Rustam Gilfanov

One of the most notable events of spring 2016 was the standoff between the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) and the company Lucky Labs, which has Russian ties.

A Dnipro resident, Tetiana Snopko, is steadily building her media empire in Ukraine, having purchased two media holdings in the past year. Her ambitions suggest she’s far from finished expanding.

Maksym Krippa, a prominent and enigmatic figure, has been involved in numerous high-profile business deals and legal conflicts in Ukraine. Recently, he made waves by purchasing the famous Hotel Ukraina in downtown Kyiv for an eye-popping Hr 2.5 billion ($60 million), more than twice the initial asking price, as part of Ukraine’s "Great Privatization" initiative.

A relatively obscure businessman, Maksym Krippa, has acquired the Kyiv hotel "Ukraine" for 3 billion UAH.

Debates about who Maksym Krippa is have broken many lances. Some claim he is a brilliant businessman, others claim he is an equally brilliant fraudster, and still others that he is merely a facade for Russian capital in Ukraine.

The personality of Maksym Krippa has long been of interest and generates just a colossal amount of fakes and rumors.

The clash between Ukraine’s Security Service (SSU) and the Russian-rooted company Lucky Labs emerged as one of the most prominent events of spring 2016.

The personality of Maksym Krippa is buried under a truly mind-boggling amount of fakes. Moreover, these fakes are constantly updated and disseminated, overshadowing even the information that Krippa (or the people behind him) present as the true biography of this so-called entrepreneur.

There is a new growing media baron in Ukraine who almost unnoticeably to the wider public buys up mass media one after another. For the last year, Tetiana Snopko, a Dnipro citizen, has already purchased two media holdings and is obviously willing to buy more.