Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky: I’m giving the Government the following ideas, okay? The liquidation of all special organizations, from hospitals to clinics and the various…uh…huge land plots…uh…that they own will net Ukraine 10 billion dollars, okay? The liquidation of the system…uh…of the systems of the Academy of Sciences — for example, okay? — that exist only in China and Ukraine and also in Russia will also net…there’s a lot of property there as well.
Sounds like the voice of experience, doesn't it?
The expert accounting and the science behind it reminded me of my favorite Depeche Mode song, “Everything Counts.”
If you dream of more than just a job, if you care about the country’s future, if your life has room for heroism, then service in the Armed Forced of Ukraine will help you turn your dreams into reality. Professional training, state-of-the-art weaponry, career advancement, financial security, decent pay, an opportunity to get a college degree, and freedom to choose place of service. Contract-based service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine is real work for real men.
Professional training? Career advancement? An opportunity to get a college degree? Freedom to choose place of service? Perhaps.
Ukraine aspires to become a member of the European Union, which is being protected by NATO. This road has been traveled by the majority of our neighbors: Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Rumania and Bulgaria. Meeting NATO membership criteria is the road to the European Union. NATO is the big league, a European future.
MP Mykhailo Chechetov, PRU: It’s…it’s over! The Coalition’s gone! It…it has died! Forget about the Coalition! It’s gone. It has already died. It’s just agony, death throes, and last convulsions. But they all end in the corpse being removed.
Looks like we have a case of death fetishism here — a political one — and a lot more histrionic than Donnie Pfaster’s.
Mr. President, Mr. Lutsenko, do you remember your “one law for all” promise?
How would you like it if someone dear to you died like this? Would the system work for you the way it worked for him?
Voiceover: Here’s the scene of tragedy of two friends who took a night trip by bicycle, moving toward Herzen Street. The road was allegedly unoccupied and both bicycles had their lights on. The friend of the victim survived only because he rode his bicycle in front.
Survivor: There was a heavy blow in the back. Reporter: You were riding by the roadside, right? Survivor: Yes, I was in the front, he was in the back, in the back. The car…it was this one…
Text: Oleksiy Bashkirtsev was 22. He was hit to death.
Male eyewitness 1: I saw it. It’s very scary. The bicyclists rode on Melnykov St. They didn’t cross anything, they rode on the curb. And this car drove at a speed of probably up to 180 km/h, and it hit them directly. Of this I’m 100% sure. We saw it.
Reporter: Did they have their lights on? Male eyewitness 1: Yes, they had their lights on and they rode well, without speeding, nothing like that. He just hit them directly.
Text: In the first decade of June, four bicyclists have been hit. In three cases, the drivers fled from the crime scene.
Male voice: How could this man, this bicyclist… Male eyewitness 2: The bicyclists rode…
Female eyewitness: He exited the vehicle through the window. What are you talking about? He didn’t use the door, he used the window. What are you talking about? You call him sober?
Driver’s companion: Listen, listen… Female eyewitness: Listen to what? Driver’s companion: Look at this door. How can anyone exit it, blyad? Why all this talk? Female eyewitness: Listen to what? He crawled out of the window. What are you talking about? Look at him. He’s totally drunk!
Text: The driver is Khomutovsky Stanislav Olehovych, b. 1988. Managed to avoid compulsory blood testing for alcohol. Evidence is being sanitized from the case file.
Driver: I didn’t hurt anything, blyad. My poor car!
Text: The murderers are on the loose. It’s time to hit the authorities. Photo of the victim carrying an animal rights sign: “I want to live.”
I guess the soundtrack found its way into the video by the person who shared it, not by the anti-NATO propagandists. The slide film dates back to 1985.
They’ve finally launched some NATO commercials. Note how these two build on the Euro 2012 theme.
The North Atlantic Alliance was founded in 1949. Among NATO members are the majority of European countries, Canada, and the US. The main objective of NATO: collective defense of freedom and security of allied member countries. They are ready to defend common values by both political and military means. NATO is the big league, high standards, successful countries.
A few hundred Communists and Progressive Socialists sweated outside Kyiv Mohyla Academy, where the NATO Secretary-General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, came to deliver a speech.
The protesters carried anti-NATO signs and chanted anti-Orange slogans. Riot police cordoned them off from a few dozen Nasha Ukrayina supporters, who played Orange Revolution theme songs.Interestingly, the Party of Regions ignored the Kyiv event and instead pursued Scheffer in several eastern Ukrainian cities he visited.
Yesterday, All my troubles seemed so far away, Now it looks as though they're here to stay, Oh, I believe in yesterday.
