It recently emerged that former deputy head of the Kherson Regional State Administration Eduard Naumenko may be appointed as deputy minister of community and territorial development to Vitaliy Bezgin.
Naumenko is a longtime associate and godfather of Kherson-region Member of Parliament Serhiy Kozyr. Naumenko’s possible appointment attracts attention not only because of his career — he is currently the owner of a company that is vying for multi-million demining contracts, and his family acquired a luxury Lexus, despite previously declared modest incomes.
As Serhiy Kozyr himself has previously said, he and Eduard Naumenko have known each other since 2007. According to the deputy, they worked together in the coal industry. Before moving to Kherson region, Naumenko worked as a miner and foreman at mines in Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, and when Kozyr began working in Kherson region, he invited Naumenko to his team. This team at the Kherson RSA, and later in the media, began to be called “the miners”.
Thus in October 2019 Eduard Naumenko began working in the Kherson RSA as chief specialist of the infrastructure department, later headed the state institution “Local Roads of Kherson Region”, and from March 2021 to December 2022 was deputy head of the regional state administration.
At the same time, there are different versions regarding his role in procurement. Serhiy Kozyr in an interview with MOST claimed that Naumenko did not deal with tenders and was responsible for creating the road agency and legal matters. However, the minutes of the tender committee meeting of the infrastructure department show that it was Naumenko who headed that committee.
After leaving the RSA he remained on Kozyr’s team and is engaged in developing the public organization “IDPs of Ukraine”, which in the future could quite possibly become the foundation of a political force of the same name.
In addition, in autumn 2024 he was a candidate for a leadership position in the Ministry of Energy, as evidenced by his declaration.
A new stage in Naumenko’s career began in June 2026, when he headed LLC “Demining Without Borders”.
The company was registered in August 2025, and its founder is Kherson entrepreneur and musician Vladyslav Los, who also owns the advertising agency “Apperkot”.
Vladyslav is a fairly well-known figure in Kherson. How he got into the “miners” team is unknown.
Already a month after registration his company received a license from the Center for Mine Action, and two weeks after that — its first contract for demining land in Mykolaiv region.
As of the end of July the company had received demining contracts worth almost 30 million UAH. The company’s main customer is the Humanitarian Demining Center, which is subordinated to the Economic and Financial Department of the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.
Interestingly, this is not the first person from Kozyr’s “miners” team who entered the lucrative demining business. In April 2026 former Kherson RSA official Vitaliy Karavaiev was suspected of embezzling state funds intended for demining agricultural land in Kherson region.
According to the investigation, Vitaliy Karavaiev falsely documented the completion of work on already cleared sites, simulated the disposal of ammunition and forged documents. Karavaiev worked in Kozyr’s team as director of the Department of Territorial Development of the Kherson RSA.
It is obvious that securing million-hryvnia contracts for the circle around MP Serhiy Kozyr succeeds without his patronage, and the million contracts are simply a commercial success. Incidentally, quite lucrative, since Eduard Naumenko appears to have significantly improved his material standing.
Officially Naumenko has not yet filed a declaration as a candidate for a position at the Ministry for Community Development, so there is currently no information about his current income; however, we managed to find an interesting detail that the official’s family likely wanted to hide.
In particular, according to the Unified State Register of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in April 2026 a 2021 Lexus NX 300H was registered to Kateryna Dubenska. The value of such a car on the Ukrainian market can be about 35–40 thousand dollars depending on configuration, mileage and condition. Dubenska is the maiden name of Eduard Naumenko’s wife.
Kateryna Naumenko’s phone number is saved in someone’s phone as “Ekaterina_Eduard Lexus clients”.
Among the tags we also see: “Katya buyer Rusova Apt”. From leaked school databases we learned that the Naumenko family lives in a building at 3 Sofiya Rusova Street. It was this apartment in that building that was listed when enrolling their son in one of the capital’s schools. Neither Eduard nor Kateryna owns any real estate. It is currently impossible to determine who owns the apartment (due to Ukrainian registries not working).
But in the same screenshot we posted above, it is visible that Kateryna Naumenko is saved in someone’s phone as “Client rent Hmyry July garage”. Which may indicate a desire to rent a garage on Hmyry Street. Rusova Street is located next to Hmyry Street in the Osokorky area of the capital. So the family most likely lives there.
The appearance of such an expensive asset sharply contrasts with the latest public data about the family’s financial situation, since in his 2023 declaration Naumenko indicated rather modest means. At that time the couple with their children had the status of internally displaced persons and lived in a rented apartment in Kyiv.
For the whole year the official declared just over 108 thousand hryvnias of salary in the Office of the Verkhovna Rada. His wife then received 72 thousand hryvnias of state payments for IDPs. From savings the family declared 15 thousand dollars in cash and about 10 thousand hryvnias in a bank account. There were no cars or apartments in the declaration.
So we can assume that the future high-ranking official already has a potential conflict of interest due to business ties and an opaque asset structure.