“They’ll skim the money. They’ll steal everything. They won’t build anything, as always.” It is precisely these words of the former head of the Kherson MVA, Roman Mrochko, with which he in autumn 2024 tried to mock the skepticism of Kherson residents about the construction of large school shelters, that now sound like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Two years have passed. While in other frontline regions the shelters built already allow children to return to in-person learning, in Kherson by September 1, 2026, the ambitious “underground schools” project left behind unfinished concrete structures, criminal proceedings, and millions in losses.
In recent months the story of Kherson’s “underground schools” has acquired new vivid details that cannot be kept silent about, although current and former local officials would prefer to forget it like a bad dream. Journalists from our editorial team were fortunate (or perhaps not) to witness the birth and death of the so-called school shelters project, whose obituaries will be dozens or even hundreds of volumes of court cases.
So we tried to fit more than two years of events surrounding one of the most scandalous constructions in Kherson’s recent history into 15 minutes of reading.
How it all began
In spring 2024 the government began allocating funds for the construction of shelters in schools in frontline regions. After that, the Kherson City Council’s Department of Capital Construction began publishing on Prozorro procurements related to survey works for the construction of shelters for educational institutions.
Later the former head of the Kherson MVA, Roman Mrochko, would emphasize that the construction of anti-radiation structures was a joint initiative of the regional and city military administrations, but in summer 2024 it was he who announced a grand project — the creation of shelters that in Kherson were baptized “underground schools”.
To obtain large-scale funding (including from the European Ukraine Facility program), Mrochko provided the government with a letter of guarantee. In it he assured in writing that as of September 1, 2025, students of Kherson schools would sit at desks offline.
A few months later Mrochko personally presented this idea to the former Minister of Education and Science Oksen Lisovyi, who visited Kherson.
The minister was greeted by both regional and city leadership, but judging by the video posted on the MVA’s social media, Roman Mrochko became the main star of the meeting as he very vividly explained to the minister the necessity of building shelters and the rosy future of Kherson schoolchildren.
“We will finish this project in nine months and immediately fill it with children,” Mrochko assured at the time, pointing to the potential construction site on the stadium between schools No. 54 and 55.
Oksen Lisovyi himself later, during a speech at a plenary session of the Verkhovna Rada, explained that the official request for the construction of shelters came directly from the Kherson Regional Military Administration and the local community.
According to him, the authorities had to respond to that request and provide the funds. Obviously, no one in the ministry intended to assess the feasibility of the construction.
Later, when MOST was able to collect a substantial body of data through requests, Roman Mrochko leaked a number of documents to his pocket publication, which still whitewashes his reputation.
Among them were two letters from the head of the Kherson OVA, Oleksandr Prokudin, to former minister Oksen Lisovyi. In the letters, from which we removed watermarks because reading them was physically painful, Prokudin sought support for obtaining funding for the construction of initially eight, and later seven, schools.
In June 2024 Prokudin requested money for repairing shelters in the region’s schools and for the construction of three “underground schools” in Kherson.
Funds were requested for shelters near city schools No. 41, 55, and 56. Each required UAH 96 million.
Obviously, no one ever heard Prokudin’s explanations about why he asked for money for these three projects.
We linked that silence back in 2024 to the idea that the order to build “underground schools” in Kherson came from the capital. We guessed it might have been the Deputy Head of the President’s Office, Oleh Tatarov, whom we associated with Roman Mrochko’s appearance in Kherson. However, our sources in political and business circles do not confirm this version. But they also won’t say who precisely was Mrochko’s patron who allowed him almost everything.
Be that as it may, in summer the money from the capital arrived in Kherson region.
In total, about one billion hryvnias were directed to build security objects in the region’s educational institutions, of which almost UAH 400 million were intended specifically for the “underground schools”, of which there were to be at least four in Kherson.
Since martial law norms apply, contracts related to protective structures were signed directly by the city Department of Capital Construction without holding open tenders. Decisions to use this procedure were made at meetings of the Regional Defense Council, which includes the heads of the OVA and MVA, representatives of the prosecutor’s office, police and others. In other words, everyone knew about the shelters.
When the first preparatory works began at the construction site, residents protested because one of the construction sites was deployed next to residential apartment buildings.
People feared that the concentration of machinery would become a target for Russian shelling.
