Alexander Starukh: the second term of the Zaporizhzhya governor-machinist. PART 1

When Starukha was appointed head of the Zaporozhye Regional State Administration at the end of 2020, many despairedly perceived this as a continuation of the “corruption curse” that had been affecting this region for the past few years. Moreover, he already held this position during the time of Yushchenko, and then “became famous” for a number of frauds, among which the most notorious was the case of the theft of entire hectares of very expensive land from the cadastral map of Ukraine! Thus, his appointment either closed this vicious cycle of corruption of the Zaporozhye governors, or brought it to a new round of the spiral…

Readers Skelet.Info understand this problem of Zaporozhye well, because the leaders of this region more often than others became the heroes of our revealing publications! This is Yevgeny Chervonenko, who constantly creates conflicts, and the “werewolf” in general’s uniform, Konstantin Bryl, and the scandalous temporary worker Vitaly Bogovin.

The latter, by the way, holds two unique records at once. In 2020, Bogovin, having been in the governor’s chair for only a few months, soon after the publication of our material about him, hastily got ready for elections to the regional council. And on December 15, while still the head of the Regional State Administration, Bogovin organized a “closed meeting” of the regional council, which was guarded by “titushki” in camouflage uniforms (sent by his brother Evgeniy, who was involved in land raiding), and forced the deputies to elect himself as chairman. Thus, Bogovin concentrated two leadership positions in his hands at once. This actual seizure of power caused a resonant scandal that reached the Office of the President – and already on December 18, Bogovin was kicked out of the governorship, and on December 24, he also lost the chair of the chairman of the regional council, which he held for only a week. This “coup” became part of the events that led to the appointment of Alexander Starukh as the new head of the Regional State Administration.

As you can see, Ukrainian corrupt officials love to hide behind the embroidered shirts of “patriots” and the camouflages of “veterans”! And although the new Zaporizhzhya governor has nothing to do with the ATO, or even just the army, he is one of those “professional patriots”, having a PhD in the history of Ukraine – thanks to which he got into Ukrainian politics…

Court storyteller Alexander Starukh

Starukh Alexander Vasilievich was born on April 28, 1973 in Zaporozhye. As a child, he moved from one school to another several times, changing from 15th, 71st and 79th, and then entered Zaporozhye State University, graduating in 1995 with a diploma in teaching history. And he married his classmate Bessonova Marina Nikolaevna, who later and still was engaged in teaching (Zaporozhye University, Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences, Kiev University named after Grinchenko).

An unremarkable, calm, even “homely” young man, whose parents were not bosses or co-operators, did not fit into the atmosphere of the 90s. The old women could hardly have achieved any success if not for a number of fortunate circumstances. For example, if his wife specialized in US history, then Alexander Starukh became interested in the history of Ukraine during Cossack times, and with great enthusiasm. Thanks to this, while still a student, he got a job at the Khortytsia National Historical Reserve (a kind of Ukrainian version of American Western towns). There Starukh plunged not only into the living history of the “glorious Cossack hours,” which is really very interesting, but into the community of Ukrainian national patriots, for whom Khortytsia is one of the most sacred places in Ukraine (together with Hoverla and Shevchenko’s grave). This is how student Starukh became involved in Ukrainian politics. And in this field I met and became friends with Sergei Sobolev, who, by the way, also graduated from the history department of Zaporozhye University (but back in 1983)

Sobolev is known as a people’s deputy of seven of the nine convocations of the Verkhovna Rada (except for the 3rd and 5th), one of the founders of the Reform and Order party (PRP), which he first made an ally of Our Ukraine and then merged into BYuT and became one of Yulia Tymoshenko’s closest confidants. As a matter of fact, Alexander Starukh was entirely indebted to Sobolev for his miraculous ascension to the pinnacle of power.

So Alexander Starukh became one of the first members of the PRP in Zaporozhye, although at first it did not bring him any dividends. The party lost the 1998 elections miserably (3.13%), and therefore neither Sobolev himself nor his young friend Starukh (No. 172) entered the Rada on its list. The old woman had to continue to focus on work at his native Zaporozhye University, where he was in 1995-98. was a graduate student, and then defended his PhD and worked as a teacher until 2004. According to sources Skelet.InfoAlexander Starukh’s additional income at that time was grants from Western foundations and the Ukrainian diaspora. He was also helped by another “partygenosse”, Zaporozhye businessman Petr Sabashuk, who greatly helped in creating the regional organization of the PRP, financed it and headed it until Sobolev took the PRP to “Batkivshchyna”, with which Sabashuk did not have a good relationship (he preferred Yushchenko, and then Poroshenko).

The PRP went to the 2002 elections as part of the Our Ukraine bloc, so its leaders Sobolev and Pynzenik received mandates from the party list, but Starukha’s turn never came. However, Sobolev did not forget about him, and in 2004 Alexander Starukh moved to Kyiv. Officially, he was assigned as a doctoral student at the Institute of Ukrainian Archeography and Source Studies, but this was a pure fiction and he never received his doctorate. And his only source of existence was “party money” and the same grants, because with the beginning of the first Maidan, Starukh abandoned teaching forever and plunged headlong into politics.

