Botox versus Kraken. Scam call centre finale
No one will ever buy off Mykola Tyshchenko!
In the final installment of our four-part series (click here for part one, part two, and part three) on scam call centres, we will finally find out the identity of this mysterious man:
All power to the Office
Our previous three articles have shown a wide range of links between Ukrainian nationalists, sections of the government and scam call centres. Asides from strana’s articles on the topic, the former Office employee interviewed by the bitcoin bro noted several times that local law enforcement takes a significant cut from Office profits. Azov’s Kukharchuk in his recent interview also stressed several times the cut the government takes from Offices.
But just how powerful the Offices have become was demonstrated by a very strange scandal involving the man you have hopefully been waiting for:
Mykola Tyshchenko is a restaurateur, television host, showman, entrepreneur, and one of today’s most well-known politicians.
Mr Tyshchenko is no stranger to controversy. He has been accused of everything from In April 2020, his restaurant in the capital became the centre of a nationwide scandal when it emerged that it was bypassing quarantine restrictions for VIPs. Back in January 2023, he sparked outrage when he took a trip to Thailand (pictured above). He claimed to have been ‘helping Ukrainian refugees’ there. His close ties with Andrii Yermak, head of the president’s office and widely considered #2, if not #1 in government, saved him - Yermak is the godfather of Tyshchenko’s son.
Though he was kicked out the ruling Servant of the People party, he remained in parliament, and it was clear that he remained close to important figures in power - or the important figure in power, namely Yermak. But Yermak urged Tischenko to lay down his parliamentary position on June 21. That’s because this time, Tyshchenko went to far - he stepped on the toes of the Offices.
On June 20, Tyshchenko announced he had arrived in the criminal capital of Europe: Greetings from the city of Dnepr. The hero city, which unfortunately has now become a center of fraud. But it won't be for long.
He went on to post various suitably epic photos of him raiding Offices in Dnepr, who he claimed ‘rob the families of military personnel, Ukrainian women, and mothers.’ He placed particular emphasis on his defense of ‘simple Ukrainians and the citizens of our partner countries’. Tyshchenko even claimed to a local paper that up to 130,000 (!) people are involved in the industry. He was also accompanied by a rather strange group of unmarked, masked, armed individuals in vague military outfits, which he claimed were his ‘security guards’.
It’s also notable that he stated he was supported in his endeavor by the general prosecutor, Andrii Kostin, and the minister of internal affairs Igor Klimenko. Both are loyal to Zelensky and intensely disliked by pro-western liberals/nationalists. I believe it is hence reasonable to assume that Tyshchenko’s mission was approved by the government, and essentially consisted in trying to claw back some fading popularity by showing how the government is struggling against fraudsters.
It’s also entirely likely that his heroic mission also had the goal of forcing whatever Offices unlucky enough to end up in his warpath to start paying their racket to him, instead of local elites.
It is also possible, however, that Yermak was knowingly setting up Tyshchenko to be the fall-guy, thereby taking attention off the beleagured Zelensky. According to well-known pro-western journalist Yuri Nikolov, Yermak and Tyshchenko haven’t been close for two years now.
Ukrainska Pravda has also begun using an interesting metaphor to describe Yermak and Zelensky’s complex relationship - the producer and the star. Quite apt, given Zelensky’s lifetime in showbusiness - PR and ad-style emotional manipulation is certainly what he does best. In such a narrative, Tyshchenko would be the villain the audience loves to hate, who receives a just punishment from the stern Hero/Star.
Enter the Kraken
In any case, things took a dramatic turn when Tyshchenko and his heavily armed, balaclava-clad ‘entourage’ ran into the following individual - Dmytro ‘Son’ Pavlov, ex-fighter in Azov’s Kharkov-based ‘Kraken Regiment’. Tyshchenko claimed this happened as he and his goon squad were preparing to take on Dnepr’s biggest Office, owned by the supposedly all-powerful ‘Nine Group’.
Tyshchenko and his strange gang of armed men lacking any badges of identification went on to attack Pavlov and ‘arrest’ him after Pavlov tried to take away the phone from one of Tyshchenko’s groupies who was trying to film him. They even pulled away his baby and stroller from him. Though honestly, in a story this murky, who knows whose baby that was.
The story is even more interesting in that one of those involved in the fight on Tischenko’s side was a policeman from Kyiv. This was confirmed to Suspilne by law enforcement. Though he was later fired, politicians like Aleksandr Dubinsky rightfully pointed out that he couldn’t have gone to Dnepr with Tyshchenko without consent from above. Which again makes it seem possible that this wasn’t simply Tyshchenko’s idea.
A criminal case was opened up soon after by the Dnepr regional police against Tyshchenko for illegal arrest of Mr Pavlov. He in turn accused the Dnepr regional police of making money off the city’s Offices. He also accused the head of the Dnepr regional government of being in on it. On this matter, I’d note that Zelensky has long been engaged with a wartime struggle against the Dnepr regional elite, which I covered back in 2022.