Generations of Ukrainians love this song, and so do billions of people all over the world. But who loves the scenario?
Billionaire Viktor Pinchuk, the man who brought Paul McCartney to Kyiv, is certainly not one of them. He wants no trouble. His bring-a-star-for-PR program aims at generating positive publicity and securing a bright tomorrow for himself and his family. In other words, PR = McCartneyPinchuk.
But does their bright tomorrow strike a high note with the “bright tomorrows” of millions of his fellow Ukrainians and their families? That’s the billion dollar question that reverberated through my brain as I stood in the pouring rain at Independence Square in Kyiv, the capital of one of Europe’s poorest countries, yet home to a dozen billionaires.
Here, at Maidan Nezalezhnosti, as we Ukrainians call it, the Orange Revolution took place in November 2004-January 2005. The goal of the Orange Revolution was to amend the social contract from a zero-sum game to a win-win game. That goal remains unmet.
It was here that on Saturday, June 14, 2008, at 9 p.m. EEST, we Ukrainians would meet Sir Paul McCartney, who came to Ukraine to perform his Independence Concert. (Proceeds from the sales of VIP tickets would go to help children with cancer.)
Actually, aside from Gen-Xers like me, the audience included scores of Soviet-born baby boomers, in their 50s and 60s, some of whom came from all over the former Soviet Union to worship the idol of their youth.
Long before glasnost and perestroika, The Beatles had become a legend in the USSR during the Khrushchev thaw of the mid 50s-early 60s. Despite this quasi-liberal post-Stalinist interlude, the Iron Curtain remained intact. The watchdogs of communism gnashed their teeth at the counter-cultural dimension of Western music, viewing it as “capitalist propaganda” and therefore a threat to the Soviet way of life. (I touched on this phenomenon in my previous post.)
I made a big mistake by not bringing an umbrella. Drenched to the bone, I had to desert my perch near the entrance to Fan Zone 3, and run for cover under the canopy of the Trade Unions building, the one with the red clock tower.
Before the concert began, they ran a telethon with major Ukrainian cities, Chas buty razom (Time to Be Together), along with a warm-up feature film about the local impact of The Beatles.
One of the interviewees shared his memories of how, back in the 60s and 70s, The Beatles records could only be purchased on the black market, at several times the monthly salary of a Soviet yuppie. At that time, a Soviet citizen’s love affair with Western civilization could cost them their career.
And guess what? All of a sudden, they put Kuchma in the memoirs mix! That’s no accident. Former President Kuchma, the autocratic leader whom the Orange Revolution cursed with "Kuchmu het!" ("Down with Kuchma!"), happens to be Pinchuk’s father-in-law.
I failed to catch Kuchma’s recollections of The Beatles era due to poor sound, but I instantly recalled the guitar gigs he pulled on television during his first presidential campaign in summer 1994. (I was 14 at the time.)
Kuchma’s unexpected two cents created cognitive dissonance for the Independence Concert, given Kuchma’s controversial role in Ukraine’s independence. Understandably, the event sponsors had a more favorable opinion of their extended family member. Later on, some other domestic policy issues would also pop up, adding to Kuchma's ever-present aura. (Tabloid has a few snapshots of the Kuchma family present at the concert.)
Anyway, the countdown finally reaches zero and Paul McCartney mounts the stage. He screams, “Pryvit druzi!” (Ukr. hello friends!) and sends ripples of joy throughout the rain-bedraggled Independence Square. His opening song: “Drive My Car.”
After a while, the rain almost subsided and I made it closer to the stage, finding my way through thousands of ecstatic folks of all ages. (An estimated 350,000 people attended the Independence Concert.)
It was a great pleasure to hear Paul McCartney cheer up his audience in Ukrainian. Naturally, I felt a little uncomfortable when I heard “the Ukraine.” Apparently, the event planners failed to instruct Paul, in the most polite manner, that we no longer live in “the Ukraine.”
“The Ukraine,” as in “the Ukraine girls really knock me out,” defined our country as a Soviet republic — as a province of Russia — not as an independent country. Since Ukraine became independent, we say Ukraine, without the definite article. And, of course, when we talk about theUkraine, we say Kyiv, not Kiev. Well, because many Ukrainians speak little English and often converse in Russian, the outdated usage did not register with the audience.
A few more caustic observations. The telethon kicked off with two hosts: Ani Lorak, who spoke Ukrainian, and this other guy, a member of Comedy Club Ukraine (can’t recall his name), who spoke Russian. Here comes politics. On the one hand, this bilingual commercial approach traditionally serves to attract Russophone audiences. On the other hand, it provides a disincentive for Russified Ukrainians to learn or relearn Ukrainian.
