Miners work at a coal mine in the occupied Donetsk region in August 2019. Photo: EPA-EFE/DAVE MUSTAINE
Companies linked to Oleksandr Yanukovych, the son of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, have earned “billions of rubles” by exporting coal from Russia-occupied eastern Ukraine over the past three years, Russian independent media outlet IStories revealed on Tuesday.
In 2023–2024, organisations linked to Oleksandr Yanukovych, who fled Ukraine to Russia with his father in 2014, exported almost half a million tonnes of coal produced in the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, IStories wrote, receiving payment through offshore accounts set up in the British Virgin Islands.
Before the War in Donbas began in 2014, coal mines in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions produced an estimated 60 million tonnes of coal annually, but after a decade of Russian occupation, that figure has dwindled to about 5 million tonnes, according to IStories.
Some of the remaining coal produced in Donbas was purchased via Energoresurs, a Rostov-on-Don-registered company owned by Russian businessman Alexey Ivanov, who has worked in law firms linked to Oleksandr Yanukovych since 2016, the outlet revealed.
According to IStories, Energoresurs purchased coal from companies registered in Donbas, declared Russia as its place of origin and sold it to Energy Union, an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands, at the low price of about 5,700 rubles (€55) per tonne in 2024. The low price, which allowed Energy Union to resell the coal anywhere and at any price it wanted, “only makes sense if these companies are affiliated”, IStories wrote.
Until 2022, Bulgaria, Estonia, Romania and the Czech Republic were among the European countries that bought coal from Energoresurs. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Türkiye has been the main buyer of the Donbas coal, IStories wrote, adding that in 2021–2023, the company was estimated to have received some 3.5 billion rubles (€34 million) in revenue.