Coups and private armies
Here is Tyshchenko’s full post on the mattter:
I accuse the head of the Department of Strategic Investigations of the police of Dnepr of protecting racketeering. I will be investigating this. He is completely lying. One of the people's deputies approached me asking not to touch him. A coup d'état in Ukraine was planned and is still being planned thanks to a bot farm. You can imagine a scenario of a military coup, which, in my opinion, will be carried out with money taken from call centers and bot farms. There, private armies exist. These private armies are formed from former soldiers who came back from the front.
Several of Zelensky’s main paranoias coalesce here - political bot-farms, which he has accused former president Petro Poroshenko of using against him in wartime, coups, which he loudly trumpeted the opposition were organizing against him in the winter of 2021, and disgruntled nationalist military veterans.
But in truth, it all seems quite realistic. After all, if Tyshchenko has a private army, why wouldn’t his enemies have one? Plenty of telegrams have speculated that Tyshchenko’s march on Dnepr had the goal of increasing Yermak’s control over the city’s lucrative offices, meaning that Tyshchenko’s private army would be just one of many. This version was supported by Georgii Tuka on July 1, former chairman of the board of the "Narodniy Tyl" charitable foundation, former head of the Luhansk Regional State Administration.
Tyshchenko claimed that the ex-Krakenite Pavlov worked in the ‘security service’ of Dnepr’s biggest Office. That’s certainly not hard to believe. Why was Pavlov so intent on confronting Tyshchenko anyway? He claimed it was because he was filled with indignation to see Tyshchenko and his gang of outlaws, but in my last article, I described how a variety of famous neonazi nationalist war veterans occupy top positions in the city’s Offices.
Most striking is how all Ukraine’s media and political class rose up to condemn Tyshchenko and praise the ‘patriotic veteran’. Everyone came together - public military Azovites like Zhorin, other mediatized nationalists like Sternenko and Lachen, who published literally dozens of posts on Tyshchenko-gate over the past week, government figures like Yermak, pro-western media publications like Radio Svoboda (the local branch of RFE), Yuri Nikolov of ‘Nashi Groshi’, Ukrainska Pravda and of course the police. A range of other nationalists condemned Tischenko and praised the Offices as patriotic anti-Russian organizations, including the Azovite Tales of the IV Empire (formerly of the IV Reich).
That’s only a small section of those who took it upon themselves to expose Tyshchenko - it has truly become an obsession over the past week in Ukraine’s media sphere. Endless mockery of Tyshchenko (not a difficult task), memes, talkshows ont he topic, and so on and on.
Much of this is obviously simply a media show to distract from more important topics. But not only. What does this outspoken attack on those who bring up the topic of Offices mean? Strana.ua speculates that a new oligarchy is rising, centered around the scam call centers. As we have seen in this and the last article, a truly powerful coalition has emerged between Ukraine’s military neonazis, scam call centres, and western-financed journalists and liberal ‘activists’.
‘Lachen Writes’, a pro-government nationalist telegram who was particularly obssessed with Tyshchenko-gate, is a good example. At the start of 2022, this citizen of Dnepr (Ihor Lachenkov) had 50 thousand subscribers. Now - 1.6 million. He has risen to fame through raising money to buy drones and other military supplies, generally alongside pro-western nationalist stars like Sternenko and Serhiy Pritula.
Lachen, like Sternenko or Pritula, perfectly encapsulates this class of ‘military activists’, untouchable heroes of the Nation who live for war, whose moralism covers over their quite less savory means of making money. Not that earning money of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people is much to be proud of either. Their power and influence has truly skyrocketed since 2022. While there were whispers of how western structures were preparing them for the presidency before, the war years have propelled them from relatively fringe figures to entirely potent candidates.
Consider also how much the traditional Ukrainian oligarchy has suffered in wartime, as I wrote here. Power abhors a vaccuum. Could the collective Office replace the old Kolomoisky and Akhmetov?
Western media are full of predictions about when Zelensky will be removed. I find it hard to believe he can last for too long. And who better to replace this increasingly cringeworth figure, this man controlled by ‘corrupt old elites’ like Yermak and Tatarov, then the ‘young, bright faces’ of Pritula or Sternenko? The latter, ‘activists/sorosites/war vultures’, however you want to call them, entirely depend on Ukraine’s role as anti-Russian military vanguard, unlike Zelensky, who was elected on a peace platform (though, of course, he’s done his best to rebrand).
The show goes on
In any case, Tyshchenko was put under house arrest, which was praised by Sternenko, who generally does his best to earn himself the gratitude of the Office of the President. The state bureau of investigations also raided him and posted him holding bundles of cash:
He also managed to put on some great performances at the court house, which rapidly became the subject of countless memes:
I do everything I demonstrated on television. I do everything the way I taught the youth on "Master Chef," "Revizor," won in "Dancing," and in "Fort Boyard." Everywhere, I was a role model and an example. I did everything so that Ukraine would be valued and respected.
They say, oh Tishchenko runs around, takes bribes. WHAT BRIBES? You will never have the ability to ever buy off Mykola Tyshchenko! I didn’t come here for that. That’s why I said yesterday - let me have my money, otherwise I won’t have anything to live on. And that isn’t funny. I earned all that money over 30 years - with these hands! And never took anything from anyone!
Sternenko and plenty others posted photos of him at an elite restaurant soon after, on the 26th. Yuri Nikolov called all this an ‘organized show’. As usual, the story isn’t over until the fat lady sings.
