Child kidnappers

In spring this year, NGL.media was contacted by several women whose children had been abducted by their ex-husbands. At first, we just couldn’t believe it: some stories were about three-year-olds who were snatched during a walk and taken in an unknown direction. After that, mothers did not see their sons and daughters for years.

NGL.media has verified a list of 72 women who are now trying to get their children back. What all of them have in common is that the father of their child became a client or activist of the NGO “Father Has the Right”. This organisation has been responsible for abduction and stealing off children in Ukraine for almost nine years, calling it legal aid for men.

This organisation has all the features of a many-tentacled closed cult, where members are luring in new recruits, taking advantage of their depressed state. The organisation has a charismatic leader, dependent “believers” and strict adherence to his instructions. And most importantly: The members of the NGO are convinced that they belong to the chosen circle, and their leader regularly repeats that they will go down in history as reformers. They intend to reform Ukrainian legislation. Until that happens, they are exploiting all possible gaps.

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Alla Holynska’s story

Alla and Vadym went to the same school in the small town of Balta in the Odesa region. Vadym was four years older. When he was graduating from university, he met Alla in a local cafe. Since then, they started communicating and going out. They got married in 2016 after five years of dating. Their daughter Sofia was born in 2017. 

“Conflicts in the family started when my mother-in-law started interfering. She would work in Italy, and when she visited, she would start telling me who should do what. When I was giving birth to my child, we were already living separately. The child’s father came to see us for the first time when my daughter was two months old”, Alla Holynska recalls. 

In March 2020, they officially divorced. Alla did not object to Vadym seeing his daughter, but he decided to apply to the children’s service to officially get specific visiting hour. He saw Sofia three times a week in Alla’s presence. In September 2020, he came for another meeting, during which they planned to go for a walk in the park.

“I took a scooter for Sofia and we got into the back seat of his car. And then something strange happened. He had never brought me anything before, but suddenly he said: “I bought something, please take it inside”. At that moment I felt something, but Sofia insisted and I got out of the car with a bag of groceries. As soon as I closed the door, the man hit the gas pedal and drove away”, Alla recalls.

That was the last time she saw her daughter.

Alla Holynska went to the police at once, but they advised her to just wait until the end of the ‘father’s hours’, which was 8 pm. However, Vadym did not get in touch after 8 pm. 

“We went to my ex-husband’s house, but there was no one there. The neighbours came out to us and said that he arrived at 4.20 pm, his mother got into the car, and they drove off towards Vinnytsia. Their phones were switched off. The next morning, I received a text message from him: “Sofia wanted to go to the Carpathians, we are there”, says Alla Holynska.

Vadym and Sofia were out of town for six weeks. Still, even after they returned to Balta, he prevented mother-daughter contact in every possible way, each time coming up with different reasons: the child was sleeping, she didn’t want to see her mother, or wasn’t in the mood…

“In December [2020], the court ordered the child’s ‘immediate return’ to her mother. However, when we arrived at Vadym’s house, my daughter was not there. He was taken to the police, where he did say that the child was with his mother. But during this time, my mother-in-law just ran away! She fled to Vinnytsia region to her friend”, says Alla.

Then she learned from the police that her mother-in-law had contacted ‘Sasha’ by phone from her friend’s house. He told them to go to Uman, where he would pick them up. It was in Uman that the mother-in-law’s abandoned car was later found.

For more than three and a half years now, Alla doesn’t know where her seven-year-old daughter is. Sofia has been put on the national and international wanted list, which has not yet yielded any results.

Vadym Holynskyi, 34 і Holynskyi Vadym Dmytrovych, born 29 June 1990   was put on the national wanted list under the article on forcible assertion of right (Art. 356 of the Criminal Code) and failure to comply with a court decision (Art. 382 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). His mother, Liudmyla Holynska, 56 і Holynska Liudmyla Mykhailivna, born on April 01, 1968   was put on the national and international wanted list for kidnapping (Art. 146 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).

Winning strategy

Immediately after her daughter’s abduction, Alla Holynska started describing the story on Facebook. However, the first comments surprised her. Oleksandr Shvets from Kyiv suddenly started actively commenting on the kidnapping of a child in the small town of Balta, and his comments were distinguished by his knowledge of the situation. He aggressively denied her allegations of abduction and was insisting that the child was safe with her father.

