Law enforcement announced suspicions against five members of an organized criminal group that, during the occupation of Kherson, organized systematic theft of private and communal property.
This is stated in the texts of the suspicion notices published on the website of the Office of the Prosecutor General.
According to the investigation, the scheme’s organizers were the head of the occupation’s Property Fund Serhii Cherednichenko and the so‑called head of the VCA security service Artem Yatsenko. They involved three other local residents in committing the crimes: Vadym Hrudkovskyi, Volodymyr Zhuravlov and tow‑truck owner “FOX” Oleh Dihtyarenko.
The group operated with a clear hierarchy and division of roles. Cherednichenko and Yatsenko selected targets for the robberies and provided force support from Russian military personnel. Hrudkovskyi and Zhuravlov, having taken positions in the fake fund, carried out direct trips to enterprises, conducted inventories and described property. Oleh Dihtyarenko acted as the chief logistician, providing special equipment and drivers for the physical removal of the seized cars to occupation vehicle parks and to the left bank of the region.
One of the group’s first episodes was a raid on the Kherson branch of the state enterprise “SETAM”, from where, with the help of tow trucks, 28 cars worth more than 5 million hryvnias were removed. Later, the occupiers seized the base of the municipal enterprise “Motor Transport Enterprise of the Kherson Regional Council”, appropriating equipment worth more than one million hryvnias. The most large‑scale crime was documented in June 2022, when the group robbed dealer centers on Mykolaiv Highway, seizing 131 vehicles of the companies “Avtoplaneta Plus”, “Center Kherson” and “Yug Auto” for a total amount of over 47 million hryvnias.
The stolen vehicles were distributed among the structures of the occupation authorities: part of the equipment was handed over to the occupation Ministry of Internal Affairs, ministries and the railway, and the rest was used for the own needs of the “security service” and Russian propagandists. The actions of all perpetrators were directly controlled by Artem Yatsenko, who personally received the assets and guaranteed the safety of group members during the robberies.
All five suspects are charged with assisting the state‑aggressor, committed by an organized group (Part 3 of Art. 28, Part 1 of Art. 111‑2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). The article’s sanction provides for up to 12 years of imprisonment with confiscation of all property.
Serhii Cherednichenko is originally from the Poltava region. In 2009–2011 he was an advisor to a representative of one of the Russian companies in Ukraine.
In October 2013 he was one of the initiators of the creation of the association “Revival of Poltava”, which later distributed the separatist newspaper “Novorossiya”.
In 2014 Cherednichenko ran for the Verkhovna Rada, and from August 2015 he worked in television.
In October 2015 he was elected to the Poltava City Council from the political force of then‑President Petro Poroshenko. Already in July 2016 he resigned his mandate as a deputy. In February 2018 he headed the Poltava city organization of the Socialist Party of Ukraine. And in 2019 he became the head of the entire SPU.
In 2021 Serhii Cherednichenko was sentenced to 3 years in prison for beating the then‑deputy mayor of Poltava, Andriy Lyamin, but he disappeared and in 2022 reappeared in Russian‑occupied Kherson region. There he received from the occupiers the position of head of the illegal “State Property Fund”.
He has been wanted since 2023. Cherednichenko was accused of collaboration and assistance to the state‑aggressor. According to Ukrainian special services, last year he was in annexed Crimea and often traveled to Russia.