Olga Drozdova — head of the administrative and economic department of the Education Management of the Dniprovsky District State Administration of Kyiv — became known in 2023 when the prosecutor's office discovered purchases for school bomb shelters that were difficult to explain by civil protection logic: drums, vegetable cutters, and chairs at prices that contradicted market rates. The case went to court. A verdict was rendered in absentia — the defendant is in Antalya.
Three episodes, three purchases
According to materials from the Kyiv City Prosecutor's Office, the scheme was uniform: as an authorized public procurement officer, Drozdova selected suppliers with commercial offers that did not correspond to market prices and concluded contracts on terms that contradicted the interests of the state.
- Vegetable cutters for shelters — embezzlement of 462 thousand hryvnia. The first suspicion was announced in 2023; later the amount of damages was clarified to almost 460 thousand hryvnia after the indictment was updated.
- "Joker" chairs — 6,500 units with a total value of 4.875 million hryvnia, damages from price inflation estimated at 1.3 million hryvnia. A separate suspicion was announced.
- Generators for shelters — new suspicion in August 2025 for complicity in the appropriation of budget funds by an organized group of persons (Part 5 of Art. 27, Part 4 of Art. 191 of the Criminal Code).
The total amount of damages from the first two episodes included in the indictment is more than 1.76 million hryvnia.
What the court decided
The Dniprovsky District Court found Drozdova guilty on two episodes of embezzlement. The verdict consists of two sentences: 5 years imprisonment with a ban on holding positions related to administrative and economic functions for 3 years; and 7 years imprisonment with the same restrictions and confiscation of property. Which of the sentences is final after sentence absorption was not publicly clarified by the prosecutor's office.
"The suspect, being an authorized person for organizing public procurements, purchased chairs for arranging shelters at inflated prices"
Kyiv City Prosecutor's Office
Where the defendant is
The trial lasted more than a year. Drozdova systematically did not appear at hearings, citing illness. In September 2025, it became clear: she left for Turkey on the eve of a hearing at which a preventive measure was to be chosen, and provided the court with a residential lease agreement in Antalya for a year. According to Ukrainska Pravda, the prosecutor requested a forced arrest warrant — the court refused. In the case concerning generators, the Holosiivsky District Court did grant permission for detention and forced arrest.
This is not the first corruption case involving Drozdova's name: according to the Ukrainian Reporter, she was previously involved in proceedings in the Podil District Court regarding the purchase of vehicles for an animal shelter at twice the inflated price.
Context: bomb shelters as a market
Large-scale arrangement of shelters in Kyiv schools in 2022–2023 — billions of hryvnia in state contracts under martial law — took place with minimal real-time control. The Drozdova case showed: price inflation was not fixed at the level of a single tender, but as a repeated practice by one person in one department over several procurement cycles.
The verdict has been rendered. The convicted person is abroad, wanted in a parallel case. The question is not whether this verdict will be executed — but whether there is a mechanism for its execution if Turkey has no extradition treaty with Ukraine.