When Alla found out that this Shvets was the head of the organisation “Father Has the Right”, which claims to help men in similar conflicts, she realised that Sofia’s abduction was not an impulsive act of her ex-husband. Rather, it was a planned and prepared action, and it wasn’t the first time it was carried out.

Simultaneously, Alla started looking for other women who were in the same situation.

To date, there are more than 70 cases of men who abducted children from their ex-wives upon Oleksandr Shvets’ advice. This is a key element of the strategy of his organisation, “Father’ Has the Right”, to remove a child from his mother by any means necessary, at least for several years. Then it gets easier: either the woman gives up and stops fighting for the child herself, or the children’s residence with their father is legalised through the courts on the grounds that they have already been living with him for a long time.

Oleksandr Shvets claims that this is a win-win strategy: “In eight years, we have lost only two cases in court, but we have not lost a single child”. He means that even after a court ruling in favour of the mother, his clients continue to hide and keep the abducted children.

NGL.media is aware of only one case where the mother і Now this woman, together with her daughter and new husband, live abroad. They are still afraid to return to the past, so they asked to remain anonymous was able to get her child back in this situation. Two years after her daughter’s abduction, her ex-husband had financial problems and approached her with an offer to return the child for 6,500 euros. She agreed and he did return the daughter.

The triple kidnapping of Vlada Lalo’s son

The marriage of Vlada and Vitalii Lalo, who worked together in the Kyiv prosecutor’s office, got on the wrong side after they were forced to move from their rented apartment to his mother’s. Vlada regretted it within days. Her mother-in-law tried to control all the family’s decisions and kept humiliating her daughter-in-law.

“We had the first and last loud scandal, where I was called names and humiliated. After that, I was secretly taking my belongings to the post office every day and eventually moved to my parents’ place in another region. My son was one and a half years old, and that’s when I filed for divorce,’ Vlada recalls.

A few months later, in January 2019, she received lawsuits from Vitalii and his mother to establish time for communication with his son. Still, according to Vlada, she did not put any obstacles in their way.

During all court hearings, Vitalii Lalo was accompanied by lawyer Dmytro Nezvisky, who, as Vlada found out, works closely with the NGO ‘Father Has the Right’. ‘The more I learned about this organisation, the more it became clear that he would take any steps to take the child away,’ says Vlada Lalo. 

At the father’s request, the court set a schedule of visits and ordered him to return the child to his mother afterwards. However, in December 2021, Vitalii took his son without any warning, and wrote the following message to his ex-wife: ‘The child is sick, I am taking him to Kyiv and now he will live with me, you won’t see him again.’ At that time, the woman had a court of appeal ruling that had entered into force, refusing to determine the child’s place of residence with the father. 

Despite all the complaints and appeals to all possible authorities, Vitalii Lalo did not give his son back for more than a year. He not only hid him, but also deliberately disoriented his ex-wife. For example, after the Russian invasion began, he said that he had taken his son to Yaremche. Vlada got there on overcrowded trains and spent several days trying to find her son on the streets, until she realised he had simply deceived her.

Eventually, the woman was able to track down that her son was being taken to an illegal kindergarten in an apartment in Kyiv, and in February 2023, she managed to get him out of there by force.

‘After my son returned, he was regularly visiting a psychologist, and we planned to send him to school. But on 25 December 2023, my ex-husband [again] abducted him right at a public transport stop. For this, he engaged a group of men who simply pushed my mother away while he forced my son into the car and fled,’ says Vlada.

It was a planned abduction. Witnesses interviewed by the police later said that the car with the kidnappers had arrived earlier and had spent some time at the bus stop, waiting for the right moment. Maksym Karpliuk, a FHR activist who will also be a part of this story, was one of the identified kidnappers.

Currently, Vitalii Lalo, a current employee of the Prosecutor General’s Office, is a defendant in three criminal proceedings under Art. 146 of the Criminal Code (kidnapping), Art. 126 of the Criminal Code (beatings and torture) and Art. 126-1 of the Criminal Code (domestic violence). However, he still has his son. 

In a commentary to NGL.media, Vitaliy Lalo confirmed that these proceedings had been initiated against him, noting that similar cases had been initiated against his ex-wife. He also stressed that his position as a prosecutor had no bearing on the situation: ‘I am a father, I am an individual, a citizen of Ukraine, who is protecting my child in accordance with the law’.

