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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
War in “Lisy Ukrayiny”
While heavy fighting continues in eastern Ukraine, a real war has broken out around a “fat” state enterprise in the rear. This concerns the state enterprise Lisy Ukrayiny, which is in the process of being transformed into a joint-stock company and therefore has become the object of fierce battles and dirty fighting.
Since July 2026, the state enterprise has been headed by Ihor Zubovych, who replaced Yurii Bolokhovets in this position. According to the Supervisory Board’s decision, Zubovych will lead Lisy Ukrayiny until a permanent director is selected by competition. The Supervisory Board also obliged Zubovych to carry out an independent audit of the state enterprise’s activities for 2026, that is, effectively to give a financial and legal assessment of the previous leadership’s activities. And since Lisy Ukrayiny is the country’s largest state forestry operator with net profit for 2025 of 6,9 billion UAH, it is not surprising that the previous management, to put it mildly, is not thrilled about the prospect of upcoming inspections. Especially in light of the fact that since the creation of the state enterprise Lisy Ukrayiny in 2023, it has regularly been shaken by corruption scandals and investigations.
On this basis the war in Lisy Ukrayiny erupted. In defense against the audit, a powerful coalition formed — its former head Yurii Bolokhovets, who led Lisy Ukrayiny from the day it was founded and who will, in fact, be the subject of the entire audit. Joining him is the head of the State Agency of Forest Resources, Viktor Smal, who successfully overlooked the scandals around Lisy Ukrayiny all these years. Smal himself began his rapid and successful career as an assistant to the deputy Volynets, an unwavering trade union fighter for miners’ rights and for undeclared apartments in Pechersk.
Bolokhovets and Smal launched active efforts using all possible connections and resources. In particular, they began pulling regional foresters to their side — officials who have run their operations for years, are friendly with every government, and whom no corruption scandal can unseat. Thus the coalition gained Lviv “forest wolf” Anatolii Dayneka, who, like the other coalition members, apparently has nowhere to retreat. So he personally negotiated with deputies of the Lviv regional council to get them to vote for an appeal to prevent the advisor to the new head of the state enterprise Lisy Ukrayiny from working at the enterprise.
The stakes are so high that the coalition even brought in heavy artillery. In the information field, the public organization Stop Corruption of Roman Bochkala and Bohdan Khmelnytsky suddenly began to take an interest in Lisy Ukrayiny. And this precisely indicates that the coalition is not sparing or economizing on money. Because Stop Corruption is an extremely expensive anti-corruption project. In essence, Bochkala’s and Khmelnytsky’s project is living proof that, with a certain dexterity, fighting corruption can be a surprisingly lucrative business. For example, modest fighters Bochkala and Khmelnytsky today use a vehicle fleet that includes two “G-Wagons 63,” two “electric G-Wagons,” two Lexus minibuses, and, as small change, Range Rovers, etc. They live in penthouses in Pechersk in the Boulevard of Fountains, own real estate in the United Kingdom, and fly exclusively business class.
And this whole modest and unpretentious atmosphere of fighting corruption actually arises from participating in projects of commissioned (and very well-paid) discrediting of various structures and individuals. On the internet it is easy to find many testimonies about how exactly Stop Corruption fights for penthouses. That is, against corruption. And the fact that Bochkala and Khmelnytsky have surfaced in the story about the audit of the state enterprise Lisy Ukrayiny can only indicate one thing: the scale of the embezzlement is simply colossal, and someone very much does not want it to stop.
In fact, that is why the coalition is lobbying to appoint Smal as the permanent head of the state enterprise Lisy Ukrayiny. Because the show must go on. And as long as the war continues in the east — no one will notice the war in Lisy Ukrayiny.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Війна в «Лісах України»". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: ANTIKOR.