Their fears were realized on October 7, 2024, when Russian aviation dropped KABs directly on the building of another school, near which a shelter was also being built. The attack wounded 20 local residents.
The reaction of the local authorities to these events was rather strange. Instead of freezing the project, Roman Mrochko blamed local Telegram channels for guiding the air bombs… and the former director of the Department of External Communications and Media Interaction, Denys Putintsev, hinted that the rallies might have been organized by Putin supporters, allegedly because someone in the crowd quietly said: “Putin will come, he’ll restore order.”
By the way, according to Roman Mrochko, the city education department even conducted a survey of parents, who allegedly supported the creation of shelters.
“There was a survey of parents. Ten thousand were surveyed, of whom seven thousand agreed on the need to build now, where in the future our children, the Kherson residents, will be able to study,” he said on air at X.ON radio, after the airstrike.
Despite public tension, construction was not planned to be stopped. At the same time, instead of four shelters they decided to build only two, but in the end there were three — on the territory of school No. 41 in the Tavriyskyi microdistrict, vocational school No. 2 in Pivnichnyi, and school No. 55 in Shumenskyi.
At the time this decision looked like a compromise between regional and city authorities, and OVA head Oleksandr Prokudin himself assured that he did not support the construction of shelters precisely at that time.
“I was not against building shelters. I was against building them at that time, when the enemy was active. I’m simply against the accumulation of equipment there, but for the shelters themselves — these protective structures are needed,” he said in October 2024.
Architects of the schemes
So whom did the Department of Capital Construction, led by Denys Kholodov, trust to spend the budget millions?
Contracts were handed out to companies that in no way resembled reliable developers.
LLC “Alsvit Plus”
A Kyiv-based firm with an authorized capital of only UAH 900, which changed many owners (including a Greek citizen) and was connected to Poltava deputies. Because of this we suspected that Oleh Tatarov’s ears might stick out in this story, who himself hails from Poltava.
In spring 2024 a former serviceman, Oleksandr Potelezhko, who had previously been prosecuted for drunkenness on duty, became the company’s nominal director.
Materials of that case had been sent to court by then military prosecutor of the Luhansk garrison Roman Mrochko. Later Mrochko claimed he did not know that serviceman.
Moreover, as the investigation has already established, Potelezhko was a formal manager and had nothing to do with construction works.
In autumn 2024 Alsvit Plus received a contract to build a shelter for school No. 55 in Shumenskyi.
The company was to be paid over UAH 95 million for these works, and it was in such a hurry that it began excavating the pit even before obtaining permits.
Later the contract with it was terminated, having paid UAH 4.3 million. The initiator of the contract termination was the company’s real management.
LLC “Tensens”
In 2024 this Kyiv-based company was headed by a taxi driver, again from Poltava region, Maksym Serdyuk.
In Kherson the firm received two contracts without competition. In particular, it was given the construction of the shelter for school 55, for which the previous contractor had already dug the pit, so the works were to be carried out for almost UAH 88 million.
The company also received the construction of the shelter for Kherson vocational school No. 2 for UAH 82.1 million.
Tensens had no intention of conducting active construction, so to do the dirty work it hired local firms which it later simply “stiffed” on payments.
That is exactly what happened with the private enterprise “ANK”, which poured concrete instead of Tensens, and Tensens in turn owed the subcontractor more than UAH 8.6 million. By the way, the director of ANK also attacked a MOST correspondent who was filming the construction of the “underground school”, and soon received a fine for that.
And the real builders were able to recover their debts for the shelter construction only through the courts.
In addition, as the investigation found, Maksym Serdyuk on paper inflated the thickness of the foundation and listed non-existent reinforcement and mastic, appropriating UAH 10.3 million from the budget, for which he received suspicion of official forgery and embezzlement of property on an especially large scale.
Suspicions were also brought against technical supervision engineers who approved the acts regarding the construction of the shelter for the vocational school. They signed documents for works that were not actually carried out, causing damages of more than UAH 3.1 million, according to law enforcement.
LLC “Budpostach-STS V”
This company, by its business style, became a symbol of Roman Mrochko’s rule in the city. Neither before nor after had Kherson journalists seen such lawlessness multiplied by permissiveness.
The company was founded in Lviv in 2015. Among its former owners were people closely associated with influential politicians of Lviv region, in particular the head of the Lviv Regional State Administration, Zinovii Kozytskyi. MOST sources in Kozytskyi’s circle insisted even then that he had sold the company and had no connection to it.
