “Nemykin’s miracle” happened — the completely ruined debtor-enterprise rose to third place in Ukraine for yield among state agricultural enterprises.
The enterprise that a year and a half earlier had neither seed, nor tractors, nor hope, became one of the best in the country. One would think this is a success story the state should showcase. But the story took a very different turn.
How “greetings” turned into lawlessness
As soon as the enterprise began to rise, “guests” started coming. Beginning in autumn 2025 year, inspections began one after another: commissions, claims regarding compliance with environmental legislation, land inspections.
The enterprise that yesterday interested no one suddenly became the object of intense attention.
We all understand how this typically plays out in Ukrainian realities. First calls, passing “greetings,” veiled hints, then open threats: you are outsiders here in Kirovohrad region, we will jail you all… Everything like the well-known American saying: “Texas belongs to Texans.” In this case — “Kirovohradites.”
Pressure on the workforce and its leader gradually intensified. The cherry on top was a report by an operative officer of the Strategic Investigations Department of the National Police in Kirovohrad region, Oleksandr Shevchuk. Both enterprise employees and external experts, after reading his version of the “crime,” say in one voice: the report was written by someone who understands nothing about the specifics of agrarian economics. All accusations are literally pulled from thin air — indeed, simply fabricated.
At some point the lack of a crime became obvious even to Shevchuk, and he began to “adjust” the original version. Apparently he received instructions to open a case by any means, whatever it cost. First the enterprise was baselessly accused: “You stole wheat.” But no evidence was found. Then: “You stole sunflower.” And again nothing emerged.
Who ordered Shevchuk to initiate illegal pressure we will tell in due course. But he completed the task assigned by his “masters” — on the basis of fabricated accusations set out in the report an investigation was launched. Logically, the investigator should have conducted an independent procedural analysis of the report and noticed the baselessness and absurdity of the accusations. For some reason this did not happen. Nor did the prosecutor pay attention…
This scheme of unlawful pressure on business is not new: the operative’s version, which has nothing to do with reality, is taken as a basis, and the law-enforcement system, ignoring the lack of corpus delicti, opens fire to destroy. The work of a team that had just begun returning to normal activity was paralyzed.
Endless searches and seizures began in the offices of Chervonyi Zemlerob and partner companies — almost down to paper clips. Again, nothing illegal was found, no document indicating violations. Then came total wiretapping — and again nothing.
Time and again officials of Chervonyi Zemlerob patiently explained each operation and provided all documents proving its legality. But all of this was ignored, not attached to the case and therefore not taken into account. The investigation’s task was clearly to find guilt where no evidence ever existed. Nor could it.
Given Chervonyi Zemlerob’s toxic history, partners from the start insured themselves against such lawlessness: all procedures underwent prior legal audit, so they were absolutely lawful and transparent. Business was run “in the white.” As it turned out, not without reason. Unfortunately, the rule of law in Ukraine ends at the border of Kirovohrad region, where strict compliance with the law does not protect against legal arbitrariness. On the contrary, it provokes those who consider themselves the “masters of the region,” like a red rag to a bull.
How an advance payment became “embezzlement”
On 18 October 2025 year the investigative department of the Main Directorate of the National Police in Kirovohrad region registered criminal proceeding No. 12025120000000665 under part 4 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine — embezzlement, misappropriation of property or seizure of it by abuse of official position. The basis was the same operative report by Shevchuk. According to it, the state enterprise’s grain was allegedly sold at significantly understated prices, causing damage to the state.
One need not be a genius to see conscious falsification in this accusation. Chervonyi Zemlerob has explained to the investigation a hundred times where this invented “understated price” came from. It concerns forward contracts — a standard instrument for financing future harvests used by farmers worldwide.
The enterprise needs money for sowing, but there is no crop yet. The buyer pays an advance in exchange for an obligation to deliver grain after harvest. This advance is only part of the final price; the rest is paid after delivery.
The example the enterprise gives is clear even to someone far from agriculture. A ton of grain costs 9 thousand UAH. In spring the buyer transfers an advance of 3 thousand UAH so the enterprise has money for seed and fuel. After harvest he pays the remaining 6 thousand UAH. Repeat: 3 thousand is not the “understated sale price” of the grain, but merely the first advance payment! The actual full price used to settle with the state enterprise is 9 thousand!
Moreover, documents provided by Chervonyi Zemlerob show that after harvest buyers fully settled with the state enterprise. Tax records plainly show: the grain sold by the enterprise in 2025 year was paid down to the last hryvnia; buyers owe nothing.
All this is confirmed by primary documents available to the investigation, yet for some reason it stubbornly ignores them. Valuing the deal by the first advance payment without considering the rest of the contract is a legal nonsense! Only a grossly incompetent person or someone acting with malicious intent could take an advance payment from the Unified Register of Tax Invoices and call it the “sale price”!
When an ordinary commercial operation is turned into a “sale of state property at an understated price,” this can be seen as an attempt to fabricate a criminal case. That in itself could constitute a criminal offense. The team at Chervonyi Zemlerob is convinced this issue should be checked by competent authorities.
