The National Military Cemetery will be built by a company that was established a day after the tender announcement

The National Military Cemetery will be built by a company that was established a day after the tender was announced.

The first phase of the construction of the memorial cemetery will cost the state 1.8 billion UAH (44 mln US Dollars). It is expected to be completed by the end of 2025.

On August 1, the state institution “National Military Memorial Cemetery” selected the winner for the construction of the first phase of the National Military Memorial Cemetery within the Hatne territorial community in the Kyiv region. The winner was the Kyiv-based consortium “Building UA,” as reported by “Glavkom” citing ProZorro, and relayed by Censor.NET.

The winning company’s bid was 1.75 billion UAH, which is 41.96 million UAH less than the expected price of 1.8 billion UAH.

The first phase of the cemetery construction includes the arrangement of burial sectors, a parking lot, an access road, fencing, utility networks, and the construction of a columbarium wall. In total, 12,036 graves and 720 columbarium niches will be allocated for traditional burials.

“Most of the specified graves will be filled with the unidentified remains of Ukrainian defenders, which are currently stored in special refrigerated units. Approximately a little over 6,000 graves at the military cemetery will be arranged by the end of 2024,” Yaroslav Starushchenko, Deputy Director of the state institution, said.

The construction work for the first phase must be completed by the end of 2025. The first burials at the National Military Memorial Cemetery will take place this fall.

Importantly, the documents provided by the “Building UA” consortium contained several discrepancies compared to the client’s tender documentation. For example, there were no relevant documents confirming the availability of specialized equipment for cutting natural stone products of volcanic origin (granite and/or labradorite); there was no document confirming the written permission from the consortium’s general meeting for the director to sign contracts exceeding 10 million UAH; and there were inaccuracies in the documents regarding the ownership of the asphalt concrete plant. Additionally, the anti-corruption program and the order appointing the official responsible for implementing the anti-corruption program were missing.

The client gave a week to address these deficiencies, with a deadline of July 31. In the protocol dated August 1, the state institution “National Military Memorial Cemetery” stated that the tender proposal from the “Building UA” consortium met the client’s tender documentation requirements.

According to the Youcontrol analytical system, the “Building UA” consortium was established on July 4, 2024, the day after the tender for the construction of the first phase of the National Military Memorial Cemetery was announced. The founders are three enterprises: “Euroelitbud” (Odessa), “Akam” (Dnipro), and PJSC “Brovary Road Construction Department No. 50” (Kyiv region). The ultimate beneficiaries of the consortium are listed as Oleksandr Isaiev and Natalia Poberezhna from Odessa.

Interestingly, until the fourth quarter of 2023, a co-owner of Brovary Road Construction Department No. 50, along with Kyiv resident Viktor Havrylenko, was Russian citizen Tamila Sviridova, who owned 9.8% of the company’s statutory capital. Currently, Sviridova’s name is no longer listed among the owners of this company.

As reported, the memorial cemetery near Kyiv will be designed for 131,200 graves and 5,200 columbarium niches to hold the ashes of Ukrainian heroes. The distance from the military cemetery to Kyiv is 11 kilometers.

Ukraine Front Lines