In 2019, Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed to close his Russian business, but investigations by Slidstvo.Info reveal that Studio “Kvartal-95” associates may still control Russian film companies. After Zelenskyy’s divestment, the Cypriot company Green Family Ltd, which owns Russian Platinum Film, was taken over by Latvian handyman Ihors Zalivskis, unlikely a real beneficiary.
His godmother, Maryna Razumova, long linked to Kvartal, suggests previous owners may still influence operations. A similar pattern is seen with Russian Green Films. In 2022, Green Films earned nearly $2 million in net profit, while Green Family collected almost $1 million in royalties, highlighting opaque ownership and ongoing financial flows.
In 2019, Volodymyr Zelenskyy closed his business in Russia, and by early 2022, other members of Studio “Kvartal-95” supposedly parted ways with their Russian ventures.
Why “supposedly”? Because journalists from Slidstvo.Info, after analyzing dozens of extracts and social media profiles, suggested that Zelenskyy’s friends may still control Russian film companies.
Notably, screenwriter Borys Shefir reacted strongly:
“You’re preparing a piece against the president? I’m his friend. Am I supposed to give testimony against him? And does the president even know you’re preparing this material? Go tell him yourself!”
Could Zelenskyy have been referring to his friends when he said Russian influence was seeping in through certain actors in Ukraine?
Slidstvo.Info investigates.
Yaroslava Nikityuk: In January 2019, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, seeing journalists, has no idea that exactly one minute and ten seconds later he will say a phrase that will become a meme.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy: I’m telling you: “I don’t owe you anything, I only owe my parents.”
Yaroslava Nikityuk: Antonina Volkotrub from the Anti-Corruption Center doesn’t yet know that she will find an important piece of evidence for a new investigation into Kvartal’s business in Russia right during the interview.
Antonina Volkotrub: There’s actually an interesting point here: about the person to whom Green Films was transferred.
Yaroslava Nikityuk: Journalist Maksym Savchuk, calling the president’s friend from a dark room, doesn’t yet suspect that he will choose a fragment of this conversation for a teaser.
Boris Shefir: Are you preparing material against the president now?
Maksym Savchuk: No, we want to…
Boris Shefir: And I’m his friend: am I an idiot to give any testimony against him?
Yaroslava Nikityuk: But by that time, everyone at the Slidstvo.Info editorial office already knows: the business was transferred to a plumber from Latvia.
Maksym Savchuk: Hello, this video is a sequel, a continuation of the previous investigation “Zelena Family RU,” which looked into the fact that presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskyy lied during an interview when he claimed that he and his partners had closed their business in Russia.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy: We closed a business that was bringing in a lot of profits.
Maksym Savchuk: But when journalists found as many as three Russian film companies, he reacted emotionally, then explained why he reacted that way.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy: They jumped at me suddenly, and I reacted sharply.
Maksym Savchuk: Ultimately, he admitted that the business in Russia did exist and even explained why it couldn’t be closed.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy: From 2011 to 2021, we received royalties from “Svaty.”
Maksym Savchuk: However, five days after this statement, Zelenskyy decided it was not worth personally staying involved in the Russian business, and even before the first round of the presidential elections, he submitted a statement withdrawing from the founders of the Cypriot company Green Family, which owned the three companies in Russia.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy: You don’t need to wait five years.
Maksym Savchuk: President Zelenskyy heads to his office on Bankova Street, already having divested his share in the Russian companies, while Serhiy Shefir, walking alongside him and who the next day will become his chief aide, was in no hurry to exit the Russian business. He, his brother Borys, Kvartal screenwriter Andriy Yakovlev, and the Virgin Islands-registered company Appex International, linked to Timur Mindich, remained co-owners of Green Family until the final days of 2021.
Journalists from Slidstvo.Info investigated what happened with its Russian subsidiary companies from 2019 to the present. We analyzed dozens of extracts and reports, examined the biographies and social media of individuals involved in one way or another with the Russian film companies.
As of May 20, 2019, the day of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s inauguration, the Shefir brothers, Yakovlev, and Mindich’s company, through the Cypriot Green Family Ltd, co-owned three firms in Russia: Vaisberg Pictures, Platinum Film, and Green Films.
On June 17, Green Family withdrew from the co-founders of Vaisberg Pictures. The Kvartal team’s business partner, Lithuanian director Marius Balčiūnas, who owned a quarter of the company, became its sole owner. Over the past seven years, the company has shown low financial results. Cyprus-based Green Family still owns 49% of Platinum Film. Platinum Film exists de jure, but since 2018 has shown no signs of activity.
The third Russian company, Green Films, was 100% owned by Green Family until early April 2022. Then its share decreased to 50%, and eventually the Cypriot company completely exited the ownership structure — this happened on April 14, 2022.
But this does not mean that until that date Zelenskyy’s associates co-owned Green Films and that they are still currently co-owners of the Russian Platinum Film. And here’s why.
