The Kyiv shopping mall Ocean Plaza, which is associated with a friend of the Russian dictator Putin - businessman Arkady Rotenberg, was recently finally closed.
According to political analyst Oleksandr Kochetkov, this should have been done before the full-scale Russia's invasion, UNN reports.
"This (Rotenberg's connection with the Kyiv shopping mall) was known from the 2014, and it took 8 years of such a hybrid war and 5 months of hot war for them to finally leave. Why did they leave? Because it is not open, you have to pay rent, but you do not earn money because it is closed. If it hadn't been closed, they probably wouldn't have left by now," he believes.
Ocean Plaza was almost closed right after the full-scale Russia's invasion on February 24, except for a few shops and supermarkets on the ground floor. Now the mall is completely closed.
Through the Cyprus-registered company Ocean Plaza Project Ltd, 33% of the mall are owned by UPD Holdings Limited. Previously, it was owned by businessman Vasyl Khmelnytskyi. Other companies are owned by TPS Nedvizhimostʹ, which owe 5 shopping malls in the aggressor country. It was founded by Oleksandr Skorobogatko, Oleksandr Ponomarenko and Arkady Rotenberg. Until 2019, it was controlled by Lilia Rotenberg, daughter of Arkady Rotenberg.
Arkady Rotenberg is a Russian oligarch, a friend of Putin, who actually built the Crimean Bridge. In Russia, he owns a large number of businesses, including the company Minudobreniya, more than 75% of the company's products were previously exported, half of them was transported via the "Togliatti-Odesa" ammonia pipeline. It runs both through Russia and Ukraine, in particular through Luhansk, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya, Dnipro, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa regions. Fertilizers were then shipped by sea through the Odesa Port Plant (Odesʹkyy pryportovyy zavod) to other countries. The same scheme was used by another Russian plant TogliattiAzot to transport ammonia through Ukraine. Since February 24, this ammonia pipeline was halted.