At the beginning of 2024 the firm abruptly changed its registration to Kherson and instantly became the local authorities’ “favorite builder.” Without any competition it received various contracts worth almost UAH 400 million. These included construction, supply of goods, and other services.
But the main contract was the order to build a large shelter on the territory of school No. 41 in the Tavriyskyi microdistrict worth almost UAH 90 million.
At that time the company was headed by Galician Oleksandr Novokhatskyi. And despite the quick start of works, the firm was unable to build the school’s shelter.
In early 2025 Novokhatskyi was detained as part of an investigation related to the handing over of “kickbacks” for contracts of “Khersonteploenergo”, and the new director of Budpostach-STS V became a taxi driver from Lviv region, Dmytro Sup.
As we can see, Novokhatskyi adapted so well to frontline Kherson that he acquired not only the right to perform contracts but also to collect “tribute” from fellow builders and other contractors.
Non-lyrical digression
While telling about phantom companies, their owners and officials, we cannot but tell about two other key players who preferred to remain in the shadows. These are the head of the Kherson regional prosecutor’s office, Serhii Hrytsenko, and the owner of a market in the town of Marefa in Kharkiv region, Vadym Hlushko. We assume these people may not even know each other personally, but in the orchestra conducted by Roman Mrochko they played important parts.
It was Serhii Hrytsenko who stubbornly ignored violations and abuses in Roman Mrochko’s administration. MOST wrote a large piece about a strange imbalance, which consisted of opening dozens of criminal cases against heads of village administrations while completely ignoring everything that was happening in Kherson. Obviously this was not simple prosecutorial solidarity, but a clear policy that was either imposed on the prosecutor from outside or incentivized by other means.
We cannot say anything definite about this due to lack of facts.
The second character is much more interesting. That is market owner from Kharkiv region Vadym Hlushko. He came to Kherson as an adviser to Oleksandr Prokudin, but Prokudin quickly sidelined Hlushko from all topics where he stuck his nose and sought profit. And he sought it in the region’s hospitals, presenting himself to chief doctors as the “watcher from the OVA.” How exactly Hlushko ended up on Prokudin’s team is still unclear. At the same time it is known that Vadym Hlushko had long been in Arsen Avakov’s close circle. Because of this, his appearance on the new Kherson head’s team was associated with the former minister.
When information about the schemes that “watcher” Hlushko was spinning in local hospitals reached Prokudin, the OVA head quickly got rid of him. But Vadym Hlushko did not leave Kherson and moved to Roman Mrochko’s team, where he turned out to be “very timely”.
For almost two years he controlled the city’s budget and all the cash flows in Kherson. Of course, he was the one who oversaw the “underground schools”.
End of construction
Interestingly, after his detention Oleksandr Novokhatskyi continued to manage Budpostach-STS V, while Dmytro Sup only signed the necessary documents. We learned this from the latest court rulings.
By that time the chair under Roman Mrochko was already wobbling with a huge amplitude that caused nausea even among hardened observers.
In January 2025 Oleksandr Prokudin, according to our sources in the OVA, was already ready to submit a proposal to the president to dismiss Mrochko, but Donald Trump saved the ex-prosecutor. Until April the country’s leadership was, to put it mildly, not focused on Mrochko.
Mrochko understood that his time was short, if only because employees of the Kherson SBU department began increasingly to hit parts of the gates that Kherson law enforcement previously could not reach. The regional prosecutor continued to remain silent, but that no longer helped. Because SBU investigators found a way to reach Mrochko’s untouchable contractors. They conducted covert investigative actions against Novokhatskyi and co. within the framework of a state treason case, and Novokhatskyi’s detention was presented as a coincidence. This helped the SBU to operate without procedural supervision by regional prosecutors by involving the military prosecutors. The operation was successful precisely because the regional prosecutor did not warn Roman Mrochko that his people were being “taken”.
Why the then head of the regional SBU, Artem Borysevych, who at first appeared loyal to Mrochko and his circle, gave the command to “tear apart” Mrochko’s schemes remains a mystery to us. Probably he had no personal interest in the construction and, knowing that Mrochko was already a “fallen pilot,” easily made an alliance with Oleksandr Prokudin, helping to remove the ex-prosecutor from his position in the MVA.
