Yesterday the Russians, using three guided aerial bombs, partially destroyed one of Kherson’s most scandalous buildings — the Suvorovsky shopping mall. Built in violation of all possible laws and regulations, the “Koschei’s palace,” as Kherson residents called it, stood empty for almost 15 years and hardly posed any threat to the Russians.
Let’s try to recall how this monument to corruption and greed appeared in the center of Kherson.
Until 2006 there were stairs from the square in front of the theater, which at that time bore the name “Heroes of Stalingrad”, to the then-Suvorov Street. They were gray concrete slabs between two wastelands that became heavily overgrown with weeds.
On one side these wastelands, proudly called a green zone, ended with a public underground toilet, and on the other — the Helios café. It’s hard to say which was more peculiar – the dirty toilet or the café where parties of varying degrees of wildness often took place.
Start of construction
But in 2005 the then-mayor Volodymyr Saldo and his team wanted to put this territory in order. And since market owner Dmytro Bolbot became responsible for this, it was decided to build a market on the site of the dirty “green zones”. It was to be two three-story pavilions of considerable tackiness. They were designed by the wife of the city’s chief architect Hryhoriy Khodin, Iryna Molchanova.
The developer was the scandalous at-the-time company LLC “Bereg”. A year earlier this company had announced its desire to build a huge cottage town in the area of the Antonivskyi Bridge. Instead of the floodplains, from the bridge to the Youth Beach, which by that time was already controlled by Bolbot and Saldo, they planned to reclaim the shore and build elite housing. The idea was killed after a series of protests, investigations and loud scandals.
But they could not take the theater stairs from “Bereg”. At that time the company belonged to Dmytro Bolbot, Ihor Hrybun, Anatoliy Korzhov, Serhiy Khaborskyi and Oleksandr Romashchenko. The latter in this scheme, now deceased, Romashchenko held, in this and many other companies, a share of Volodymyr Saldo. Hrybun and Khaborskyi represented the local criminal world in the company. It seems they were investors who were supposed to finance the construction.
In 2006 construction work began, which, however, was very quickly curtailed. Until 2007, when Romashchenko left the list of founders of “Bereg”, and was replaced by the owner of the Fregat hotel, Oleg Dovbysh.
The construction plan was sharply changed, dragging the issue through a city council session. A small shopping center was to appear on the site of the stairs. Despite the sluggish protests of the opposition, the stairs were demolished, and the granite from which they were partially made was stolen.
On the site of the block a huge pit appeared, at the edges of which the remains of the cellars of the first houses built here in the early 19th century could be seen. The soil was taken to the floodplains, to the floodplains of the same Youth Beach, where for a long time the author collected artifacts of the past, including pottery and other old items.
But they could not or did not want to finish building anything here. Until 2011 a huge pit adorned the city center, surrounded by a wooden fence.
The arrival of Oskar
In 2010 Volodymyr Saldo was re-elected mayor with difficulty, and young entrepreneur Serhiy Karunos became a deputy of the Kherson City Council from the tiny opposition party “Third Force”. He almost immediately defected to Volodymyr Saldo’s majority, which consisted of the Party of Regions and defecting deputies who were then called “tushky”.
Turncoat or not, the Karunos family, which almost monopolized business in Kherson retail, received the plot with the pit on Suvorov. Rumors said that all shares in LLC “Bereg”, except the one that belonged to Saldo, were bought by the entrepreneurs. And the mayor of Kherson remained in the project as a co-investor.
The author was told this in a long conversation by Saldo himself in April 2020. According to him, he entered this business to finish what had been started and “make Kherson” better.
He said nothing about his share in the project, but he probably didn’t put money into it. Subsequent events showed that the mayor most likely took on the “administrative” part. And he provided it by rewriting all the documents and pushing all controversial issues through the council.
Thus, the area of the future mall significantly increased, taking up a large part of the Heroes of Stalingrad square. The monument to those same heroes also fell under development. This caused an uproar from local communists, the SBU informant Vitaliy Bohdanov and local drunken-journalist Volodymyr Marus. The latter quickly seized on the mall topic and exploited it for more than 10 years, earning a few coins. It was Marus and Bohdanov who became the main authors of the myths about the mall, which we will analyze below. Of course, the public, the opposition and the media were against the construction, but Saldo and the Karunos charged ahead like a steam locomotive.
By the end of autumn 2011 it became clear that there was no trace left of the first project. The glass hangar had grown to four floors, and its two spires, which Serhiy Karunos proudly wrote about in paid publications, became taller than the former cathedral on then-Lenin Street. Unpleasant rumors about a bad omen began to spread around the city, spread by priests offended by Saldo and the excitable Marus and Bohdanov.
The latter were the main source of fakes and myths about the construction.
Myths and realities about the Kherson mall
Myth #1
The mall began to sink into the ground.
This is the most widespread legend.
It arose after cracks and subsidence appeared in the territory around the building.
