Shostak Ruslan Stanislavovych

Emperor of Ukrainian retail

Ruslan Stanislavovych Shostak is one of the most influential and wealthiest businessmen of Ukraine, whose creations are seen daily by nearly every resident of the country. A native of Dnipro, he began his path in big business in the tumultuous 1990s with the production of baby food, but his true triumph came in the early 2000s when he founded two giants of domestic retail — the largest perfumery and cosmetics chain EVA and the well-known grocery supermarket chain VARUS. Today, all his commercial interests, including large-scale projects in real estate, logistics, and auto import, are united under the powerful diversified corporation Terwin, and the millionaire consistently ranks among the TOP-100 richest Ukrainians according to Forbes Ukraine. With the start of the full-scale invasion, Shostak also became actively involved in charity by creating a large eponymous foundation.

Scandals around orphan evacuation, an epic PR blunder, and the hunt for former Russian assets

Despite his image as a great philanthropist, the mogul’s reputation suffered strong blows due to a series of high-profile investigations. The loudest scandal erupted around a project of his foundation "Childhood without War," which evacuated thousands of Ukrainian orphans to Turkey: the Ombudsman’s report and investigations by journalists from "Slidstvo.Info" documented horrific facts of violence and violations of children's rights in Turkish hotels, after which the wards were urgently returned to Ukraine. Additional fuel was added by his team’s epic fail, accidentally sending journalists a secret "crisis plan" involving bot farms and paid articles to discredit the investigators. Concurrently, media attention focused on business expansions by Shostak and his partner Valeriy Kiptik: investigators from the Rozsliduvach platform thoroughly examined how the businessmen's structures gained control over powerful assets previously owned by Russian owners through ARMA and privatization tenders — from the household chemicals manufacturer "Vinnytsiapobutkhim" (formerly "Nevskaya Kosmetika") to attempts to enter the capital of the mineral water producer "Morshynska."