Paul McCartney punctuated some of his songs with a playful combination of spasibo-dyakuyu/dyakuyu-spasibo, or thank you in Russian and Ukrainian, respectively. While I certainly don’t believe that he meant to upset non-Russified Ukrainians like me, I suspect that this learned meme reflects the event planners’ segmentation of Ukraine’s linguistic landscape.
In the 2004 presidential election, which sparked the Orange Revolution, Mr. Pinchuk favored Viktor Yanukovych of the Party of Regions. The PRU owes much of its popularity to being the driving force behind the bid to make Russian a second official language in Ukraine. If approved, the measure would effectively kill the Ukrainian government’s modest efforts at reviving the Ukrainian language. That, in turn, would preserve the linguicidal legacy of Russification in eastern Ukraine.
So here’s my question: Does making Paul McCartney a party to this intimate policy issue — no matter how subtly — promote Ukraine’s independence?
One can study Russification on a family basis. Judging by their public appearances, neither Viktor Pinchuk nor his wife, Olena Franchuk, former President Kuchma’s daughter, speaks Ukrainian.
Ironically, Kuchma does speak Ukrainian. A native of Kostobobrovo, a small village in Chernihiv oblast, Kuchma spent most of his pre-political life in Baikonur and Dnipropetrovsk, where he learned Russian and unlearned Ukrainian. After becoming President of Ukraine in 1994, Kuchma relearned Ukrainian without unlearning Russian.
His linguistic success story — one of his few presidential achievements of which Ukraine can be proud of — begs the question of why his daughter and son-in-law can’t master Ukrainian. After all, they want to be perceived as supporters of Ukraine’s independence, correct?
That said, the show was terrific, a time travel experience from a true legend. Ageless Paul McCartney rocked the rain away and received the warmest reception from the people who were having the happiest time of their lives.
As the concert drew to a close, they begged him to perform “Yesterday,” and he did it! It was midnight, but the people walked away with their eyes shining. Thank you for coming to Kyiv, Paul!
As the concert drew to a close, they begged him to perform “Yesterday,” and he did it! His valedictory song brought tears to many eyes. It was midnight, and the people walked away with their eyes shining bright. Thank you for coming to Kyiv, Paul!
My advice for Mr. Pinchuk: Put the people first and do more for Ukraine!
Maidan under heavy clouds
Crossing police cordons
In half an hour, I'd be taking a shower
Taking a shower
Damn, I should have brought my own umbrella!
The last shot I made before deserting my position and running for cover
My "drydock" vantage point
Ani Lorak and (dunno his name), hosting the Chas buty razom (time to be together) telethon
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome Leeeeooooniiiid Kuuuuchmaaaa!
With the election honeymoon over, there comes a payback time for the buckwits who voted for a pack of buckwheat.
Unfortunately, other people will suffer, too, as they stand up for their rights. Watch a scene of struggle at Berezniaky, a left-bank Kyiv neighborhood.
In a literal tug of war, local residents overpowered the construction workers who landed on their doorstep. Will they succeed next time?
According to Korrespondent magazine, Ukraine’s Top 50 richest people have doubled their assets over the last year.
Not only has Rinat Akhmetov become the richest man in the CIS, but he has also won the title of the richest man in Europe, outclassing Ingvar Kamprad of IKEA.
Korrespondent gives the following ranking: #1 Rinat Akhmetov, PRU, $31.1B. #2 Viktor Pinchuk, $8.8B, sponsor of Paul McCartney’s upcoming June 14 concert #3 Ihor Kolomoisky, often linked to NUNS, $6.6B #4 Hennadiy Boholyubov, Kolomoisky’s partner, $6.2B #5 Kostyantyn Zhevago, BYuT, $2.2B
Members of the Party Regions control $35.42B worth of assets, while the Top 50 sit on some $112.7B, which equals two annual Ukrainian budgets.
MP Ihor Kril, NUNS: Today, we're preparing our political platform, and with this political platform we want to offer a new ideology to society. We say that today there is no ideology in the world — no classic ideology — that would be valuable for Ukraine, that would provide the opportunity to propel Ukraine onto a broad global road. That’s why we call such ideology unicentrism. And we say that it’s an ideology of unity, an ideology of patriotism, an ideology of truth and pragmatism.
It’s an association of personalities that belong to parties of different kinds. Today, I can claim with confidence that the United Center enrolls members of both BYuT and the Party of Regions, Nasha Ukrayina, People’s Democratic Party, Democratic Party, Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Ukrainian People’s Movement.
