- August 30, 2026
- 10:27 am
- World News
Igor Kolomoisky from the hall of the Ukrainian court spoke about ballistic missiles, Lenin’s mausoleum, and Timur Mindich in Israel. But behind one sarcastic remark was the story of Kolomoisky’s own Israeli citizenship, the Jewish community of Dnipro, “Dnipro-1”, Fire Point, and several legal proceedings.
Igor Kolomoisky was back in the news not because of another court decision, but because of a remark that the war could supposedly be ended by a missile hitting Lenin’s mausoleum. But the conversation on August 28, 2026, was broader. He talked about Ukrainian ballistics, Fire Point, and Timur Mindich, who is in Israel. Kolomoisky himself is also an Israeli citizen, a former head of a major Jewish organization in Ukraine, and a person who has been in a Kyiv detention center for almost three years.
In this material, I, Alexander Khmelnitsky, for NANews — Israel News compared where Kolomoisky’s words were a joke and where he relied on real stories around Fire Point and Mindich. For the Israeli reader, his Israeli passport, the “Menorah” in Dnipro, the story of “Dnipro-1”, and several legal proceedings, which are often mixed into one, are important here.
The mausoleum was a joke. Mindich — not so much
On August 28, 2026, Kolomoisky spoke with journalists in the Appeals Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine. HACC is a special court for the most significant corruption cases. On that day, the defense tried to transfer the case to another court, where Kolomoisky and five other former managers of PrivatBank are accused of embezzling more than 9.2 billion hryvnias.
The court refused.
Against this backdrop, Kolomoisky began to speculate about the war. According to his logic, the mere possibility of Ukraine responding with ballistic strikes on Moscow would not yet force Russia to stop. Then followed sarcasm about Lenin’s mausoleum and the “death of Koschei.” The phrase “everything will end immediately” in context sounded like a joke, not a military plan.
He then spoke about Fire Point, called the company a “super organization,” demanded the return of the “chief designer,” and immediately recalled Mindich in Israel — supposedly “with all the secrets.”
“Chief designer” in Israel: where is the substitution of fact
Timur Mindich is not the chief designer of Fire Point. This position is held by the company’s co-founder Denis Shtilerman; in 2026, he publicly stated that he owns 97.5% of Fire Point.
But the connection of Mindich with the company is not entirely fictional. Shtilerman himself said that Mindich helped gain access to closed Soviet archives with materials on missile technologies, including documents on the S-300. He claimed that these materials helped work on Ukrainian missile projects.
This is Shtilerman’s version, not an independently established fact about which documents were transferred. There is no confirmation that Mindich took “all the drawings” to Israel.
Fire Point is indeed working on ballistics. Reuters reported on FP-7 and FP-9; for FP-9, a range of about 850 kilometers and a warhead of up to 800 kilograms is declared. Simultaneously, the company is developing the Freyja anti-missile project with the FP-7X interceptor.
Mindich is in Israel, and Ukraine is seeking his extradition in the “Midas” case. On August 10, the head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, Alexander Klymenko, said that there was no response from Israel to the request for the extradition of Mindich and Alexander Zuckerman. SAP is the prosecutor’s office that handles top corruption cases together with NABU, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.
Kolomoisky received an Israeli passport back in 1995
For the Israeli audience, Kolomoisky is not just a “Ukrainian oligarch.” He himself said that he received Israeli citizenship in 1995, after his first trip here in 1992. Later, he simultaneously had Ukrainian, Israeli, and Cypriot passports.
Since then, the set of citizenships has changed. In 2025, the Supreme Court of Ukraine finally upheld the decision to terminate his Ukrainian citizenship. Cyprus revoked its citizenship in 2024. I found no data on the termination of Israeli citizenship.
Since 2018, Kolomoisky lived in Herzliya, and in May 2019, he returned to Ukraine.
The connection with Jewish life was also real. In 2008, he was elected president of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine. He was a major donor to the Jewish community of Dnipro and participated in financing the “Menorah” complex; separately financed the related museum of Jewish memory and the Holocaust. In 2010, he headed the European Council of Jewish Communities, although his arrival was accompanied by conflict within the organization.
For NANews — Israel News | NikkNANews — Israel Newsestablished part of his past, but it says nothing about guilt or innocence in current cases.
“Kolomoisky’s Battalion” — not quite a personal army
In the spring of 2014, after the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the start of the war in Donbas, Kolomoisky headed the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration. For an Israeli, this is roughly a region head appointed by the central government, although there is no direct Israeli equivalent.
Kolomoisky and his team invested private money in the defense of the region and the support of volunteer units. The most famous is “Dnipro-1.”
It is often called “Kolomoisky’s battalion” or even “private army.” The latter is inaccurate. “Dnipro-1” was created in April 2014 as a special volunteer police battalion within the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Private funding and the role of Kolomoisky’s team were significant, but legally it was not his personal armed structure.
During that period, he also promised monetary rewards for captured Russian saboteurs. For Moscow, Kolomoisky became one of the symbols of Ukrainian resistance in the east — despite being a Jewish public figure and an Israeli citizen.
Why he has been in detention for the third year without a verdict
Kolomoisky has been in custody since September 2, 2023. But to say that he is “in prison by verdict” is incorrect. He is held in a pre-trial detention center during investigations and court proceedings.
On August 7, 2026, the Podolsky District Court of Kyiv kept him in custody until October 9, setting bail at 948 million hryvnias in a case related to PrivatBank.
Another proceeding is ongoing in parallel. Kolomoisky is accused of organizing an attempt on the lawyer Sergey Karpenko in 2003. According to the investigation, the conflict arose around a corporate dispute, after which Karpenko was attacked and stabbed. Kolomoisky denies involvement. In June 2026, Karpenko testified in court for the first time, and the defense tried to close the case due to the statute of limitations.
These cases cannot be mixed. And the detention itself does not prove guilt: the final decision is made by the court.
The court on August 28 returned the conversation to PrivatBank
NABU and SAP submitted the indictment to the court on August 6, 2026. According to the prosecution, in January–March 2015, the former ultimate owner of PrivatBank, who simultaneously headed the Dnipropetrovsk region, organized the embezzlement of more than 9.2 billion hryvnias of the bank through a controlled structure. Kolomoisky and other defendants have the right to challenge this version.
There is also a separate British process. In 2025, the High Court of England found Kolomoisky and Gennady Bogolyubov liable to PrivatBank for the withdrawal of funds. On May 22, 2026, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales dismissed their appeal. This is a civil decision, not a Ukrainian criminal verdict.
It was at the hearing on the Ukrainian case on August 28 that Kolomoisky spoke about Mindich. One Israeli citizen is in custody in Kyiv; another Ukraine is trying to obtain from Israel through extradition. Between them in this story is Fire Point — a Ukrainian missile manufacturer, around which the dispute over Mindich’s real role remains a dispute, not a fact established by the court.