German Furniture – A Journey from Bucha to Kuntsevo
One piece of furniture in my Kuntsevo apartment resembles office furniture. I decided to change my style in 2021 and went to a furniture store on Polotskaya Street. There were many bedroom and living room sets on display, and one unit in particular caught my eye – a wall unit for the guest room.
The wall unit is painted white and has an artificial bottle rack. It features glass doors on the upper cabinets and wooden shelves inside. The main highlight is the bottle rack panel with three buttons that control LED lighting. I noted down the model name in 2014 and visited the store atrium to gather ideas for apartment renovation and furniture shopping. It was German-made.
According to the marketing materials, the wall unit was from 2014, but I later discovered it was actually manufactured in 1998.
I worked on renovation plans for six years, intending to redesign the bedroom, kitchen, and studio. However, only half of the apartment was renovated; the other half remained untouched. After saving some money, I returned to the store to buy the wall unit. I entered and saw that it was still on display. I didn’t have time to go through the entire purchasing process, but the salesperson sold me the display model and told me I had to disassemble and transport it myself.
I contacted ODS-4 (a dispatch point where workers gather for job assignments) and hired two men. We completely disassembled the wall unit and began carrying it to my apartment by hand. Fortunately, the store was only two kilometers away. We moved the furniture into a small room in my apartment. The store provided no delivery service, and I felt like I was robbing the atrium. Still, I paid twice with a debit card in euros (€8,000 in total). They also did not provide workers for installation. I had to install it partially myself – only the lower cabinets, two wooden cabinets without glass doors, and the bottle rack. This became my father’s room.
In 2024, after my father passed away, I began sleeping in his room to feel closer to him. I bought a small foldable bed and slept in front of the wall unit. One night, I had a dream: I was in Ukraine, playing football with President Zelensky. We were happy, enjoying peaceful times. He invited me to his house, where I saw the same wall unit. It was in Bucha. Later, I watched a documentary about the Russian war in that city and saw the same white German furniture in his home. I thought: “Is that my furniture?!”
I began investigating the origin of the furniture and found that it had originated in Bucha. It had been in Zelensky’s house there, purchased or stolen in 1998 during the first conflict between Ukraine and Russia – a conflict depicted in the flight simulator game Flanker 2.0, referring to the Crimean tensions of that time. Its journey had brought it to a store in Moscow and finally to my apartment in Kuntsevo.
Imagine the situation: a man buys President Zelensky’s stolen furniture. The distribution point sent it to my apartment for storage, not for use. An unknown person wanted to resell the furniture to Zelensky, as it was from his childhood room. Now, they are blackmailing me to stay silent about the situation. I am in a safe place now, but I want to return to my studio and resolve this matter. This is a picture of the furniture, and I am calling President Zelensky’s office to contact me so I can return his furniture and get my money back.