How the organisation works

The most striking thing about all the stories is their remarkable similarity. Names, cities, age of the children and professions of the parents are different, but in every single case the events unfolded according to the same scenario.

In most cases, the women themselves handed their children over to their fathers for the next scheduled meeting. For example, Anna Strunina from Dnipro recalls that her son wasn’t keen on going on holiday to his father’s house in the village of Hatne near Kyiv, but she convinced him that his father missed him. The very next day, the phones of both her son and her ex-husband were disconnected. In a few days, the man said only one phrase: “you won’t see your son again”.

Other women say the same thing. The phones were disconnected for at least two weeks. Children would be completely isolated from their mothers – no meetings, no calls. It is important to create the most festive atmosphere for the child: going to the seaside or mountains, travelling, new experiences, and holiday permissiveness. This is necessary to create a contrast with the previous orderly life with the mother, with a school or kindergarten present, with a daily schedule and routine rules. 

Mothers’ appeals to the police do not help. Putting it simply, the police do not accept reports of abduction. The child is with the father, it is legal and safe. 

Complete and prolonged isolation from the mother is generally the main condition that men who decide to fight for their children under the rules of the NGO “Father Has the Right” community must fulfil”. This is perhaps the most important element of the ‘winning algorithm’ that the head of the organisation, Oleksandr Shvets, offers men. Then, it helps them win in court. This is not just a psychological calculation on women’s fatigue and despair, but a real reason for the court to give the child to the parent with whom he or she has been living for the past few years. Judges make such decisions based on the child’s best interests, so as not to further traumatise the child.

Isolation lasts for years. And all this time, if the child communicates with the mother, it is only through video connection, under the father’s supervision. Many mothers told NGL.media that it is very noticeable how children repeat seemingly memorized phrases and look to the side all the time to check whether their answers are correct. 

“Interests of the children are usually not taken into account. In such cases, the father uses the child as a means revenge and put pressure on his ex-wife. Such a father can intimidate the child with ‘you will end up under a fence on the street with your mother’, ‘your mother does not love you and will hand you over to an orphanage’ or manipulate the child by buying expensive gifts, regardless of the harm he causes to the child’s mental health and development”, explains Halyna Fedkovych, a lawyer at the Women’s Perspectives Human Rights Centre, who has represented dozens of women going to court to establish that the child should live with the mother. 

“Women’s Perspectives” is working on a number of cases where fathers got active assistance from the “Father Has the Right” (FHR). According to Fedkovych, there are more such cases now, as children can be used as a tool to dodge mobilisation. Volodymyr Kreposniak, one of the most active FHR members, took advantage of this opportunity immediately after abducting his son in June 2022. The territorial military enlistment office granted him a deferral from mobilisation as a father raising a minor child on his own.

‘Recently, we were approached by a woman whose ex-husband, who has been separated for almost 10 years, ‘convinced’ her teenage child not only to go to live with him, but also to write a statement to the police that her mother had allegedly committed violence. ‘It was urgent to avoid mobilisation,’ says Halyna Fedkovych from Women’s Perspectives. “Such cases are usually very complicated. While the child lives with the abusive father, it is very difficult to figure out whether this is a free expression of the child’s will or the result of the father’s influence, and whether it is in the best interests of the child.’

It is these moments – the abduction and deliberate turning of the child against the mother – that stop some fathers. On condition of anonymity, NGL.media managed to talk to a man who used many of the tips of the FHR in the fight for the right to see his daughter. For example, he purchased a body camera to record all meetings and conversations with his ex-wife and present these recordings in court. He also used some other advice from the FHR. Still, he said abducting his child and her turning against his mother was against both his principles and his daughter’s interests. 

Personal story of Oleksandr Shvets

Behind each of more than 70 cases of child abduction known to NGL.media is one inspirational person – the founder and head of the NGO “Father Has the Right”, Oleksandr Shvets.

This 48-year-old, almost completely grey-haired man of medium height didn’t just create a public organisation to help men in difficult life situations. He created an effective business model resembling a cult. His personal life story is what served as the basis for his business model.

In 2010, Oleksandr Shvets, then a 34-year-old lover of travelling and loud parties, met a young singer named Dasha Medova, 20. A few months later, they got married.

As Dasha’s close friend told NGL.media, this marriage did not look like a deliberate decision. 

