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Top investigative stories
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RFE/RL maps military facilities in Russian-occupied Crimea
Crimea.Realities, a project of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, launched an interactive map showing 233 active and frozen military facilities in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula occupied by Russia since 2014.
They include military airfields, naval bases, docks, arsenals, supply warehouses, military towns, military units, rotations of air defense locations, training grounds, and military-industrial enterprises.
The map provides exact coordinates and photographs of the military infrastructure.
The project's authors said the idea behind it is to inform residents of Crimea about the extent of the militarization of the Russian-occupied peninsula and warn them about the dangers it poses.
State Watch think tank launches registry of Russian oligarchs' Ukraine assets
Ukrainian think tank State Watch created the first comprehensive database of Russian oligarch assets in Ukraine. It also shows which entities have been confiscated by the state.
The registry currently has 53 names. Some of them are Russia’s richest men like Oleg Deripaska, Mikhail Fridman, and Aleksey Mordashov. Others are not as familiar to the general public, even though they’re under Ukrainian sanctions.
Together these Russian nationals own 112 Ukrainian companies worth a total of $163 million.
Ukraine started confiscating Russian assets in September 2022. Since then, 12 enterprises have been seized by the state through the administrative forfeiture process while corporate rights to 21 enterprises have been arrested in connection to criminal proceedings.
Media: Family of CEO of Russian missile manufacturer lives lavish life in Czech Republic
The daughter and son-in-law of Boris Obnosov, director of Russia’s Tactical Missiles Corporation, live in the Czech Republic in luxury they can’t afford with their own incomes, Russian Anti-Corruption Foundation of Alexei Navalny found.
Tactical Missiles Corporation makes missiles that Russia uses to attack Ukraine and is under Western sanctions.
Obnosov’s daughter, Olga Zorikova, works at an event marketing agency while her husband, Rostislav Zorikov, has a tiny printing business in Russia.
However, they also have some side gigs.
In 2018, news broke that Zorikova owns 20% of the shares of a company that buys spare parts for her father’s corporation.
According to the journalists, Zorikova’s household’s official income doesn’t match its lifestyle.
The couple owns a luxury car fleet, including a Lamborghini Aventador, a Jaguar F-PACE, and a Rolls Royce Ghost. They also have a 140-meter penthouse in an elite residential complex called Panorama not far from Prague which cost the couple 1.1 million euros.
Zorikov also owns six parking lots in the building and another flat with a parking lot nearby. His father and brother also have apartments in the neighborhood.
Watch the full story in Russian with English subtitles here.
Anna Myroniuk is the head of investigations at the Kyiv Independent. Anna has run investigative projects on human rights, healthcare and illicit trade. She also investigated political and corporate misconduct and alleged wrongdoings in the Ukraine army's leadership. Anna holds a Masters in Investigative Journalism from the City University of London. She is a Chevening Scholar, the European Press Prize 2023 winner, the winner of the #AllForJan Award 2023, an honoree of the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe Media & Marketing list, the runner-up in the investigative reporting category of the 2022 European Press Prize, and a finalist of the 2022 Ukraine's National Investigative Journalism Award and the 2020 Thomson Foundation Young Journalist Award.
