- January 24, 2026
- 6:29 pm
- Israel
Ukrainian journalistic investigations unexpectedly received an Israeli continuation. A report by Mykhailo Tkach about the fugitive figures of a high-profile corruption case in the entourage of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — the so-called “Midas” operation — led to the intersection of two media spaces at once: Ukrainian and Israeli, writes news.israelinfo.co.il.
Tkach’s materials attracted the attention of TheMarker correspondent Gur Megiddo, who has been investigating the connections of Israeli politicians with foreign businessmen and former oligarchs for many years. At the center of this intersection was Mikhail Cherney — a man with a long and ambiguous biography.
During covert filming in Tel Aviv, Cherney was caught on Tkach’s camera twice. The subject is the luxury clothing store Philosophy, located on Kikar HaMedina — one of the most expensive shopping areas in the city. Here, the cost of a single wardrobe item can reach tens and even hundreds of thousands of shekels.
The Ukrainian journalist claimed that Cherney is the actual owner of this exotic business. Formally, the store is registered to Aryeh Pesakhov, but the structure of visits and the environment of visitors raised questions.
The filming was conducted from a parked car at a distance. Over two days, Cherney appeared in the store twice. Along with him in the frame was a person resembling a former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada from the pro-Russian Party of Regions Dmytro Shentsev — one of the 38 deputies who voted in 2018 against securing Ukrainian sovereignty over the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The camera also captured key figures of the “Midas” case — Oleksandr Tsukerman and his brother Mykhailo Tsukerman. According to the investigation, the brothers often visited Philosophy, sometimes twice a day. The camera recorded hugs with Pesakhov and the moment of transferring a “heavy black bag,” which he handed to one of the Tsukermans.
Having studied court materials from past years, Gur Megiddo discovered that Pesakhov had previously informed Israeli courts about the presence of “partners” in the business. In a conversation with a journalist, the store owner began to deny this, insisting that he had no partners, and Cherney “has been called a partner for 30 years, but it’s not true.” He also stated that if his lawyer ever said otherwise, then “he is no longer my lawyer.”
Cherney himself, after divorcing the media “socialite” and friend of Sara Netanyahu Nicole Raidman, leads a maximally non-public life in Israel. In response to a request from TheMarker, he stated that he is only a regular customer and a long-time friend of Pesakhov and has no relation to his business.
His press service’s reaction was harsher. Gur Megiddo was directly told: the publication of “erroneous or defamatory information” will result in the use of “all legal possibilities” to protect Cherney’s reputation.
The context of this story goes far beyond a single store. In 2004, Mikhail Cherney was stripped of Israeli citizenship after the Ministry of Internal Affairs began an investigation into fraud in obtaining it. The case was eventually effectively frozen, and in 2011, then-Minister of Internal Affairs Eli Yishai (Shas) returned Cherney’s Israeli passport.
Today, Ukrainian corruption investigations are increasingly finding continuation in Israel — in expensive neighborhoods, business showcases, and old court cases that seemed to have long gone into the past. And it is in such details that it becomes visible how closely Ukrainian politics, Israeli jurisdiction, and figures accustomed to remaining in the shadows for years are intertwined.
This is what NAnews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency writes about, capturing not rumors, but points of intersection of investigations, interests, and countries where the past suddenly catches up with the present.
