Billions for energy reconstruction: Mykhailo Reva exploits state funds through ties to Kyrylo Tymoshenko

The “Great Construction” project, in its worst traditions, has reached energy facilities damaged by shelling from the aggressor country. Multi-million contracts are tendered on a non-competitive basis and go to companies with the right connections.

Reconstruction of Zaporizhzhya’s centralized heating system for 300 million, construction of a protective structure for the Kaniv HPP for 140 million, anti-drone protection for the Kremenchuk HPP, and numerous reconstructions at “Kyivteploenergo” facilities, by a strange coincidence, are awarded to companies linked to Mykhaylo Reva and his family. Journalists analyzed the registries and found connections that may explain such good fortune for this businessman’s enterprises.

Mykhaylo Reva and his family have a wide range of business interests: from engineering and installation works to the agricultural industry and hunting.

Last year, Reva’s surname surfaced in a major journalistic investigation that revealed the appropriation of 80 hectares of forests by the head of the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine,” Yuriy Bolokhovets, and persons close to him. In the summer of last year, Bolokhovets received a suspicion of illegal enrichment. However, already in September 2025 he was released on bail and, apparently, returned to work at “Forests of Ukraine.”

On those 80 hectares mentioned by the journalists, there are lands belonging to the family of Mykhaylo Reva. Moreover, the hunting enterprise “Yeher,” owned by the Revas, is also registered there. Another plot is registered to Oleksandra Zubko. She is the daughter of former deputy Yuriy Zubko, who was suspected of lobbying developers’ interests. The neighborhood of the Revas and Zubkos is not just a coincidence. They have common business interests.

Oleksandra Zubko was listed among the co-founders of LLC “Ivanhorodske.” Also appearing there were Mykhaylo Reva’s son Andriy and Yuriy Bolokhovets’s wife Liudmyla. Zubko’s son Heorhiy, together with Andriy Reva, were co-founders of LLC “M.V. Invest.” Heorhiy Zubko and Mykhaylo Reva were also listed among the founders of LLC “Lux A.”

Yuriy Zubko is a former Kyiv City Council deputy and ex-MP. In 2010–2012 he worked at the Ministry of Defence, and later moved to “Kyivmiskbud.” In 2016 he was suspected of illegally lobbying benefits for “KMB” and a conflict of interest.

Zubko’s son Heorhiy worked from 2016 to 2021 as deputy general director for commercial activities at Boryspil Airport. It was during this period that companies linked to the Reva family began winning tenders for various works at the airport.

From 2018 to 2020, PE “Garant Energo” won more than twenty tenders at Boryspil worth 310.7 million hryvnias. In fact, the business interests of the Zubkos and Revas became intertwined with state interests and benefited both families.

In 2022, Heorhiy Zubko became an advisor to the deputy head of the Office of the President, Kyrylo Tymoshenko. The same one who was responsible for “Great Construction,” which, due to scandalous contracts, had already been dubbed “great theft.”

From the moment Zubko began advising Tymoshenko, the affairs of Mykhaylo Reva’s companies went up even more actively. But now winning state tenders became even easier, since some of them could be conducted on a non-competitive basis.

From December 2022 to the present, LLC “NVP Garant-Energo” owned by Mykhaylo Reva has won tenders only at “Kyivoblenergo” worth 840 million hryvnias. This entity is a municipal enterprise of the executive body of the Kyiv City Council — the Kyiv City State Administration, where Heorhiy Zubko’s father once worked. Most of these public procurements were conducted with a single participant on a non-competitive basis, citing a Cabinet of Ministers resolution that allows such a procedure during martial law.

Another company belonging to Mykhaylo Reva’s group, LLC “Garant Energo,” from 2023 to the present won another thirteen tenders for repair works at “Kyivteploenergo.” It was also awarded the construction of a protective structure for the electrical equipment of the Kaniv HPP worth 141 million hryvnias, several tenders for the construction of anti-drone protection for the Kremenchuk HPP, and the construction of a protective structure for the building of HPP-1 of the Dnipro HPP. The latter procurement is estimated at 1.8 billion hryvnias.

It should be noted that the aforementioned former deputy head of the Office of the President, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, from 2024 worked as an advisor to the then Minister of Defence, and now Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, Rustem Umerov, who “appeared” in the so-called Mindich tapes, where the participants discussed theft in the energy sector.

And the current deputy minister for communities and territories development, Kostyantyn Kovalchuk, in 2019 was listed as head of the legal department of another of Mykhaylo Reva’s companies — PE “Garant Energo M.” In 2018, this company was chosen by ARMA as the manager of the Novyi Rozdil CHP and Novoiavorivsk CHP, which belonged to the Dubnevych brothers. As a result, Reva’s company managed things in such a way that it disrupted the heating season and was replaced by a subsidiary of NJSC “Naftogaz of Ukraine.”

Thus, by a coincidence of circumstances, companies belonging to the Reva family won “lucrative” state tenders at Boryspil Airport when Heorhiy Zubko worked there. And then, from the beginning of the full-scale invasion, they began to absorb billion-hryvnia state orders at “Kyivoblenergo,” which is subordinate to the Kyiv City Council, where Heorhiy Zubko’s father Yuriy once worked. At the same time, the younger Zubko took up the position of advisor to the then deputy head of the Office of the President, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, when he was responsible for “Great Construction,” and later began advising the Minister of Defence.

Of course, everything described could be called just a coincidence. But these coincidences cost the state billions of hryvnias, and most of these tenders do not allow other companies besides Mykhaylo Reva’s firms.

It will be interesting to see how much longer the neighbors on the plots of appropriated lands of the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” will continue to combine their business interests with state ones, and whether law enforcement agencies will notice the strange coincidences between the tenders won by Mykhaylo Reva’s companies and the career of the Zubko family. And whether the scandalous Kyrylo Tymoshenko played any role in these coincidences.