‘Dasha had just moved to Kyiv, was stressed out in the big city and was looking for support. Perhaps that was how she wanted to find support. Still, Sasha didn’t seem to be a reliable partner. He regularly went out to clubs, he liked to say that he was writing a book about his sexual adventures, wrote a blog about the same and listed all his partners in detail, describing where, when, with whom and where… I got the impression that he was mentally ill or obsessed,’ recalls Dasha’s friend і she agreed to speak to NGL.media on condition of anonymity . 

At the same time, Oleksandr became Dasha’s producer. She took part in the national selection for Eurovision and came fourth. Their daughter Varia was born in 2011. However, their relationship got noticeably worse, according to their friends.

After the baby was born, Dasha moved in with her friend for a while, and then went to live with her parents in Kherson. She told her friend that she was seeing a psychologist. Back then, she cut her hair short and lost a lot of weight. At the same time, she signed a contract and became the vocalist of the famous band VIA Gra, but in March 2014, she left the band without any public explanation. 

“She was very private. As far as I understood, she already had debts and all this fight to get her daughter back took her last strength,’ the friend recalls. 

Another friend of Dasha’s says that during the divorce, Oleksandr did everything he could to humiliate and hurt her. ‘He blocked access to her public Facebook page. Then he sold her personal laptop with all the information on it. I was approached by people who bought it asking if I needed this data”, she says і this friend of Dasha Medova also asked NGL.media for anonymity . 

Dasha’s father, Volodymyr Kobets, also talks about humiliation and abuse in the relationship. In a conversation with NGL.media, he recalls the time when he came to Kyiv to celebrate the New Year 2015 together. Then he was surprised that his son-in-law decided not to celebrate with his family, and went to visit his friends in Russia. 

‘My daughter, my granddaughter and I turned around and went to Kherson. When they returned to Kyiv in January 2015, they were in for a surprise: Shvets’s mother had changed the locks to their shared apartment and wouldn’t let Dasha and her granddaughter in. From then on, all hell broke loose,’ Volodymyr Kobets recalls.

After that, Dasha and her daughter returned to their parents in Kherson, and Oleksandr started writing posts on Facebook about his child being kidnapped and hidden. Given that Dasha was already quite famous at the time, the media was actively discussing the story. Oleksandr also reported to the police that his daughter had been abducted.

Shvets wasn’t about stop. In August 2015 he registered the NGO ‘Father has the right’ and even applied to the European Court of Human Rights. Dasha realised she needed to defend herself more actively. She attached a specialist’s opinion on her ex-husband’s psychological state to the court’s files. Based on an analysis of Shvets’ public speeches and posts on social media, the psychologist concluded that his views could have a negative impact on his daughter’s upbringing.

Shvets does not hide his misogynistic і Misogyny, or hatred of women – hatred, contempt, disgust, prejudice against women   views, claiming that men are `naturally superior to women, and calls women nothing but “tw@ts”, “hussies”, “chicks” or “old cows”. Despite this, Oleksandr Shvets won a court case that determined the child’s place of residence with his father. 

 “For three and a half years, I slept four to five hours, studied law, had about a hundred court cases that I lost. In the end, a unique decision was made to determine the child’s place of residence with his father”, Oleksandr Shvets described this period of his life in June 2018.

A few weeks after that, Dasha Medova went missing, and she is still officially wanted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Neither her family nor her friends know what happened to her. 

The price of a winning algorithm 

Despite the lack of legal education, Oleksandr Shvets decided to turn his experience in the courts into a business and call it human rights protection. The NGO ‘Father has the Right’ (FHR), which he registered in 2015, initially declared that it would help anyone who was fighting for the right to see their children or grandchildren, without any gender division. However, Shvets’ rhetoric soon changed – the organisation would only help men.

‘We will help you leave the children with the father, divide the property in favour of the father, help you kick your ex out of your apartment and get her to pay child support. And you will live with your child, f.cking new young wenches, if you still have enough time after you take care of your child and live your new life”, is a typical example of a FHR post in June 2024.

All public pages of the Father Has the Right on various social media list the only contact phone number, and it’s Oleksandr Shvets’ personal number. Only a personal conversation with him will give you a chance to join a closed group chat on Telegram, where its members more openly discuss various aspects of their activities, including plainly illegal ones.

NGL.media managed to access this chat and study its content.

However, first we had to come up with a plausible story. An NGL.media journalist spent almost two hours talking to Shvets under the guise of a father of two children, one of whom he is trying to seize from his ex-wife by court action.

