The cemetery mafia - economy newsletter

Human dust, home front fortification corruption, mobilizing HIV-positive proletarians, oligarchs and onlyfans, the mysterious Mr Kripp

First of all - the cemetery mafia. The following was shared by just about all the top militarist, Azovite telegrams on September 20:

Appeal from Our Brothers for the Sake of Justice!

Here is the situation: Kyiv cops and the funeral mafia have been working together in a good partnership for many years. However, the situation has drastically changed after the full-scale war began and with the growing number of casualties — both civilians and military personnel.

The police and mafia realized that they can earn much more and faster from the deaths of military personnel, so they established total control and monopolized the burial sector. These criminals know that the relatives receive large sums of money for a fallen soldier, and therefore, they try to extort the maximum amount from them.

Our brothers are trying to correct this injustice and blatant violation of the law so that families don’t have to pay tens of thousands of hryvnias to the mafia for a burial, and things can be handled much better.

But now, the Kyiv police have become heavily involved, threatening veterans with physical violence and defending the mafia. They even call the military units where these guys served to discredit the veterans in the eyes of their commanders, accusing them of becoming drug addicts and alcoholics (there’s video evidence).

Can you imagine how much money the police and mafia are making on deaths and this monopoly right now? Relatives of fallen heroes shouldn't have to pay anything for these services — that’s how it should work in a decent society. Instead, we see the mother or wife of a fallen soldier having to give the mafia and police 100,000 hryvnias just to bury their loved one with honor.

How do they make money? They create artificial obstacles (problems), endless paperwork, monopolize coffins, and control the burial process, and much more. Profiting from people's grief is beyond immoral, but this situation suits the law enforcement.

What will the reaction be?

It’s ironic that the above post was made by an Azovite military telegram. I wrote here earlier about how Azov was in charge of a comically-criminal funeral racketeering network in Kharkov years before 2022. I suppose they’re angry that this time, the cemetery racket isn’t under their control.

The home front

There’s been plenty of talk about unbuilt fortifications close to the Donbass frontlines lately. On September 23, parliamentarian Mariana Bezuhla published the following to telegram:

I’m returning once again from Donetsk region. There are no fortifications beyond Chasiv Yar, and Kostiantynivka is not prepared for defense. Neither is Kurakhove. In the center of Selydove, there was absolutely no readiness for defense; now they are frantically trying to do something. There are no defensive lines beyond Vuhledar, and the chaos created by Syrskyi in the 72nd brigade due to the dismissal of the brigade commander at the peak of the Russian offensive, along with the non-priority reinforcement of a priority unit, now makes the loss of Vuhledar a matter of time.

Around the Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad agglomeration, fortifications are currently being built, and they are the most modern structures created since the start of the full-scale invasion. However, the vast majority of these fortifications no longer have any connection to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. They are the result of horizontal coordination between military administrations, local units, engineers of various "backgrounds," the command of the eastern front "Khortytsia," and benefactors who deliberately bypass outdated and out-of-touch instructions issued by higher military headquarters. Previously, they were afraid, but now they don't care. They do what needs to be done themselves.

As part of her usual jihad against Syrsky and the military elite, most probably on behalf of Zelensky, Bezuhla places the blame on the generals and praises local military administrations for their initiatives.

But there’s another side to that. Maksym Kozytskyi, the head of the Lviv region civil-military administration, spent 25 million hryvnia building a road to his father’s house. Local publication NGL media wrote on September 6:

The complex of Kozytskyi Sr. is called the wellness resort "Panorama Skhidnytsia." It is accessed via Horna Street. The reconstruction of this street turned out to be the most expensive among the roads funded by the Regional Military Administration (RMA) in 2023—and "the most questionable in terms of priority.

Of course, Lviv is far from the frontline. But Druzhkyvka, only 18 kilometres from frontline Chasiv Yar, made the rounds on telegram on August 28 because the local military administration decided that now was the right time to pave the roads:

And instead of spending resources on fortifications, local soldiers angrily shared on July 25 how the local administration of Pokrovsk was planting flowers:

Building roads is a favorite feeding trough for the government - Zelensky’s great pre-war project was the ‘big build’, also often called ‘the big steal’ by anti-corruption journalists. Journalists pointed to things like the fact that the construction of roads in Ukraine often cost many times more than similar roads in Poland, despite wages being much lower. The saga with the ‘big build’ has continued in wartime, with infamous ‘big builder’ government-linked entrepreneurs cooperating tightly with corrupt regional civilian-military administrations - as the Golyk story, which I wrote about here, amply demonstrated.

Perhaps that’s why Bezuhla, generally considered to be a barely-covert Zelensky operative, is so glowing about the military-civilian administration….

But these infrastructure-addicts may run into trouble. Not with the law, but with the supply of workers. On September 5, the Lviv mobilization office announced it was still deciding whether an asphalt layer with HIV could be mobilized - for the second time!