Truth and pragmatism. What a touching combination! My heart melts for unicentrism.
So, people elected you under the NUNS/BYuT/PRU/whatever brand and now you want to do “something” else. You want to build a new brand without losing the seats you gained under the old brand. On top of that, you want to build a coalition that has zero grassroots support among voters of these respective parties.
Does a party that goes against the will of the people and professes universalist pretensions reminiscent of the Communist Party amount to a new ideology? Does unicentrism serve as an umbrella for assorted shyrkadelic androids bent on colonizing Ukraine with more stabilnist? Will this “broad” coalition propel Ukraine onto that "broad global road?"
Viktor Yanukovych: It's…it’s not a holiday, it’s not a holiday. It’s a sort of insignificant event…in our life. Time will tell. Something…something will happen, something will happen. Hahaha!
Yeah, something’s gotta give, my fellow Ukrainians. Get back to your coal mines and let shyrka & stabilnist shine!
Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk: You know what the good thing in Ukraine is right now? The good thing is, we don’t have an authoritarian government. There’s no one tsar. That’s our only salvation.
Vitaliy Portnykov, journalist: Well, that’s because the oligarchs haven’t agreed. That’s why we have no tsar.
Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk: And they won’t agree, make no mistake! They won’t agree. They can agree on an ad hoc basis once in a blue moon. And the fact that they won’t agree is our key salvation. We can’t make tsarism in this state. We can’t make absolutism in this state. And it’s a hard road. Some say we need an iron hand. We need no iron hand. Let them read history books about the iron hand — about how all those stories end.
Mr. Yatsenyuk makes a good point as long as he doesn’t mean that clans of competing oligarchs can be a substitute for democracy.
A checks and balances system that relies on oligarchs instead of citizens would only continue depopulating Ukraine.
Early on Sunday, a massive methane explosion at a coal mine in Yanakiyevo, Donetsk oblast, left 5 injured and 37 missing.
As Ukrainian mines continue to devour Ukrainians, the mine's Soviet-era name — Karl Marx — aptly describes the state of the country's coal mining industry. The accident comes less than a week after the recovery of 11 bodies from the May 23 accident at the Krasnolymanska mine.
Early on Friday, MP Ihor Rybakov of BYuT and MP Yuriy But submitted statements canceling their membership in the Orange Coalition. Technically, their move cuts the life support of the ailing BYuT-NUNS enterprise, a “game over” predicted by analysts and desired by fans of shyrka, or the grand coalition with the Party of Regions.
In his statements, MP Rybakov cites government corruption and failures, while MP But blames internal divisions and the coalition’s disconnect with President Yushchenko’s policies. Yushchenko’s chief of staff, Viktor Baloha, whom the media also believes to be the chief shyrka ideologist, reportedly has close relations with MP Ihor Rybakov.
Baloha has claimed no knowledge of the developments. "I haven't heard that the Coalition is disbanding. Disbanding the coalition requires that a meeting of the faction be held and that a majority decide that they are quitting the coalition," Baloha was quoted as saying.
"If we talk about the Constitution, it should be passed in Parliament by 450 votes, that is, it has to suit both the President, the Prermier and all political forces. It will be a grand coalition or a narrow vision," Baloha added.
This time, it was Bratstvo badasses who did the job. In full view of the cameras, they donated a cow’s tongue and a pile of coins to Mykola Levchenko, Secretary of the Donetsk City Council.
Bratstvo activists: Here’s the money, here’s the tongue, and, finally, learn Russ…Ukrainian because Russian is a Turkish dialect of the language that our ancestors spoke. Learn Ukrainian! Mykola Levchenko: I’m very pleased you did it. Thanks! Come on, come on! Empty your pockets. Come on, come on!
Bratstvo activists: Don’t push people toe-to-toe just because of the language. Mykola Levchenko: We really need this money.
Narrator: All in all, they tossed about 25 hryvnias on Levchenko’s table and lap, all of it in 10-kopiyka coins. The official made towers out of them, but didn’t take them with him. The whereabouts of the tongue remain unknown.
Russian as a Turkish dialect of Old Ukrainian vs. Ukrainian as a Polish dialect of Old Russian represent the two opposite poles in the oft-unprofessional debate among ultra-nationalists.
Bratstvo adheres to — or, rather, experiments with — an eclectic ideology that mixes Ukrainian nationalism, Marxism, Christianity and anti-Orangism. Dmytro Korchynsky recently launched a talk show on the Chernovetsky-controlled TRK Kyiv.