Over the phone, Oleksandr Shvets sounds much like a professional salesman or insurance agent. He talks a lot, skilfully manipulating and pushing the interlocutor to the conclusions he wants. At first glance, he appears to be a frank person, offering various options for help. However, he is cautious and circumspect about the key point – child abduction and hiding. He does not keep back the fact that you will have to pay a lot for his services.

After a while, he offers a list of next steps – “if you are really ready to get your son back”. There’s a price for each step.

Step 1. First, you need to join the Father Has Right’s closed telegram group chat, where you can communicate with like-minded people. It costs 150 UAH per month, prepaid for three months at once. That’s how we managed to get into this group, which currently has 117 members and brings around UAH 200,000 a year. It’s not a particularly significant amount, but it will get more expensive.

Step 2. Next, the client will have two personal consultations with Shvets. The first one lasts two hours and costs EUR 300 (UAH 13,500 at the NBU exchange rate). The second consultation lasts at least four hours and costs EUR 600 (UAH 27,000). Shvets claims that he has already given more than 20,000 consultations, which seems to be an openly exaggerated number, but these consultations are the basis of his business. 

Step 3. When the ‘father’ assured him money was not a problem, Shvets talked about the lawyers’ fees. According to him, Father Has the Right’s lawyers work under his direct supervision and deal only with cases involving the determination of the child’s place of residence with the father. “I am definitely number one in this country in this area”, Shvets boasts. “I control the lawyers myself; in fact, they are my hands and feet”.

FHR lawyers work on an hourly basis, EUR 80 per hour і A working hour is direct work with a client’s case: writing claims, attending meetings, etc. . Downtime or waiting time in court is also paid at EUR 40 per hour і Waiting time is when the hearing is delayed, trips to the post office to send claims, etc. These are also called technical hours .

Shvets instantly warns that litigation can drag on for years, so the client should immediately deposit EUR 1,000, adding another EUR 250 every month until the total is EUR 3,000. Depending on the court instance, a lawyer receives an additional bonus of EUR 500-1000 for winning a case.

Plus, money is needed to collect evidence. This amount depends on the client’s financial capacity, but Shvets insists the more evidence, the better. We are talking about various kinds of expertise, primarily psychological. According to him, FHR has specialists who are ready to help with this. NGL.media found these experts and found out their fees. We’ll discuss it later.

“We have lost only two trials so far. But we did not lose the children – that is, the children remained with their parents. On average, with God’s help, every two to three months we win another trial for another father. But these are trials that took three or four years to plan”, says Shvets.

In general, a Father Has the Right’s client should be prepared to pay at least EUR 10,000 within a three-year period. 

Of course, this amount does not take into account other daily living expenses, which increase dramatically for the FHR clients. After all, hiding a child often comes with a move to another city, which means renting a place to live. 

In addition, children usually do not return to a regular school or kindergarten, they start studying at home or in private schools. Why private schools? Because some private schools have an interesting option – the conclusion of a contract, which means that the school is accountable only to the person who signed the contract. In other words, such a school will not give any information about the child to anyone, not even the mother, only to the person who pays. 

In the closed FHR chats, fathers most often advise each other about the Kyiv-based remote school Optima, where a year of studies costs UAH 31,500. This format of education allows to keep the child at home under constant supervision. This is where, according to her mother, the abducted Sofia Holynska, who is officially wanted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, studies.

How is this possible? Repeated attempts by NGL.media to get an explanation from the school’s management resulted in receiving a refusal from the Protas, Sorokin and Partners law firm, which serves the interests of the Optima school.

What happens in private chats

After conducting a preliminary conversation and receiving a payment, Oleksandr Shvets personally adds all new members to the closed group ‘Father Has the Right Ukraine’ on Telegram. Here you get access to 25 different chats based on your interests. For example, there is a chat on the territorial military enlistment centers, where participants share news and lawyers’ advice on mobilisation. There is a group on kindergartens, where they advise on how to make sure that a mother cannot transfer her child to another school without her husband’s consent. There are regional chats for different cities – Dnipro, Odesa, Kherson, Lviv, and Kharkiv.

The most interesting is the SOS chat, where you can message only in case of emergency. For example, in April 2024, Vlada Lalo from Kyiv found her kidnapped son in Brovary and called the police to take him away. Then, in the SOS chat, Oleksandr Shvets called on FHR activists to immediately go there and put pressure on the police. This strategy worked, for Vlada was unable to take the child away.

