Oleksandr Katsuba

Oleksandr Katsuba was born on 8 September 1986 in Kryvyi Rih. The family soon moved to Kharkiv, where he grew up, studied and took his first steps in business.

He graduated from V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in Finance (2008) and from the Yaroslav Mudryi National Law Academy in Law (2009). The two degrees shaped his way of thinking: a financial model and a legal framework are where every one of his projects begins.

His parents are Volodymyr Mykhailovych Katsuba and Nataliia Ivanivna Katsuba. His elder brother is Serhii Volodymyrovych Katsuba. He is a father of three.

His career began in Kharkiv: from 2006 he was deputy director for economics at the research and production company Tekhproekt, and in 2009–2010 he chaired the supervisory board of Kharkiv Electrical Installation Products Plant No. 1. It was hands-on manufacturing experience — accounting, cost of goods, people on the shop floor — that he returned to in every business since.

He entered the energy sector in 2010 as deputy director for economic activity at Poltavagasvydobuvannya, a division of Ukrgasvydobuvannya. The same year he became Deputy Chairman of the Board of Chornomornaftogaz: during his tenure the company’s offshore production in the Black Sea grew from 1.1 to 2.4 billion cubic metres a year — more than double.

In 2012–2014 he was Deputy Chairman of the Board of Naftogaz of Ukraine and a member of the supervisory board of Ukrtransgaz. Working at the country’s largest energy company gave him a view of the industry at scale — from geology and drilling to regulation, tariffs and energy security. That experience underpins his public position on subsoil-use reform.

Alongside he pursued research: in 2013 he defended two theses and earned the degrees of Candidate of Law and Candidate of Economics (PhD equivalents). In 2013–2015 he was an assistant at the Department of Labour Law of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.

In 2014 he left the state sector for private business and has since been managing and developing the gas producer Nadra-Geoinvest, one of the three largest private gas producers in Ukraine. In January 2026 he officially became its co-owner. The company develops the Skorobahatky field in the Poltava region and in December 2025 acquired the Liubynetska area in the Lviv region for more than UAH 110 million.

Alongside gas he invested in digital ventures. In 2014 he co-founded the online lending service Credit365 and in 2015 launched MyCredit; in 2019 the TAS group invested USD 3 million for a 20% stake. Fintech was his school of digital business: a product that lives on data, scoring and automation. At MyCredit, loan decisions have been made by machine-learning scoring models from day one, and algorithms screen out fraudulent applications in real time.

Since 2021 he has owned the automotive media Autocentre and AB (formerly Autobazar), Ukraine’s largest automotive publications.

In September 2022, when most investors were waiting, he founded his own gas producer Alpha Gas and brought together a team of industry specialists.

The company holds four special permits in the Poltava and Luhansk regions with combined reserves of 13.5 billion cubic metres and drills wells deeper than 5,000 metres — where, in his words, the main potential of Ukrainian gas lies. By the end of 2023 the company was producing more than 1 million cubic metres of gas a month. The company operates in wartime: its facilities are protected, with a shelter built at every production site.

Since February 2022 he has systematically supported Ukraine’s Defence Forces, delivering more than 130 passenger, cargo and engineering vehicles to the army — directly to units, without intermediaries. His companies repair schools and roads in the communities of the Poltava and Kharkiv regions, build shelters at their sites and have given more than a thousand residents of frontline villages access to clean water. He sees philanthropy as a business’s duty to the communities where it operates.

He began with the “one vehicle a week” initiative. “A missile can destroy our business, that is true. But we invest in the Armed Forces for a reason. My partners and I are sure that the further we go, the better the army will be able to protect civilian and energy infrastructure,” he told UNN in November 2023.

He is associated with the Blagomay charity fund, which has supported orphanages since 2013: according to the fund, more than UAH 93 million went to charity over eleven years.

In December 2024 he founded Landex Agro, an agricultural holding operating in eight de-occupied communities of the Kharkiv region. Within eighteen months its land bank grew to 52,800 hectares, its niche crops to over 5,000 hectares, and in 2026 Landex Agro entered the Forbes Ukraine Next 250 — the list of the country’s most promising companies. The group also includes Lozivskyi Agropromtekhservis, Ivak Agro and the Podolivska farm; in December 2025 it acquired more than 6,000 hectares in the Izium area.

The company’s fields are run through the IoT platform Agrocontrol: operations are automated and decisions rest on the data collected; drones watch the crops.

In all his companies Oleksandr Katsuba builds the same model: a traditional industry with a digital core. Accounting and planning live in IT systems, decisions rest on data, routine operations are automated; he applies artificial-intelligence tools where they deliver a measurable result — in analysing geological data, in precision farming, in forecasting and cost control. The goal is not technology for its own sake, but gas production and agriculture in Ukraine working at the level of the best global practice.

He regularly comments on energy and the economy for NV, TSN, UNN, UNIAN, Kyiv Post, The Page and international outlets. His main themes: subsoil-use reform and dormant licences, the tax regime for deep drilling, protection of gas infrastructure, energy independence, the prospects of small modular reactors and the digitalisation of traditional industries. His columns and comments are collected in the Publications and Media sections.

He argues for a transparent gas market, the privatisation of Naftogaz and less influence for monopolies, state and private alike, and names the British model as the example for reform. Most consistently he calls for dormant licences to return to the state: by his estimate, 200 to 300 special permits have sat for years without drilling or seismic surveys.

“There must be a clear deadline for exploration — three to five years at most. If by then the licence holder has not started real production or shown progress in exploration, the permit should return to the state automatically and go to a transparent auction,” he told Gordon.ua in April 2026.

On the fall in gas imports he has no illusions: “We are ‘energy independent’ only because the economy consumes far less than it could in normal conditions.” He does not plan to return to politics or public service: he sees himself as an entrepreneur and a volunteer.