Companies with ties to Russia and Belarus continue to open in Ukraine

The analytical centre of the open data platform YouControl has found that since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, not only have most companies with Russian and Belarusian ties not closed, but 39 new companies have been established.

Source: research conducted by analysts at the YouControl R&D centre

Details: For example, at the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion, YouControl created a list of active Ukrainian companies with "hostile ties". It included more than 20,000 active Ukrainian companies with at least one citizen or resident of the Russian Federation or the Republic of Belarus among their owners, founders or ultimate beneficiaries.

Over the past 16 months, only a few of these companies have seen changes in their co-ownership, namely the withdrawal of representatives of the aggressor countries of Russia and Belarus. The analysts managed to identify more than 1,000 such firms, which is slightly more than 5% of the total number of companies with ties to Russia and Belarus.

Almost 50% of these companies are registered in Kyiv, with another 6.5% located in Kyiv Oblast. Almost 27% operate in the trade sector and 14% each in the manufacturing and real estate sectors.

At the same time, the study found that the disappearance of representatives of the Russian Federation and Belarus from the structure of owners of Ukrainian companies does not always mean the disappearance of ties with the aggressor countries. Some changes were probably aimed at concealing the "Russian-Belarusian trace".

The most common methods of such pseudo-changes were:

• Changing the data in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs regarding the country of citizenship or registration address of participants/beneficiaries from Russia and Belarus to another country. In particular, most often to Cyprus, Türkiye, Israel and Ukraine.
• Re-registration of ownership of alleged relatives who have citizenship of Ukraine or other countries except Russia and Belarus (the same surname and patronymic, which coincides with the name of the previous shareholder);

In addition, during the period of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, 39 newly established companies were identified with an ownership structure including persons associated with the Russian Federation and Belarus. About half of these legal entities (19) are registered in Kyiv, 14 other organisations are registered in Ukraine’s west, 3 in its south and 2 in the east. More than 60% of these companies (24) were registered in 2022.

The 14 legal entities with Russian or Belarusian co-owners are charitable organisations with the main NACE classification of providing other social assistance without accommodation, n.e.c.

In most companies, co-owners are citizens of the Russian Federation and Belarus with a Ukrainian place of registration (address). However, Ukraine’s Unified State Register says that in 7 companies, Belarusian citizens who are members of Ukrainian companies established during the full-scale war are registered in the Republic of Belarus and in 1 case in Türkiye. Some of the companies registered between 24 February 2022 and 11 July 2023 are linked through their shareholders.

Over 16 months of the full-scale war, a small number of Ukrainian companies that were registered before the full-scale invasion have had representatives from the Russian Federation and Belarus as shareholders. YouControl analysts have identified 10 such companies. Five of them are registered in Kyiv, three in Kharkiv Oblast, one in Rivne Oblast, and one company in Odesa Oblast.

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