They also write messages in this chat when someone is taken to the territorial military enlistment center or has another court hearing where they need to show public support. The FHR members actively support each other. This is one of the key characteristics of this organisation.

It was in this chat that the abduction of Anna Holynska’s daughter from Balta was discussed. As a reminder, when the court ordered the ‘immediate return of the child to her mother’ in December 2020 and the police arrived to execute the court’s decision, the child was not with her father – on Oleksandr Shvets’ instructions, her grandmother was driving the child towards Uman. At the same time, the child’s father, Vadym Holynskyi, was giving explanations at the police station. From there, he called Shvets, who personally controlled the whole situation, and in the chat, he gave step-by-step instructions and instructions to the participants on how to take Vadym out, put pressure on the police, and organise an information campaign on social media.

After Holynskyi was taken out of Balta, Shvets regularly posted about raising funds for ‘his family’s existence’. Fundraising for Holynskyi took place even in 2023. The posts also prove that they see each other from time to time. We would like to remind you that Vadyn Holynskyi is on the national wanted list under several articles of the Criminal Code.

Despite the fact that these private Telegram chats are accessible only to their own members, FHR activists often use code words to describe their actions. For example, the forcible abduction of a child in the street is called ‘fortune’.

A more common method, when a father simply does not return the child after an agreed visit, is called ‘going to the seaside’. In practice, this means that you can take the child anywhere (to the mountains, a neighbouring region or just to Kyiv) – just to get as far away from the mother as possible.

Additional coding even in private chats proves that the FHR activists are aware their actions are illegal.

Psychologists and lawyers on the payroll

‘We estimate the outcome of the trial as 90% probability of victory. Why not 100%? Because there is always the fool factor, the money factor, and the factor of opportunities [of the opposing side]”, says Shvets.

One of the key elements in the FHR strategy is the written of psychologists and experts confirming the importance of the father in raising a child and, accordingly, the harm the mother’s influence causes. NGL.media found that such conclusions were written for the FHR clients mainly by psychologists Tetiana Vakulich, Liudmyla Fedosova and Viktor Vus.

The most common names in the cases analysed by NGL.media are Tetiana Vakulich і until 2021, she worked as the head of the Department of Psychology at the Lviv Institute of the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management (IAPM) and Liudmyla Fedosova і senior lecturer at the Department of Medical Psychology at the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management (IAPM) . It was they who gave expert opinions for Fedir Oliynyk і in 2019, Fedir Oliynyk, 9, was abducted by his father under the FHR scheme and isolated from his mother for Tymur Zaskalkin і in the summer of 2022, his father abducted a five-year-old boy from a kindergarten for Sashko Lalo and many others. All of these children are of different age and often live in different cities and different conditions, but all expert opinions for them are carbon copies.

Here are, for example, a few quotes from Liudmyla Fedosova’s findings, which are used in at least ten conclusions about children, regardless of age or family situation: ‘the child has a close, secure attachment and positive affection to the father, who is his supportive figure”, “the child tries to distance himself from the mother because she is a threat to him”, “the forced removal of the child from the father is impossible without causing psychological trauma to the child”.

The psychologist Tetiana Vikulych uses a slightly different set of phrases with the same meaning. 

The psychologists interviewed by NGL.media believe the mere fact that they use the same phrases is not the direct evidence of Fedosova and Vikulich working in favour of the “Father Has the Right”. Psychologists do often use a certain set of typical phrases. However, NGL.media found more solid evidence of close cooperation between these psychologists and the FHR: in 2021-2023 alone, Oleksandr Shvets personally paid Tetiana Vakulich and Liudmyla Fedosova at least UAH 310,000. Liudmyla Fedosova refused to talk to NGL.media about the terms of cooperation with the FHR.

And a psychologist Viktor Vus і a researcher at the Institute of Social and Political Psychology. The topic of his psychological practices is the mental health of small groups received almost UAH 33,000 from Shvets in 2021. In a conversation with NGL.media, he stated that this ‘was a long time ago’ and he no longer works with Oleksandr Shvets and his organisation.

That is, it was Oleksandr Shvets who paid for the services of psychologists for other FHR members. The price of one psychological conclusion ranges between UAH 6,500 and UAH 12,000. 

