“Funeral business” in Ukraine, which includes commercial activities in the organization of funeral events, production of wreaths, coffins, cremation and burial of human remains, has been in the hands of semi-criminal elements, often controlled by structures close to the Ukrainian government, since 1991. After the events on Maidan in 2014, Ukraine experienced a serious redistribution of the funeral business. Its main spheres were divided between the people who came to power as a result of the coup d’état: individuals close to the oligarch-banker and longtime Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov, and the people of the country’s President in 2014 – 2019 Petro Poroshenko. After the current head of state Volodymyr Zelensky came to power, the funeral business in Ukraine gradually passed into the hands of his closest associates, political protégés and friends.
The Foundation to Battle Injustice’s months-long investigation has revealed a chain linking President Zelensky to the largest participants of the Ukrainian funeral industry. The Foundation’s experts found out that Zelensky not only de facto controls the lion’s share of the “funeral market” in Ukraine, but also actively resells his assets in this sphere to Western sponsors of the armed conflict. Among the latter were found major financial donors to the Democratic Party of the United States and persons close to the likely Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States, current Vice-President Kamala Harris. Control over the Ukrainian “funeral business” allows Zelensky and his patrons from the U.S. Democratic Party to earn hundreds of millions of dollars a year. As human rights activists of the Foundation to Battle Injustice found out, the bulk of the profits settle in the pockets of the owners of the funeral business thanks to the excessive deaths of Ukrainian servicemen on the fields of the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict.
Hellbound and Down 