On 16 August, a film investigation “Battalion Monaco” about Ukrainian “VIP refugees” on the Côte d’Azur coast was released on the YouTube channel of the Ukrayinska Pravda news and analysis website.
The video description says that the publication received reports of an “obscenely large number” of Ukrainian “VIP refugees” in Monaco, Monte Carlo and Nice.
“Different names and different addresses were heard. But we thought it was better to see once than hear a hundred times. So on the way to Turkey, we stopped for a few days on the Côte d’Azur. What we saw was in strong contrast with what Ukraine and Ukrainians have been experiencing for the past six months. The Cote d’Azur is historically one of the favourite summer holiday destinations of the world’s elite. That is why it is hard to understand why Ukrainian millionaires and billionaires, who have weakened the country for decades, decided to wait out the war there, in full view of the world. The world, which is now helping to make Ukraine stronger. There seems to be no worse antipublicity than a Bentley and a Maybach of the latest models in Ukrainian number plates”, the media say.
The author of the investigation is journalist of Ukrayinska Pravda, Mykhaylo Tkach. The material features a number of famous Ukrainian businessmen. For example, Tkach said that in Monaco you can see cars with Ukrainian number plates “almost every five minutes” and the Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat resort, which is built up with private estates and located near Nice, was “turned by Ukrainian businessmen into a French Concha-Zaspa”.
One of the most scandalous episodes in the film is that the film crew saw the yacht of Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Zhevago, who is the third richest man in Ukraine according to Forbes Ukraine 2021, sailing into Monaco.
It turned out that his yacht has the following inscription: “Z” on its board. At the same time, the businessman’s press service told Forbes Ukraine that this sign has nothing to do with one of the symbols of the Russian special operation in Ukraine.
“The name corresponds to the first letter of the English transliteration of the Zhevago family surname (Zhevago),” the statement said.
At the same time, the businessman himself, according to the release, has no plans to change the name of the yacht. Journalists spotted him on board the vessel in Monaco and filmed it on video with a drone.
The yacht did not enter the port, having been docked off the coast of Monaco for several days. It is known that Konstantin Zhevago has been wanted by Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation since 2019.
The agency even claimed on 15 July that Interpol had put him on an international wanted list, but the businessman’s press service informed that this was not true.
As EADaily earlier reported, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova mocked the “patriotism” of Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, whose family left the country together with his dogs.
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