In just five months of 2021, Oleksandr Shvets personally transferred UAH 78,500 to Tetiana Vakulich. It was during this period that she made psychological reports for the fathers who are FHR activists – Andrii Melnyk, Andrii Tverdokhlib, Vadym Holynskyi, Kyrylo Oliinyk and Dmytro Puzik. 

In 2022, Vakulich received UAH 21,400 from Shvets. At that time, she prepared an expert opinion for Volodymyr Kreposniak, one of the most active FHR members. At the time, Tetiana Vakulich was abroad, where she evacuated when the full-scale Russian invasion started. That is, it was only online that she could make all her conclusions about the child’s condition and the father’s role in the upbringing, by watching the child through a computer camera or not communicating with the child at all. NGL.media couldn’t receive a comment from Tetiana Vakulich.

Perhaps, because of Vakulich’s absence, in 2023 Shvets was ordering expert opinions mainly from Liudmyla Fedosova. She received UAH 145,000 from him during this year. She received this money, in particular, for the opinions for two other active FHR members, Vladyslav Mintenko and Yevhen Kryieviņš.

The psychologists’ opinions have yet to be used correctly in court, so the FHR works only with specific lawyers. Oleksandr Shvets emphasises that he is the brains behind the organisation and he is the one who controls everything. He even emphasises on Facebook that his lawyers never write to his clients directly or contact them. All contacts and money go only through him personally.

At present, the Father Has the Right cooperates mainly with Kyiv lawyers Mykola Yakymenko and Nina Kamenska. Shvets also personally pays for their services. For example, Nina Kamenska received more than UAH 250,000 from him in 2021-2023. She did not respond to NGL.media’s request. During the same period, Mykola Yakymenko received much more – over a million hryvnias. He refused to talk to NGL.media about his cooperation with Shvets, reacting emotionally when asked about the UAH 1,130,000 he received from him: “Where did this information come from? I demand an answer to this question! Don’t you dare collect information about me. Do you understand? I ask again, do you understand?!”

Members of the organisation and the distribution of roles

In addition to legal and expert support, there are other people who provide for the organisation’s activities. Having analysed the FHR activities both from open and private sources, NGL.media was able to identify the backbone of the organisation – people whose role is somewhat broader than that of ordinary activists.

It is this division and structure that gives grounds to say that the NGO ‘Father has the Right’ has all the signs of a totalitarian cult.

According to an explanatory dictionary, a totalitarian cult is an isolated group of people who are locked in their narrow group interests. Experts list the following as the cult characteristics: 

• presence of a charismatic leader who is a preacher and chief manager;
• existence of a circle of people who are particularly close to the cult leader and who hold leadership positions in the cult;
• active missionary and preaching activities of the cult members;
• surrounding people who have recently joined the sect with care;
• special training for neophytes.

The presence of a charismatic leader was described above. Now let’s talk about his inner circle and the distribution of roles. Our definitions of these roles are rather arbitrary: we focused on the activities demonstrated by men in public and in private groups.

First of all, these are “informers”. They are people who actively promote the organisation’s activities through their own success stories. They run social media, talk about their lives and respond to comments in open groups. Their main role is to attract new clients.

The main informer is Volodymyr Kreposniak, who lives in the village of Hatne near Kyiv. There are at least three other fathers associated with the “Father Has the Right” who live in the same village. The 43-year-old former athlete is currently suing for two of his children. After his divorce from Anna Strunina and the abduction of her son, he remarried and had a daughter in his second marriage. Now his second ex-wife has moved from Kyiv suburb, taking her daughter. According to Strunina, she is very worried that he might kidnap her daughter as well.

It is Volodymyr Kreposniak and Kyrylo Oliynyk, his neighbour from Hatne, who are always in the photos from court hearings. They actively support other parents during court hearings, or rather create an audience in the courtroom, which often creates indirect pressure on judges. Oliynyk used to be a highly successful sales agent for international companies. Today, he and his son are a kind of walking advertisement for the organisation’s success.

According to their ex-wives, both Kreposniak and Oliynyk are working off the organisation’s services with their activities. Their behaviour in the private Telegram group, to which NGL.media gained access, makes it clear they also act as a kind of sales agents, gently reminding newcomers ‘Have you already taken Sasha’s paid consultation? It will really help you”.

