From the head of the DSA to the head of Kyiv’s service center: what is known about Pavlo Soroka’s background and family ties

From the head of the DSA to the head of Kyiv’s service center: what is known about Pavlo Soroka’s background and family ties

The Regional Service Center in Kyiv is headed by Pavlo Soroka, who also serves as Deputy Head of the State Service Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Previously, he headed the Malovyskivska District State Administration in Kirovohrad Region, and that period became the most controversial in his biography.

After the Revolution of Dignity, the area of agricultural land owned by the Soroka family and related enterprises, namely FG “Krasliany” and LLC “Sigma”, grew more than three and a half times — to nearly one and a half thousand hectares. Part of the land was acquired after Soroka became head of the Malovyskivska DSA.

Local residents and farmers repeatedly complained that some plots were allocated to ATO participants “according to Soroka’s lists,” after which the land was leased or sold to companies linked to the district administration head’s family. In addition, farmers were forced to terminate lease agreements early, while available shares were mostly given to people close to the official.
Most of the plots were registered to enterprises controlled by the official’s father, and the family’s agricultural business was closely tied to connections in the highest levels of government.

In particular, with First Deputy Prosecutor General of the scandal-ridden Lutsenko, Dmytro Storozhuk, who is married to Soroka’s sister.

Storozhuk is known for signing off in 2016 on allowing international fraudster Dmytro Malynovskyi from Odesa — suspected of multi-million-dollar scams — to be officially declared dead and to hide abroad for years. Lutsenko, it should be recalled, is Ukraine’s former Minister of Internal Affairs, so it is hardly surprising that Soroka, despite such a background but with powerful protection, was appointed to head the regional service center in the capital.