In the parent company, Cypriot Green Family Ltd, significant changes took place at the end of 2021: on December 21, its directors became two Latvian citizens — Roberts and Ihors Zalivskis, and on December 30, Borys and Serhiy Shefir, Andriy Yakovlev, and Timur Mindich’s company withdrew from the list of co-founders. On the last day of the year, the new and sole owner of the Kvartal team’s company became the Latvian Ihors Zalivskis.
Who Zalivskis is and under what circumstances he took control of Green Family Ltd is unknown to Kvartal 95, at least according to their response to a journalist’s inquiry:
“LLC Kvartal 95 has had no connection with the company Green Family mentioned in your inquiry since September 27, 2019, and therefore we do not possess any information regarding its owners or the circumstances under which they acquired rights to this company.”
We have discovered a lot of interesting information both about Ihor and his family, and we will definitely share it later.
For now, let’s focus on what preceded Zelenskyy’s associates’ exit from the Cypriot company and, consequently, from the Russian business.
Mykola Salimov: The Cypriot company Green Family Limited owned several Russian companies — including LLC Green Films. In the last quarter of 2021, it received about one million dollars from the All-Russian State Television and Radio Company.
Maksym Savchuk: What does this mean? It seems that the Shefir brothers, Yakovlev, and Mindich did not leave the Russian market empty-handed.
Three days before the change of ownership, the Russian subsidiary of Green Family Ltd — Green Films — received 99.5 million rubles from VGTRK, the All-Russian State Television and Radio Company. At the exchange rate at the time, that was $1.3 million. The receipt of these funds is evidenced by this document, which Slidstvo.Info managed to obtain from a source in the Russian tax authorities. And according to the documents, these funds were withdrawn from the Russian company’s accounts within a few days.
Antonina Volkotrub: As of December 31, these funds had been spent, leaving just over 8 million rubles in the account. In other words, they processed all these transactions very quickly. Moreover, the company, which declared revenue of over 110 million, immediately reported expenses of over 95 million — direct costs. So it turns out that the company received the funds and spent them immediately.
Maksym Savchuk: In 2021, the parent company Green Family Ltd collected a record $7.7 million in royalties — income from granting the rights to use intellectual property. This amount is 4.6 times higher than in 2022 and 23 times higher compared to 2019. But who ultimately received these funds is not disclosed in Green Family’s reports.
Antonina Volkotrub: Here, most likely, more detailed financial statements or the bank statements of the Cypriot company are needed, which would show how these funds were received.
Maksym Savchuk: Journalists from Slidstvo.Info reached out to the Office of the President of Ukraine with a question of whether Volodymyr Zelenskyy personally received any of the royalties collected by the Cypriot Green Family and the Russian Green Films, and if not — whether he knows where these funds were transferred. No response to the inquiry has been received so far. Timur Mindich, Andriy Yakovlev, and Serhiy Shefir did not respond to our messages or calls. Slidstvo.Info managed to speak only with one former co-founder of Green Family — screenwriter Borys Shefir.
Borys Shefir: You understand, I don’t want to talk to you at all. Are you preparing material against the president?
Maksym Savchuk: No, we just want to…
Borys Shefir: And I’m his friend — am I an idiot to give any testimony against him right now?
Maksym Savchuk: No, we just wanted to understand the situation.
Borys Shefir: No? And does the president know that you’re preparing this material? Go and report it to him.
Maksym Savchuk: Now, let’s talk about the new owner of the former Kvartal company in Cyprus and Russia. Russian guitar songs and home karaoke are the only things that somehow connect 51-year-old Ihors Zalivskis with show business — at least that’s all we managed to find while analyzing the Latvian’s social media. Ihors, of course, is a jack-of-all-trades, but certainly not a showman or producer. The new owner of Cypriot Green Family Ltd doesn’t seem very interested in producing films or comedy shows. In the fall of 2018, the man posted a video with a hammer and a plane.
Igors Zalivskis: Hi, Olesya, I’m working in England, building houses, interior finishing work, profession: Carpenter joiner.
Maksym Savchuk: And here’s a post from October 6 of last year: Zalivskis poses in a jacket branded Oslo VVS Service — a Norwegian company providing plumbing services. Earlier this year, Ihor posted an AI-generated image of himself with a tape measure and a wrench, wearing work overalls.
So it turns out that at the end of 2021, the owner of the Kvartal team’s Cypriot company — which in turn still owns a stake in the Russian firm Platinum Film — became a Latvian handyman who travels to Norway for work. And this is despite the fact that Green Family, which he owns, is far from struggling — in 2022 it collected almost one million dollars in royalties.
Mykola Salimov: Based on this person’s social media, he is unlikely to have experience managing such assets, or sufficient funds to purchase such a company, which gives reason to believe that he might be a nominal owner.