How to find what no one hid
When the attempt to pass the advance payment off as the final price began to stall, new episodes appeared in the case without any grounds — about sunflower and yields. Later these episodes were split off, but materials concerning them still remain in the first criminal proceeding, which the defense considers a direct procedural violation.
The logic of the accusation is: if the yield was lower than expected, then some of the product was hidden. But the discrepancy between expected and actual yield in itself proves nothing — especially in an abnormally dry year on fields that had been overgrown with weeds for years. An expected yield is called “expected” precisely because nature does not always comply with human wishes.
Enterprise specialists told investigators that one can speak of concealment only after analyzing sowing areas, combine harvester data, weighbridge records, warehouse accounting, transport… and not by assertion.
The investigation interviewed employees, received full access to a huge array of documents and information about transactions with counterparties. Again it found nothing to support the concealment version! The gap between assumptions about how much the enterprise “should” have harvested and proof of how much it actually harvested is enormous. Operational fantasies cannot fill that chasm.
Because the first case was falling apart before their eyes, a second was hastily organized. On 6 July 2026 year information on proceeding No. 12026120000000254 was entered into the Unified Register of Pretrial Investigations. The same article — part 4 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code. But now they invented a different reason: alleged embezzlement of the 2026 year harvest — the very record harvest that put the enterprise among the top three in the country.
The initiator was the same “ready-for-anything” operative who wrote the first report — Oleksandr Shevchuk. Others apparently refused to participate in this “circus.”
Besides outright legal arbitrariness, this case has another aspect. Recently President Volodymyr Zelensky announced an expansion of the support program for Ukrainian businesses operating during the war and critical for Ukraine’s defense and economy. In Kirovohrad region, however, law-enforcement interpreted that call in a very peculiar way.
It turns out that the better an enterprise performs, the more suspicions law-enforcement raises. Didn’t find theft in the 2025 year harvest — look in the 2026 year. Didn’t find it in 2026 — continue terrorizing in 2027… What new facts have appeared? How does the second case differ from the first? The enterprise’s team never received answers to those questions.
It’s no secret that a tax hole of 70 billion hryvnias is expected by year’s end. And who should be thanked for it? Those “Shevchuks” and their “roof,” who pull investigators and prosecutors into clan groups and illegal schemes.
Sixty-four warrants!
The scale of illegal “attention” to this single, not even the largest but revived, agricultural enterprise is striking! Within the criminal proceedings 64 court authorizations were obtained for investigative actions: temporary access to documents, numerous searches, covert investigative actions, including obtaining information from telecom networks and intruding on private communications.
Nemykin himself has been placed under covert surveillance. “I’m a record holder! — Yuriy Mykolayovych bitterly jokes. — Neither Mindich nor Kravchenko had so many warrants.” Unfortunately there is too much truth in that joke: the director of a state agroholding who raised it from ruins has been subjected to a level of covert surveillance unknown even to figures in the country’s most high-profile corruption investigations.
Yet the courts that grant permissions for this abnormal conveyor of wiretaps, surveillance and searches are untroubled. Following the investigation and prosecution, they ignore the absence of corpus delicti in the actions of the enterprise’s leadership.
Why wiretap a person for months when all the enterprise’s operations — contracts, payments, tax invoices, warehouse registers, transport documents — lie on the table and are open for inspection? The answer is one: the system is not interested in the legal status of actions; it is carrying out an order “from above” — to apply the maximum possible pressure on Chervonyi Zemlerob.
Is the goal of the investigation to inflict maximum harm?
On 30 July and 19 August 2026 year the pressure entered a new phase. Searches were conducted at Chervonyi Zemlerob and its counterparties — in executives’ offices and warehouses where products were stored. Grain was seized: both that stored at the state enterprise and grain that already belonged to private companies that had purchased it under contracts.
The investigator recognized the grain as material evidence and initiated seizure of it. For the enterprise this was a blow to the heart. For a company that had just gotten back on its feet, grain is everything at once: payroll for the workforce, payments to creditors, and funds for the next season. Removing it is like cutting off the oxygen supply.
Part of the seized grain was intended to settle with those who financed the harvest: supplied fertilizers, performed field work, advanced payments. By seizing the grain, law enforcement effectively blocked the ability to pay partners who, together with Yuriy Nemykin, believed in reviving the enterprise.
From the Krasnyi Zemlerob warehouse 700 tons of grain were seized, intended for animal feed and the sowing campaign, effectively depriving the enterprise of prospects. What is this if not deliberate sabotage? The trial court understood this and denied the investigator’s motion to seize the grain. However, the prosecutor persistently appealed, perhaps wishing to finish off the enterprise — “free” it from personnel and the state from an asset that could earn money through privatization. The appellate court sided with the enterprise. Unlike Chervonyi Zemlerob, the prosecutor’s office has no specialists capable of feeding 90 pigs on its own funds and without grain. Therefore the appeal was also left without satisfaction.