Also, Vladyslav Mintenko, a car mechanic and Serhii Kalinichenko, a taxi driver almost always appear in court photos. Kalinichenko was one of those who helped Oleksandr Shvets kidnap his own daughter. In July 2019, on the TV talk show ‘It Concerns Everyone’, Serhiy Kalinichenko, as a FHR representative, said that he was present during the execution of the court decision to take Shvets’ daughter away and that he testified that Dasha Medova had a drug problem.

“Administrators” are people who technically support the activities of groups on social media. First of all, it’s Ihor Dubas, who is in charge of the private Telegram chats. He is the one who tracks payments and adds new members. Also, Mykhailo Naumov, a programmer, father of two children, with one of whom he went abroad at the beginning of the full-scale invasion and is now living in Mexico.

“Militants” are primarily Yaroslav Karpliuk, 47, and Oleksandr Stetsenko, 43. They help others to implement the scenario of child abduction by force. And then they provide shelter to parents with abducted children. Rumour has it, for a fee.

“Security forces”. It is worth describing separately the people who do not appear in the photo, but are definitely crucial for the “Father Has the Right”. More precisely, they are Vitaliy Lalo, Artem Zaskalkin and Svyatoslav Horodniuk.

Svyatoslav Horodniuk is a former law enforcement officer who provides surveillance of mothers for the organisation and installs GPS trackers on their cars if necessary. Vladyslava Lalo from the Kyiv Prosecutor’s Office told NGL.media about the tracker found in her car. 

Artem Zaskalkin is the head of the organisational and legal support department of the Specialised Defence Prosecutor’s Office in the Eastern Region. His story has long been public – it was made public by Liudmyla Zaskalkina, who has been fighting to see her son for almost two years. On Instagram, Liudmyla describes in detail the story of her child’s kidnapping from the kindergarten.

The abovementioned Vitaliy Lalo, a prosecutor from the Prosecutor General’s Office, is even more famous. He abducted his son from his ex-wife twice. NGL.media has evidence that Lalo personally paid Shvets at least UAH 36,000. This is a relatively small amount, so it is possible that he is working off his services in some other way.

There are also “sponsors” who pay much more than other FHM members. For example, Andrii Tverdokhlib, a successful farmer from Kropyvnytskyi, sponsored the creation of a large promotional  film about the organisation. Or Ihor Veskov, the owner of the “Lucky Tour” travel company, who paid Shvets almost UAH 100,000 over six months. Now, according to discussions in the FHR chats, Veskov and his kidnapped child have gone abroad, where he faced a rather difficult financial situation.

Oleksandr Shvets’ comments

Contrary to the above facts, Oleksandr Shvets denies both the financial and moral side of his activities. After completing this investigation, NGL.media officially contacted him for a final interview.

“Our consultations are free I am not personally involved in commercial activities. Of course, we have information about good lawyers and other resources. People can turn to them and use these resources to protect their rights”, said Shvets, although he had previously told an undercover NGL.media agent about the cost of all his services. Prosecutor Vitalii Lalo also confirmed the payment for consultations.

At the same time, it seems that Shvets controls the entire financial side of the organisation’s activities, collecting all the money from clients and personally paying for the services of lawyers and psychologists, according to NGL.media’s sources. 

He also insists that he bears no responsibility for his activities. “We only advise. I tell a parent – if you want to raise your children properly, then take them and raise them! I can’t tell them what they should do. It is their choice and their responsibility”, said Oleksandr Shvets.

As for the fate of children who are abducted by their parents by force after his consultations, he assures that all these children ran away because of their mothers’ abuse.

Conclusions

We do understand that not all men, even those who are part of the private FHR channels, use children or try to take revenge on their ex-wives. Some of them are really fighting for their children, while their ex-wives are denying them the communication. Out of desperation, they are ready to use various methods of struggle.

But in this case, we are talking about an extensive organisation that uses fathers’ despair to strengthen its own influence and directly push men to commit criminal offences. The presence of current and former law enforcement officers, successful businessmen and politicians in its ranks allows one person to decide the fate of entire families.

NGL.media passed on all the data obtained from the FHR’s private chats, including plans to ‘take children to the sea’, to the women whose ex-husbands were mentioned in the chats.

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This material was prepared with the financial support from the European Union. The EU4IM project, funded by the European Union, is solely responsible for its content. The content of the material is the sole responsibility of NGL.media and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.