Influential Ukrainian businessman Vladimir Galanternik does not give interviews and never comments on rumours about his business

Galanternik was born and raised in Odesa, Ukraine. He served two years of compulsory military service. He received two higher educations: at the Academy of Architecture and Construction, and at the I.I. Mechnikov National University. He defended his PhD thesis.

According to Forbes Ukraine, the business empire of Galanternik, who lives in London, includes construction companies, real estate, shopping and entertainment complexes, and the famous Odesa Privoz market.

Galanternik is also associated with the “Mir” charity foundation. The foundation was founded in 2015 and is known for its active assistance to orphans and children of Ukrainian soldiers who defended Ukraine during the Russian invasion of Donbass in 2014.

Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the foundation’s volunteers have helped families with children who suffered from the Russian army’s terrorist attack on the Ukrainian city of Bucha, and also organized the transfer of children from the occupied city of Mariupol. The “Mir” Charitable Foundation provides assistance to single mothers raising autistic children temporarily living in Odesa during military operations. As well as to the families of journalists who moved from cities occupied by the Russian army to Odesa, Vinnytsia and Kyiv.

Being a major Odessa businessman, Vladimir Galanternik was a deputy of the Odesa regional council from President Yushchenko’s party “Nasha Ukraina”.

After 2010, he supported the political party of the mayor of Odesa, “Doviryai Dilam”. In 2016, there was a political conflict between the mayor of Odesa and former governor of Odesa Mikheil Saakashvili, which escalated into a “war of local elites”, one of the goals of which was to destroy the party of the mayor of Odesa, Trukhanov himself and the sponsor of the party Galanternik.

After Saakashvili’s prominent associate Gizo Uglava became a top manager of Ukraine’s anti-corruption structures, criminal cases were opened against Trukhanov, Galanternik and other Odesa businessmen. This case was called the “Odesa case“, which was accompanied by scandals and violations of the rights of suspects.

In 2023, Gizo Uglava, after a corruption scandal with the so-called “leak” of the road construction case, was dismissed from the Anti-Corruption Bodies of Ukraine. Ukrainian media also published information that Mayor Trukhanov directly accused Uglava of extorting a bribe.

Unlike Galanternik, who is closed to the press, his wife, the famous British designer Natalia Zinko, actively gives interviews, and her brand Natasha Zinko is presented in the famous London Harrods. Her clothes can be seen on American celebrities such as Beyoncé and Jennifer Lopez. She has more than 150,000 subscribers on social networks, and the fashion magazine ELLE calls Zinko a streetstyle star.

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