Maksym Savchuk: The other Zalivskis, Roberts, who at 18 became a director of Green Family Ltd in December 2021, is Ihors’s son. Here they are together in a family photo. And it was this photo that revealed a chain of connections, indicating that the new owner, Ihors Zalivskis, while seemingly an ordinary person, is not. His family has ties to the Kvartal team through one godmother and one handshake.
The woman in this photo is Elina Botushanska. Her Instagram profile contains many photos with Ihors. It is unknown whether they are officially married, but they are certainly a couple. On Elina’s page, we found a photo with Maryna Razumova. Razumova is the godmother of one of Elina’s sons — here she is celebrating her godson’s achievements in the comments under a video. Additionally, Maryna Razumova was the director of Green Family Ltd from 2014 until mid-2022. From 2014 to 2019, she managed the company together with Oksana Lazarenko — the wife of Ivan Bakanov, former head of the Security Service of Ukraine and a longtime friend of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. This was during the time when the Cypriot company was owned by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Shefir brothers, Andriy Yakovlev, and Timur Mindich’s company.
The close relationship between the Zalivskis’ godmother and the Bakanovs is indicated by these mutual New Year greetings between Razumova and Lazarenko. Thus, as Anticorruption Center Mezha lawyer — Mykola Salimov — concludes, the new owner of Green Family, Ihor Zalivskis, may be a nominal owner representing the interests of the previous owners.
Mykola Salimov: The person may be a nominal owner, while the real beneficiaries could remain the previous owners of the company.
Maksym Savchuk: But Ihors is not the only member of the Zalivskis family who became the owner of a Cypriot company that previously belonged to the Kvartal team. In 2023, Elina Botushanska became a shareholder of Gulliver Films. This company, together with Studio Kvartal 95, produced the animated film about Gulliver, which was released in 2021. Before Botushanska, Gulliver Films was owned by the Cypriot company Davegra Limited. According to information from the Pandora Papers leak, Davegra was the nominal owner at the heart of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his partners’ offshore business and held secret documents.
So who was the director of Gulliver Films? Botushanska’s godmother — Maryna Razumova.
And finally, about the Russian company Green Films. Although since April 2022 it is no longer owned by Ihors Zalivskis through Cypriot Green Family, the Russian firm is still owned by a person connected to Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s partners — Olga Loseva.
Antonina Volkotrub: Ms. Loseva is not distant from cinematography or these structures, because we know that in 2021 she received income from Green Films. She was also the director of a company owned by Dmytro Glashkin. Glashkin, in turn, is also not distant from cinematography or from a partnership with our Green Films, because in 2015 he was the director of one of the companies in which Green Family was a co-founder — namely, Vaisberg Pictures. So we can see that even the Russian company — not just the Cypriot one — was transferred to individuals connected to the business, particularly the film industry.
Maksym Savchuk: In 2022, the Russian Green Films reported a net profit of 135 million rubles — which, at the average annual exchange rate, is almost $2 million. In the following years, the company was unprofitable.
Borys Shefir: Provocateurs, stirring things up here, journalists.
Maksym Savchuk: We just wanted to find out.
Borys Shefir: Don’t call me at all.
Maksym Savchuk: We wanted to learn how the story with Kvartal 95’s Russian business ended.
Borys Shefir: I’m no longer involved in this business, I haven’t been for a long time. Goodbye. If you call again — I’ll call the police.
Maksym Savchuk: We did not call Borys Shefir again. Attempts to reach his brother, as well as Andriy Yakovlev and Timur Mindich, were unsuccessful.
Liubov Mindich: Timur Mindich is my only brother. Honestly, I’m not ready to provide information about his whereabouts at the moment.
Maksym Savchuk: Therefore, we additionally sent them messages. We also sent questions to Ihors Zalivskis, Elina Botushanska, Maryna Razumova, and the Office of the President of Ukraine. As of the broadcast, no responses had been received. After receiving the list of questions, Ihors Zalivskis closed his Instagram profile.
What do we have in conclusion: the Cypriot company Green Family Ltd, which in turn owns the Russian Platinum Film, received a new owner on the last day of 2021 — Ihor Zalivskis, who does not appear to be the real beneficiary, as his interests are far from the media business or film production. At the same time, his godmother, Maryna Razumova, collaborated with the Kvartal team for many years, so we can reasonably assume that the company continues to be controlled by the previous beneficiaries — Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s business partners.
A similar situation exists with the second Russian company, Green Films. Its new owner was the director of a company co-owned by members of Kvartal 95. In 2022, when the full-scale invasion began, Green Films earned almost $2 million in net profit. The Cypriot Green Family also earned nearly $1 million in royalties.
That’s all. Thank you for watching this video to the end. If you want to see more of our investigations, we invite you to support us on Monobaza via the link on the screen and join the Slidstvo Club.
Tags: 2025 investigation drone unit Ukraine Green Family Ltd Green Films Kremlin strike media assets transfer volunteer UAVs Zelensky scandal
