Andrey Portnov: raider history

Several years ago, the appearance of Portnov or his people in the office of an enterprise forced directors and businessmen to swallow Validol with shaking hands and hastily call their “roof.” The uninvited visit of the main raiders of Ukraine did not foretell anything other than the beginning of a series of troubles, in the end of which people were faced with a choice: either share part or lose everything. And although they did not stage “mask shows”, and they did not have their own “titties” swinging bats, they could let anyone into the world only through manipulation of the law and machination of the share registry. Now they expect to return, believing that the Ukrainian elite will again need their specific services…

Andrey Portnov. “Children of Dobroslav”

“Unfortunately, I don’t have school friends – either they are lost, or I am lost. We are probably in a different coordinate system. There are practically no friends left from the university,” Portnov once admitted in one of his interviews.

Perhaps, wanting to make it clear to curious journalists that he belongs to the type of people described in the famous joke: Ivan Ivanovich never studied anywhere with anyone. They really have no friends, only allies in politics and partners in business – whom they “dump” from time to time. They also hope that by renouncing people from their past, they will hide some unwanted facts about their biography from the public.

Andrey Vladimirovich Portnov was born on October 27, 1973 in Lugansk (then Voroshilovgrad), in a family supported by his mother Svetlana Mikhailovna, who worked in Soviet trade (salesperson, then store manager). However, his father Vladimir Mikhailovich, who worked as a driver, could also sometimes bring an extra “penny” into the house. Therefore, unlike many of his peers from ordinary working families, Andrei had everything that the then Soviet schoolchild needed to be happy: jeans, sneakers, tape recorders, video, some pocket money and confidence in his future. He knew that he would not become a mechanic or a miner, although he did not have a specific dream.

After graduating from high school, in 1990, Andrei Portnov went to enter the university, but failed the foreign language exam. Then he hurriedly entered a military school in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), from where he was expelled after the first year (he claims that he left on his own), sending him straight to the military registration and enlistment office. Fortunately for Andrei, his year of college was credited as military service, so he was demobilized in 1992. And, having returned to his native Lugansk, confusedly trying to adapt to a new life, Portnov joined the police, and also immediately married his school sweetheart Tatyana (born 1974). In 1993, he even enrolled in absentia at the Faculty of Law of the Eastern Ukrainian State University – perhaps eager to make a career in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. But in the same year, Portnov left the ranks of the police, possibly for economic reasons: then law enforcement officers were paid in canned food, and they had not yet begun to “protect” the stalls. Meanwhile, his son Igor (1993) was born, followed immediately by his daughter Lilia (1994).

And then the young dad was hired into the business. Whether his mother, the store manager, helped him in this, or the parents of his wife Tatyana, or maybe those very “friends” whom he so wants to forget – Portnov and his family never admitted this. But already at the end of 1993, a first-year correspondence student at the Faculty of Law was hired by the Lugansk company Yurlit Ltd LLC as a legal adviser, and a year later he was already working as a lawyer at the Lugansk Oil Depot. But let’s ask ourselves a question: what private company, especially one dealing with petroleum products, needs a lawyer without a diploma, a part-time student who has not even written his first term paper? This is only possible in one case: if he is a relative or a very close person of the owners of this company. Well, in order to be involved in the oil business in those years, very large connections were required either in government or in criminal circles.

Valery Dobroslavsky

Skelet.Info has information about the involvement of Andrei Portnov in the Luhansk organized crime group of the well-known crime boss of the 90s, Valery Dobroslavsky (nickname Dobroslav, Dobrik), who was killed in June 1997. Or more precisely, to its “business wing”, which was directly involved in commerce, privatization, and also created its own media (“Lugansk-XXI century”) and moved its people into power. According to Igor Gumenyuk (nickname Tsirkul), one of Dobroslavsky’s associates in the 90s (in 2010 he was elected as a deputy of the Aleksandrovsky City Council from the “Front of Change”), many well-known people in the region came out of their team. Among them: mayor (1994-97) and governor of Lugansk (2005) Alexey Danilov, Oleg Titamir (leader of the regional organization “Front of Change” in 2010-2014), Grigory Prigeba (one of the leaders of the Luhansk Euromaidan, in 2016 together with “ Opposition bloc” carried out a raider seizure of power in the mayor’s office of Severodonetsk), the Serpokrylov brothers (leaders of the regional organizations “PORA-PRP” and “UDAR”).

Grigory Prigeba

An interesting fact: the eternal “opposition” and the appearance of a “pro-Ukrainian orientation” of these “children of Dobroslav” is explained, firstly, by the fact that in the early 90s Dobroslavsky’s organized crime group was in conflict with its competitors, supported by the regional authorities from among the former Soviet nomenklatura. The “Dobroslavtsy” contemptuously called them “commies”, then “communo-oligarchs”, and in contrast to them they supported the Lugansk “Rukhovites”. And secondly, the murder of Dobroslavsky, according to unofficial information, was organized by the Donetsk people. Therefore, with the collapse of the “brigade” of the murdered Dobroslavsky, this hostility only intensified and dragged on for decades, manifesting itself in the endless confrontation between the former “Dobroslavsky” and Lugansk regionals.

So, Gumenyuk said that Andrei Portnov also belonged to the “Dobroslavskys” – the only one of their “brigade” who reached the all-Ukrainian political level. According to Gumenyuk, in the 90s Portnov “provided legal services” to their firms – however, he did not explain what services a half-educated correspondence student could provide. In a word, Portnov’s activities at that time are a secret that he carefully hides, and about which we would not have known anything at all if not for Gumenyuk’s revelations. No wonder he so carefully “forgot” all his former friends!

But then it was even more interesting: in 1996, Andrei Portnov headed the Ukrinformpravo law firm in Lugansk – which, according to him, he himself opened, and in January 1997, a 4th year part-time student moved to Kyiv, where he received the position of chief specialist in the department of methodology and standardization of accounting and reporting of the corporate finance department at the State Commission for Securities and Stock Market (SCSM). Moreover, a few months later Portnov was appointed deputy head of the department! Let us emphasize: Portnov did not yet have a higher education; he received it with a delay only in the summer of 1999. Thus, Roman Zvarych (Read more about him in Roman Zvarych: without a diploma and conscience ) was far from the first to