MP Dymtro Tabachnyk, PRU: I think that Kostyantyn Ivanovych Hryshchenko [PRU] will be doing a lot of work in Moscow with the goal of revitalizing economic relations, facilitating border cooperation. Strategically, he won’t be able to change or solve anything for one simple reason: Because the basis of today’s state policy of the President of Ukraine and his pocket Ministry of Foreign Affairs is Russophobia and caveman nationalism of the 19th century kind.
Ooh la la! Don’t you guys want to make Yushchenko a surrogate mother in your grand coalition with NUNS? Don’t you want to make him a caveman for stabilnist? Isn’t that the plan?
And by the way, how did this “Greatest Ukrainians” thing go? How many times did you vote? Did you beat Kivalov?
MP Kseniya Lyapina NUNS: To all viewers and listeners, to all citizens who have experienced stress during the last month, let me apologize on behalf of our entire coalition, our team mates, that we, unfortunately — intentionally or unintentionally — have created, via this adolescent democracy of ours — so immature — that we have created so much stress for society. We Nasha Ukrayina believe that we must overcome this state of adolescence, find political will, lay aside personal fears and concerns, and proceed with fulfilling the tasks you laid out before us. Moreover, I’m confident that we are able to fulfill them.
Lyapina, who ran the Council of Entrepreneurs at the Cabinet of Ministers, comes across as a true-Orange lady.
She steers clear of scandals and turf battles. She does not appear to have a hidden agenda, which puts her in stark comparison with Baloha’s shyrka squad, aka United Center.
The mouth-watering specter of a grand coalition with the Party of Regions — in the name of stabilnist — both seduces and scares Yushchenko. On the one hand, it raises a thin hope of re-election via complex bargaining; on the other hand, it carries the risk of burying whatever approval ratings he has left.
So, realizing that Tymoshenko’s unemployment in 2008 would only boost her employability in 2009, Yushchenko limits himself to a dietary shyrka, or informal grand coalition, as Stepan Havrysh put it. The deputy chief of the National Security and Defense Council used this term in describing the present modus operandi.
Indeed, the extramarital affair with the Party of Regions preserves the formal coalition with BYuT and keeps the Cold War in the Orange camp below its boiling point until further course of action.
As always, everybody wants to rule the world, and that includes both Yushchenko and Tymoshenko.
That’s why Lyapina’s calls for working out a détente, and working for the public good, sound like a cry in the wilderness.
“Ukrainians, I love you. I don’t even know you, but I love you already.”
Back in 1968, he sang: “Well, the Ukraine girls really knock me out, they leave the West behind.” A lot has changed since The Beatles’ “Back in the U.S.S.R.” The USSR collapsed, Ukrainian girls hit Western brothels, and Paul McCartney is now coming to Ukraine!
Watch a piece of McCartney’s promotional interview aired on ICTV.
Also, watch his public service announcement. (Interestingly, McCartney still relies on Soviet-era usage, such as Kiev and the Ukraine, although he does say a few words of Ukrainian).
The Beatles enjoyed enormous popularity in the USSR, where Western music signified non-conformism and was deemed a threat to the regime.
On June 14, McCartney will come to Kyiv to perform a free concert at Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, the heart of the now-comatose Orange Revolution.
Indeed, one can see the shadow of yesterday (pardon the pun) hanging over the event.
The concert will be sponsored by billionaire Viktor Pinchuk, one of Ukraine's richest men and son-in-law of former President Leonid Kuchma, the autocratic leader to whom the word regime was often applied before and after the Orange Revolution. (Well, not exactly. Last month, President Yushchenko appointed Kuchma to the board of trustees at Shevchenko National University, adding to an already impressive catalogue of controversial awards.)
Bringing the world’s best performers to Kyiv has been Pinchuk’s pride and joy for several years.
In June 2007, Elton John drew a crowd of several hundred thousand people at an AIDS awareness concert at Kyiv's Maidan. This year, on May 23, mayoral candidate Vasyl Horbal of the Party of Regions threw a concert by famous German rock band Scorpions.
Undoubtedly, hundreds of thousands of people will truly enjoy McCartney’s show.
But given today’s level of social responsibility in Ukraine, will they believe that the host’s love for Ukraine runs deeper than his promotional considerations?
Hi! I’m Taras. I was born and live in Kyiv, Ukraine. Welcome to a blog that explores the political power struggle in my country.
If you’re looking for a perspective free from the Moscowcentric bias often found in the Western media, you’ve come to the right place.
Initially, I kept this blog for work portfolio purposes only, so don’t be alarmed by the blog URL:) It now keeps me working, from time to time, for a bigger purpose: helping the world get a better grasp of Ukraine. Enjoy!