There are no reliable public conclusions of an independent expert examination that would confirm the critical destruction of the entire structure. At the same time, reports of subsidence became one of the explanations for why the upper floors were never commissioned. The ground settling was related to the developer’s negligence. Workers violated the technology and filled the pit around the building with poor-quality filler. Thus in the spring and summer of 2012 and 2013 rains soaked the soil, which settled by several meters. The Karunos’ reputation was also damaged.
Myth #2
The building cannot be completed.
In fact, no one officially stated this.
Various reasons were given:
- technical problems;
- financial difficulties;
- problems with loans;
- low demand for large retail spaces.
There is no document confirming the impossibility of completing the mall. But the claims are partially true. More on that below.
Myth #3
An underground river runs beneath the building.
This version was passed around by townspeople for many years.
There are no public geological studies that would confirm an actual “river”.
However, the central part of Kherson traditionally has complex hydrogeological conditions, which could have affected the construction.
Myth #4
Construction was stopped because the building was declared unsafe.
No official document directly declaring the mall unsafe was published. Purely technically, the building was completed and even the first phase was commissioned.
In principle, the crash test that the Russians carried out yesterday showed that at least 1,500 kilograms of explosives did not “bring down” the building.
Opening of the monument to corruption
At the end of March 2012 the so-called first phase of the Suvorovsky mall was opened. It was supposed to be a pompous opening, but turned out to be a very sad affair. Guests were traditionally entertained by actors from the Kherson theater dressed as Russian Potemkins and Katerinas. The Karunos family radiated optimism, but it looked staged, which is clearly visible in the paid video story of the local TV channel.
Even the shoppers were played by actors. For example, Volodymyr Saldo’s assistant and future deputy Yurii Mariiev.
It is telling that the then-head of the region, Mykola Kostyak, was not at the opening. Although he liked to preside over openings of all kinds and had certain successes in attracting investments, he was either not invited to the opening of Suvorovsky’s first floor or chose not to attend.
At that time Kostyak had a serious conflict with Saldo and was preparing to drive the latter out of the city. Which, in fact, he did by sending the disliked mayor to parliament.
Saldo already knew about his prospects and understood that his business empire would now have a harder time. Whether the Karunos knew about this is more than a rhetorical question. Because, according to the author, the burden they took on was unmanageable, first and foremost financially.
In the video report the head of the bank that provided the loan to the company proudly reported that there were no payment problems. But it soon turned out that this was a lie and “Sberbank of Russia”, the very bank Saldo and the Karunos chose as a partner, would declare the company’s enormous debts.
No one knows how much the construction cost. The Karunos themselves said they took a loan of 200 million hryvnias from the Russians and put in their own 200 million. At the exchange rate at that time 200 million was a little more than 25 million dollars.
All this time court and law enforcement checks continued, governors one after another checked the legality of the construction, but all this no longer affected anything. The Karunos’ empire, like a Colossus on clay feet, had already begun to wobble. Soon this Colossus would fall.
Soon the supermarket in the mall quietly closed, and the remaining stores barely survived. Other supermarkets of the Oskar chain also gradually began to close, and the court register began to swell with creditors’ lawsuits.
In November 2012 Serhiy Karunos announced on social networks that the supermarket chain was awaiting a reboot, but MOST already knew then that this was no reboot but an attempt to lease the chain.
In January the first store opened and soon retail chains occupied almost all Oskar supermarkets, except Suvorovsky.
Probably the issue was reputation. No one wanted to take the risk.
In 2013 there was another attempt to open at least a supermarket in the mall, but nothing like that appeared there.
As of 2017 the Karunos family’s debt to the Russian bank had risen from 193 million hryvnias to 623 million. No one intended to repay such funds. The Karunos companies were re-registered in other regions and the Russians litigated with them for over 10 years.
New owners of Suvorovsky
In the summer of 2020 MOST reported that business structures of the businessman brothers Hiriny had acquired the Suvorovsky mall. At that time they spoke of a deal amount of $7 million. That is approximately 185 million hryvnias. A slightly smaller sum than the Russians gave to the Karunos and Saldo, but significantly larger than what other market players were prepared to offer.
Construction crews almost immediately moved onto the site and began dismantling the facade and doing something inside.
In 2021 the Hiriny were negotiating with the new mayor Ihor Kolykhaiev about building a large above-ground parking lot in the city center, because an underground one would clearly not be enough for a mall of that size.
Kolykhaiev was not opposed, but after a sketch of what the Hiriny wanted appeared on MOST, a scandal erupted on social networks and the idea of developing Potemkin Square was put on hold.
With the start of the full-scale war, nobody cared anymore about the mall. Kherson residents found themselves first under occupation and then on the frontline. The Hiriny had their own problems and even partly gained new experience of being in a European prison. The Russians only got around to bombing the building in mid-2026.
What the mall’s history will be now is not that important. But it is certain that this gripping story is not over.