On April 18, 2026, Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed Roman Mrochko. Later the contract with Budpostach-STS V was terminated and the contract for the “underground school” construction was handed over to other pseudo-builders.
As law enforcement has already found, because of these schemes Budpostach-STS V received over UAH 8.8 million for poor-quality work.
At the end of June this year Oleksandr Novokhatskyi and Dmytro Sup received suspicions for submitting false data in the acts of completed work.
The investigation into this case continues.
LLC “Megaplan Fast”
This “paper company” was created at the end of 2024.
At first it was supposed to engage in meat production, and later its scope of activity was changed and it was re-registered to a resident of Bilozerka, Roman Matvieiev, whose main life achievement up to that point had been official fines for swearing at his wife and mother.
In the so-called power vacuum period in spring 2025, when Roman Mrochko had already been dismissed and Yaroslav Shanko had not yet been appointed head of the MVA, Megaplan Fast received a contract to complete the shelter for school 41.
It was to receive UAH 55 million for its works. The agreement with the fictitious builders was signed by the same Denys Kholodov.
According to law enforcement, Roman Matvieiev did not run the company. In reality he was a builder in one of the crews working in Kherson, and the actual leader was, again, Oleksandr Novokhatskyi.
So through Megaplan Fast, which performed no works, more than UAH 5.7 million was withdrawn from the budget.
Later the court ordered to recover UAH 560 thousand in penalties from the company, which must be returned to the community budget.
The trouble with these projects lay not only in document falsification but also in the quality of the construction itself.
Kherson OVA head Oleksandr Prokudin openly stated that the shelters were built from the very beginning with critical defects. They simply lacked whole layers of reinforcement and concrete.
His words are confirmed by the results of independent expert examinations conducted within the criminal proceedings.
Technical supervision engineers turned a blind eye to the violations and signed fake acts, causing, according to law enforcement, losses of more than UAH 10 million.
It is now known that at least three engineers who were supposed to inspect the facilities have been suspected.
It is worth recalling Roman Mrochko’s words spoken in November 2024:
“There are firms that carry out repair works and provide acts. In all cases we hire technical supervision so that there are no questions. After this technical supervision the acts of completed works are signed and submitted to the treasury. And only after that will they receive monetary funds. Where they got the equipment — bought, rented, or simply borrowed — this is not my field of activity to directly control. There is a signed contract, there are deadlines, there are penalties, acts of completed works,” he said live on the media platform “Vhoru”.
Essentially, if you believe the investigation’s version, the technical supervision engineers hired by the Kherson City Council’s Department of Capital Construction were in collusion with the contractors hired by that same department.
It turns out that Mrochko’s subordinates for months transferred money for non-existent works, and he simply did not know about it because it was “not his zone of responsibility”.
Dismantled illusions
After Mrochko’s dismissal the new local authorities led by Yaroslav Shanko took a pause. Construction was frozen and inspections began.
In July last year it became known that law enforcement was investigating possible abuses during the construction of the “underground schools”.
Now court rulings show that Budpostach-STS V’s activities attracted attention as early as September 2024. It was then that a criminal proceeding was opened under Part 4 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (misappropriation, embezzlement of property or acquiring it by abuse of office). Currently, the defendants in this case include absolutely all companies that were to build Kherson’s “underground schools”. According to the latest calculations of the investigation, their fictitious construction led to losses of at least UAH 20 million.
According to MOST, the Kherson police under the leadership of Oleksandr Korol opened the case almost immediately, but for a certain time it remained dormant. That is, investigators, under someone’s instruction, did not file motions to the court for conducting covert investigative actions or other procedural steps.
According to a MOST source in law enforcement, this is a common practice that allows one to report at any moment to superiors, and if necessary to the public, that work was being done.
But having the regional prosecutor as an ally, the police could have “marinated” this case to this day.
According to the current head of the Kherson MVA, Yaroslav Shanko, the fate of the unfinished shelters is decided unequivocally — they must be demolished because they cannot be used as school shelters.
They want to do this using funds that contractors must return to the community after the investigation is completed and, obviously, after the cessation of hostilities.
“They’ll skim the money. They’ll steal everything. They won’t build anything, as always,” said Roman Mrochko in November 2024, commenting on the media resonance and Kherson residents’ dissatisfaction caused by the start of construction of the “underground schools”.
…As if he had looked into the water.