Private partners of the state enterprise fared worse. Under prosecutor pressure the first-instance court decision was overturned. Nearly 5 thousand tons of grain became subject to seizure, depriving entrepreneurs of the ability to fulfill contractual obligations to Chervonyi Zemlerob. The state enterprise could not receive the money due for grain it could not dispose of. On what grounds was it seized? Who will be responsible? When and to whom did ownership of this grain pass? If the goal was to inflict maximum damage, it seems the investigators didn’t care about these questions.
The investigation continued the practice of falsifying violations. It is not difficult to do if one ignores the realities of agribusiness: grain constantly moves — field, temporary site, elevator, buyer, another enterprise’s warehouse. It is natural that actual movement, accounting entries, delivery documentation and transfer of ownership do not always coincide in time. But each stage is documented! So it would be easy to understand the whole picture by studying the full chain of documents.
Instead the investigation built its version on separate accounting entries mechanically ripped from context. As a result of such manipulations another episode was born — about roughly 2 thousand tons of grain allegedly taken out without proper paperwork. Yet no one explained which batches of grain are meant. From where and to where were they moved? Who owned them? What documents accompanied them?
Just like that — 2 thousand unknown tons were taken out somehow and somewhere. And this is presented as evidence!
Who will pay for this unlawful “banquet”?
The actions of Kirovohrad law enforcement are hard to classify as anything other than deliberate sabotage. Accounts and grain seized. Fields are not being cultivated. Sowing is not carried out. Taxes are not paid. The enterprise that took a year and a half to raise from ruins has stopped. Who will pay for this? Who will pay partner fees? Who will pay to store the harvest? Losses grow daily.
Seized grain must be stored somewhere: pay for storage capacities, maintenance, security, monitor product condition.
Next question: who will now pay wages? Today Chervonyi Zemlerob’s workforce numbers about 60 people. For them this is not lines in a criminal case but wages, work and the ability to feed their families. If the stoppage drags on, layoffs will be inevitable.
What will happen to the agroholding next? Without timely sowing the next year will bring even greater losses — weeds will return to fields the Nemykin team fought for a year and a half. The ruin from which the state enterprise had so painfully recovered will return thanks to those who, by logic, should have protected the state’s interests. Today they are doing what missiles and port blockades could not — finishing off the agricultural sector and the companies the industry rests on. What will the state get as a result of the destructive pressure by law enforcement?
A state asset subject to privatization is rapidly devaluing again, debts are growing, development is impossible... Who will want to buy such a ruined enterprise? Maybe Shevchuk together with the investigators and prosecutors will take part in such a tender? Unlikely.
Who stands behind the system of Kirovohrad arbitrariness?
Let’s answer bluntly: what is needed for such a mad mechanism of lawlessness toward Chervonyi Zemlerob to operate at full power? For a criminal case to move in one direction for years, one operative is not enough. You need an investigator who does not ask unnecessary questions. You need a procedural supervisor who overlooks the obvious. You need a prosecutor who approves. You need courts that stamp permissions.
The names of people capable of influencing this entire chain in Kirovohrad region are well known. These names repeatedly surface when talking with local farmers, entrepreneurs and some regional council deputies. A stunning picture emerges — Kirovohrad region has been almost occupied by a clan headed by a regional official who spent nearly thirty years building a career in law enforcement. That time was enough to build a sprawling system of corrupt ties and to embed members of his family into it. As a result, Kirovohrad region got a “family contract” of law-enforcers who are used to using their influence to extract “tribute” from state assets and private business. Their activities certainly deserve a separate journalistic investigation, which is yet to come.
Worst of all, behaving like highway robbers, this clan hides behind ties “at the very top.” They boast about it on every corner so brazenly that they have brought the situation to the brink of almost a new “Mindichgate” — only with a Kirovohrad flavor! Does the country’s leadership know about all their lawless antics locally? Unlikely. Would Kyiv be happy that they are being used and set up in the dark? Unlikely. Will the head of the Kirovohrad law-enforcement clan’s ties “at the very top,” which he hides behind, help him? Judging by recent moods at that “very top,” they are not prepared to risk reputation for someone already beyond repute.
“We are interested in the state investigating everything honestly and impartially. We have nothing to hide,” say people at the enterprise. Yuriy Nemykin also does not intend to back down. He has already appealed to the President of Ukraine, the State Bureau of Investigations and the State Property Fund demanding an independent review of all circumstances of the criminal proceedings against the enterprise. It’s not hard to calculate how much this “investigation” has already cost the state. And to compare the imaginary losses the investigators sought with the real losses they have already caused.
The problem goes far beyond Kirovohrad region. Its resolution will determine whether domestic and foreign businesses will continue to take on restoring ruined state assets. Will they learn a simple lesson: raise a state enterprise from ruins — and you’ll get a search, not gratitude.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "На Кіровоградщині “перевертні у погонах” фальсифікують справи проти державних агропідприємств". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: ANTIKOR.
