XV Corporate Lawyers Forum

Business in a state of circular defense: Founder of ONCOMEDICA LLC Vladislav Smirnov broke the mold at the 15th Forum of Corporate Lawyers
Kyiv, Ukraine — As part of the 15th Forum of Corporate Lawyers (Legal Counsel), organized by the Ukrainian Bar Association (UBA), a special interview was held with the founder and owner of ONCOMEDICA LLC Vladislav Smirnov. The declared topic of the panel sounded quite politically correct: "Practical challenges faced by small businesses in the field of medical devices since the beginning of the full-scale invasion." However, the conversation quickly went beyond convenient formulations and turned into a harsh, undiplomatic analysis of how domestic state institutions deliberately destroy legal businesses in wartime.
During the interview, moderated by the chairman of the APU Committee on Criminal and Criminal Procedure Law, Stanislav Borys, managing partner of AO Vidar, founder of ONCOMEDICA LLC, destroyed all illusions about the mythical "partnership" between the state and entrepreneurs. Official releases from such events are usually full of beautiful phrases about "changes in financial models" and "adaptation", but Vladyslav Smirnov voiced the naked and cynical truth from the stage.
The perfect storm: war, debts and foreign partners
The founder of the company began his speech by reminding us of the conditions under which the Ukrainian medical business met a full-scale invasion. ONCOMEDICA entered the big war as an importer of medical products with a team of specialists of 35-37 people.
"We made a fundamental decision - to save all jobs. We continued to pay salaries, urgently relocated warehouses to save products, massively purchased generators and burned tons of fuel for the autonomous operation of offices. And all this happened against the background of the fact that landlords continued to inflate prices, as if there was no war in the country, — noted Smirnov. — At the same time, the market collapsed. Some clients simply evaporated or left, leaving us with colossal “dead” debts. And foreign manufacturers and suppliers, twiddling their thumbs, instantly cut off all credit lines and harshly transferred us to 100% prepayment. The financial model was torn to pieces, working capital was frozen, but we survived.
However, as the entrepreneur emphasized, the main blow to exhaustion for legal business is received not so much from the macroeconomic consequences of the war, but from the actions of its own regulatory authorities.
The State as a Vulture: Punitive Bureaucracy in Action
According to Vladyslav, today every state body views a working, white business exclusively as a fodder base from which it is necessary to squeeze the last juices. From the forum stage, specific, blatant facts of institutional pressure were voiced, bordering on the absurd:
1. Fiscal surrealism from the State Tax Service. The State Tax Service is seriously demanding that the company pay income tax… from recorded losses. “Just think about this level of cynicism. The state wants to get a share of what does not exist, ignoring any laws of economics and common sense,” commented the founder of ONCOMEDICA.
2. Customs arbitrariness in retrospect. The State Customs Service used the dirtiest tool of pressure — changing the rules of the game after it was over. The agency decided to change the product code retroactively and on this basis “painted” the company 1.5 million hryvnias in additional VAT and customs duties for the previous 5 years of work. Moreover, customs officers groundlessly soldered fines to the company in addition to the most fictitious amounts of additional charges.
3. Theater of the Absurdity of the State Service of Medicines and Drug Control. The most illustrative example of the degradation of state bodies was the situation with the State Service of Ukraine for Medicines and Drug Control.
“Instead of doing their direct work — catching real contraband at the borders and checking dubious supply channels, these figures choose the easiest way. They come to us, as an official authorized representative of European factories, and slap fines of 34,000 hryvnias for EACH lot of products found. Products that some doctors “yesterday” brought into the country in their own suitcases, bypassing us as an importer! That is, they are the ones who pull the smuggling and gray imports, and they financially milk us for it. This is the absolute impotence of a body that imitates activities at the expense of legal business,” Vladislav Smirnov emphasized.
Separately, the speaker focused on the issue of employee reservations, which has turned into a separate circle of bureaucratic hell. The problems with obtaining legal reservations are enormous, and the financial costs of maintaining one reserved specialist over the 4 years of the war have increased many times over due to constant changes in regulatory requirements and the level of mandatory salaries. You pay for everything, you pull the company on your shoulders, and you continue to be considered a cash cow.

Surviving a Minefield
Vladyslav Smirnov concluded his speech at the Corporate Lawyers Forum with a tough conclusion that made the entire legal community present think.
“Today, my speech was not about the “challenges of small business” — let’s leave this vocabulary for grant-seekers. My speech was about the fact that Ukrainian business today is not about development at all, not about long-term planning, and even less about investments. It is a round-the-clock, exhausting all-round defense against a pack of state marauders. And legal support for a company in 2026 is not about drawing up beautiful contracts or compliance. It is about surviving in a minefield, where instead of the Russian enemy, your own customs officers, tax officers, and investigators methodically and accurately shoot you in the back. If the state does not change this punitive approach, there will soon be no one to save the economy.”