Just yesterday the head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, reported that in the Kherson region they had completed a third of the planned work to install anti-drone nets on road routes, when MOST journalists learned that these nets are being purchased from suppliers with a somewhat checkered past.
On September 17 the Prozorro portal published information that the Department of Civil Protection and Defense Work of KhODA, headed by Yevhen Pisotskyi, purchased 317,240 m2 of anti-drone nets for 6.3 million UAH.
The nets were bought from a businesswoman from Lutsk, Nataliya Borshchevych.
According to the YouControl portal, Nataliya Borshchevych decided to sell building materials a little over a month ago, as she registered as a sole proprietor at the end of July.
After signing the contract with the KhODA department, Nataliya Borshchevych registered a ZIL-MMZ 1991 dump truck in her name. As we later learned, she purchased it to transport the nets from Lutsk to Kherson.
MOST journalists also established that before Nataliya Borshchevych decided to help defend Kherson from Russian drones, she was engaged in something illegal, namely the production and distribution of pornography, as classified by the local police.
In 2020 a criminal case was even opened against her under Part 3 of Article 301 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. According to the text of the ruling of the Lutsk City District Court, in August 2020, while chatting in a video chat with a man, “she undressed and in close-up on the webcam showed her genitalia, touching them with her hands and other objects.”
Photos of an explicit nature of hers are still publicly available.
After the case was opened, Borshchevych entered into a plea agreement, but later asked the court to refuse to approve the agreement because at the time of its conclusion she did not fully understand its content and consequences.
There have been no updates on this case since April 2022.
To find out whether Nataliya Borshchevych really sells anti-drone nets, MOST journalists spoke with her by phone.
During the conversation she confirmed that she sells nets, and that she bought the dump truck to transport them.
It should be noted that at first the supplier of nets for Kherson could not recall whether there were any proceedings against her, but then she did remember.
“It was somehow closed quickly, and after that — I don’t know anything. I don’t go anywhere. I’m not aware. By the way, you said that, so it will need to be found out,” said Nataliya Borshchevych.
She says she does not remember what crime the case concerned, because it was a very long time ago. At the same time, the entrepreneur emphasized that she did not engage in “this”, and that law enforcement “mixed something up in the databases.”
When asked how she learned about the Kherson administration and the need for nets, Nataliya replied that she had been in Kherson, learned about the need for nets there, and then offered her services to supply them. However, Nataliya refused to say to whom exactly she offered these services.
“Let this be a secret,” she suggested to MOST.
Interestingly, Nataliya Borshchevych does not know where the nets that she will supply to Kherson are manufactured.
In addition to the contract with Nataliya Borshchevych, on September 12 the Department of Civil Protection and Defense Work of KhODA signed two more contracts to supply anti-drone nets.
A contract worth 9.5 million UAH was signed with Kherson entrepreneur Mykola Rozdorozhniuk. Previously he supplied gabions and provided repair services to budgetary institutions of the city and region.
Another contract of almost 1.5 million UAH was signed with Andrii Romanyuk from Kherson. He also regularly supplies construction products to KhODA.
Neither Mykola Rozdorozhniuk nor Andrii Romanyuk have proceedings under Part 3 of Article 301 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. We checked.