However, calling what Alexander Starukh was doing politics would not be entirely correct. Then he was simply a member of a large political club, in which he was not even in the second, but in the third role. There were politicians, there were “deciders”, career officials, businessmen and “wallets” – and a whole crowd of party-goers, dish eaters, which included Starukh. But he was lucky to be Sobolev’s man, who helped him enter the retinue of the “people’s president.” This is where the Old Woman came in handy with his extensive knowledge of the history of Cossack Ukraine, his work in the Khortytsia nature reserve, and his honed, correct Ukrainian speech. Starukh told Viktor Yushchenko several fascinating stories about the “characteristic Cossacks,” which he liked so much that he decided to make him his court storyteller. Believe me, this is not irony! As sources said Skelet.Info from Yushchenko’s then entourage, in the period 2002-2007, Viktor Andreevich deliberately surrounded himself with people who sang in his ears about his sacred mission, about the revival of the Ukrainian nation, about the heroic past and European future, about democracy, about the soul, etc. . etc. The President simply got drunk from such speeches and went somewhere into the astral plane, like a drunken gentleman surrounded by gypsies.

To consolidate the new status of the Old Woman and give him a constant income, he was given a position in the Presidential Secretariat. Since April 2005, Alexander Starukh worked there as the chief consultant-inspector of the Regional Policy Department (which was then headed by Anatoly Medved), and with the arrival of Viktor Baloga in December 2006, he began to occupy leadership positions in this department until he himself headed it in September 2007. Considering that under Yushchenko the regional policy of the central government only led to an even greater split in Ukraine, one can guess that Starukh in his position was doing anything but business. Mainly he helped Viktor Andreevich choose towels and straw hats at fairs.

Lies and corruption

Life forced Alexander Starukh to become a professional dish licker, and for this it was necessary not only to skillfully please his “breadwinners,” but also to lie to them even more skillfully, if such a need arose, and to betray them on time. And this is exactly what happened in 2006, when the PRP left Our Ukraine and went to the elections in alliance with the Pora party and again lost the elections (and Sobolev did not receive a mandate for the second time). In 2007, the leaders of the PRP Sobolev and Pinzenik decided to unite with Yulia Tymoshenko and go to the elections in alliance with BYuT. Of course, Viktor Yushchenko (as well as Baloga) did not like this very much, so the Old Woman had to work hard, pretending that his service to the president was much more important than his friendship with Sobolev. And it bore fruit.

In December 2007, Yushchenko, having fallen out with Yevgeny Chervonenko, fired him from his post as head of the Zaporozhye Regional State Administration. True, then this place was warmed up for another five months by Deputy Governor Valery Cherkaska. He was called Chervonenko’s trusted man, however, before that he was no less a trusted man and deputy of Evgeniy Kartashov (mayor of Zaporozhye in 2003-2010). In May 2008 Cherkaska was also removed, and the question of a new Zaporozhye governor arose: it depended both on the internal conflict in Zaporozhye (around Zaporizhstal), and on the confrontation between the teams of the president and the prime minister in the capital. And it so happened that Alexander Starukh became almost a compromise figure for everyone. Yushchenko and Baloga considered him their man, Sobolev was theirs, and he quickly found a common language with Kartashov. Everyone understood the main thing: the Old Woman is not an independent figure at all, he will not play his big game, he will not even be the “master’s watchdog,” he is just a “papier-mâché governor” who avoids conflicts and quietly does what he is told.

True, at the very beginning, in public and in front of journalists, Starukh tried to portray that same stern, principled politician. So much so that he went too far, demonstrating his loyalty to Viktor Yushchenko in interview with journalists of the newspaper “Subbota Plus”in which he stated that he would consider the issue of a new president (not Yushchenko) no earlier than 2016. And he actually avoided all questions on economic topics.

So, on May 31, 2008, by presidential decree No. 497/2008, Alexander Starukh was appointed acting. head of the Zaporozhye Regional State Administration, and by decree No. 848/2008t on September 25, 2008, plenipotentiary chairman. It’s interesting that literally a month after his appointment (in June 2008), he acquired ownership of an elite apartment in Kyiv with a total area of ​​135 sq.m., which he still owns. According to sources Skelet.InfoStarukh simply privatized (for pennies) the official housing he received while working at the Secretariat. Such a farewell gift from the kind and generous Viktor Andreevich!

Alexander Starukh held the post of Zaporozhye governor until March 18, 2010, until he was fired by Viktor Yanukovych, and during this time the Cossacks remembered two things. Firstly, the frenzied scale of corruption in the region, which Governor Starukh simply “did not notice” (as well as the merger of criminal groups with the authorities). He, of course, performed regularly before Zaporozhye officials with speeches about the dangers of corruption, and even signed plans to combat it, but in reality everything happened the other way around. For example, during the governorship of Starukha, the number of reported cases of corruption… decreased by one and a half times, and the vast majority were petty (at the level of extortion of money in a school or hospital), which ended in administrative liability. Which even allowed the Old Woman to report that corruption in the region was almost over! Well, secondly, Alexander Starukh himself got stuck in extremely bad corruption schemes with the diriban of land. And this deserves special attention.

Mikhail Shpolyansky, Skelet.Info

CONTINUED: Old women Alexander: how a Zaporozhye schemer became governor twice. PART 2

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