Dozens of porcelain hens and roosters decorate Yuriy Kosiuk's office in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. Nicknamed "the chicken king," the 55-year-old oligarch has risen to become one of the country's 10 richest people thanks to his company, Myronivsky Hliboprodukt (MHP), which manages 60% of Ukraine's poultry production, or around 300 million chickens a year. MHP farms cover no less than 300,000 hectares of land in the country.

But Kosiuk keeps a low profile. In mid-February, he set up several business meetings in Paris, but each time preferred to send Jofn Rich, his Australian right-hand man, president and number two in the company. According to Dmytro (his first name was changed at his request), one of his former advisers, the billionaire refuses to become a public figure. And yet, in recent months, his name has been on everyone's lips. Across Europe, farmers who have been demonstrating to improve their living conditions denounced, among other things, unfair competition from cheap Ukrainian poultry.

In April 2022, in response to the Russian invasion, the European Union abolished customs duties on all Ukrainian farming products, doubling imports of certain foods, including chicken, in the space of a few months. At a European summit in Brussels on February 1, French President Emmanuel Macron criticized this upsurge, referring to the big Ukrainian boss (who did not wish to respond to our requests): "Who's the one reaping three quarters of the benefits? A group owned by a billionaire. Objectively speaking, we have no desire to enrich this gentleman."

Supporting the war effort

While on a trip to the Saudi capital Riyadh, Rich said he was "shocked" by Macron's accusation. "How can Ukraine be blamed for those disruptions in French agriculture," asked this former consultant for the World Bank. While he did not deny that the Ukrainian food group benefited greatly from economic measures in Kyiv's favor, he insisted that the company's valuation (listed on the London Stock Exchange) fell because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

According to figures from the company, which employs 30,000 people, MHP also spent the equivalent of €20 million in two years of war to support the families of its thousands of employees fighting on the front lines. If an employee dies in combat, the employer pledges to pay his family his salary "for 10 years," explained Rich. He also detailed the chicken donations to the army and likes to tell the story of how Kosiuk, his "personal friend," supervised a solidarity kitchen along the front line in February 2022.

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