More devotional rhetoric from our Mars-sent mayor Leonid Chernovetsky. This time, he addresses Yulia Tymoshenko, his unsuccessful nemesis, who celebrated her 48th anniversary Thursday.
Kyiv Mayor Leonid “Kosmos” Chernovetsky: I forgive her everything. Flowers — the most beautiful that can be — to the beautiful woman I gave. I hope she repents, comes to God, and falls in love with the mayor of Kyiv. She will fall in love with me certainly in a Christian sense, if any, because I have one wife and I’m not going to swap her. I love her.
You just witnessed a gift of monogamous poetry of cosmic proportions!
She makes $3-4K a month, wears a $50K watch, and lives in a $500-850K home.
She belongs to a caste of Ukrainian politicians whose well-being defies the laws of finance, but not the laws of Ukraine. Ironically, she makes the laws.
They took pictures of her home in Horenychi, five minutes’ drive west of Kyiv.
Hanna Herman — who once had worked as an RFE/RL host and, later, as a spokeswoman for Yanukovych until becoming a Party of Regions MP — didn't enjoy this kind of investigative reporting.
She charged the reporters with spying and running a smear campaign.
In fact, it doesn't take a covert operation to learn that comparable homes in the area sell in the $500-850K range.
That didn’t prevent MP Herman from issuing a statement in which she referred to her home as none other than "silska khata," or "village hut." (Well, if she thinks she lives in a “silska khata,” then putting that hefty price tag on it certainly smacked of a smear campaign to her.)
Interestingly, she welcomed the reporters to check her earnings statements filed with the Verkhovna Rada.Everything is accounted for, Herman said. The $50K watch? A birthday gift! (Yeah, what a modest gift compared to the $500K watches worn by other Party of Regions lawmakers.)
To buy the home in question, Herman claims to have taken out a mortgage on her Kyiv apartment, currently worth $500K.
Bad call! She could have bought herself a "village watch" instead of the "village hut."
On November 22, 2008, I joined the thousands of people from all over Ukraine who braved the rainy snow to participate in the Holodomor remembrance service. This year, the event took place in the newly-opened Holodomor Memorial in Kyiv.
Along came the Presidents of Poland, Georgia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as some 44 foreign delegations. President Yushchenko received letters of commemoration from the leaders of Paraguay, Ireland, Finalnd, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and Argentina, not to mention outgoing U.S. President Bush and President-elect Obama. He also received a letter of denial from Russian President Medvedev.
The remembrance service actually marked the opening of the Holodomor Memorial, situated amid Pechersk’s majestic scenery, on a hill overlooking the Dnipro and leftbank Kyiv. On the one side, the Memorial neighbors the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and, on the other, the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra.
On my way, I saw countless yellow-blue banners, some of them decorated with black ribbons in honor of the dead.
A motorcade moving along Ivan Mazepa Street en route to the Holodomor Memorial
Signs representing all Ukrainian oblasts and the Crimean Autonomous Republic
Latvian President Valdis Zatlers and First Lady Lilita Zatlerelay their candles
Religious leaders
Leaders from Moldova, Croatia, Slovakia, the EU and the CoE lay their candles
President Yushchenko delivers his speech, thanks world leaders, governments and international organizations for recognizing the Holodomor
Observing a moment of silence Vichna vam pamyat!
Hill of Candles
Baba Paraska
A capella of bandurists
The main monument: a candle-shaped tower (crisscrossed with little crosses that follow a Ukrainian ornament) embraced by four crosses, one for every cardinal direction: North, South, East, and West.
Embedded into every cross are cranes ascending into the sky. (In Ukrainian culture, cranes traditionally symbolize Ukraine.)
The crane at the face of the monument is crucified by two gate-like stones.
A bundle of wheat amid candles
The entrance to the underground shrine
Inside: a circle of wheat under a bell suspended from the ceiling, a candle stand, black curtains, and a couple of big screens placed on the walls showing Holodomor documentaries.
Exiting through the central entrance (there's also a backdoor entrance that gives you a panoramic view of the hillside, the Dnipro and leftbank Kyiv)
This girl really touches your heart — a stark symbol for all the children that perished in the Holodomor.
On November 22, 2008, Ukraine commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor, the manmade famine that killed at least 3 million Ukrainians in 1932-33.
The Holodomor, which means death inflicted by hunger, can be considered one of the most successful genocidal policies pursued by Stalin and the Soviet leadership. In just a year, Ukraine went from breadbasket of Europe to mass grave. Soviet grain requisition squads raided Ukrainian villages, depriving the villagers of the very last food supplies they needed to survive.
The period between fall 1932 and spring 1933 saw entire rayons (counties) littered with dead or dying people whom local authorities piled up on carts and buried Auschwitz-style.
Starvation drove people to insanity and cannibalism. To ensure that no one would escape, the Soviets surrounded famine-stricken rural areas with NKVD troops, similar to the blocking troops they later used during WW II.
Scores of elderly survivors bear testimony to this heinous crime against humanity, which killed thousands of Russians, Jews, Greeks and other minorities living in Ukraine, but targeted primarily Ukrainians.
The death certificate below states it clearly: "Причина смерті — зазначити докладно: Українець." ("Cause of death — provide details: Ukrainian.")
The current disaster will lead to the colonization of Ukraine, mostly by the Russian population. This will change its ethnographic nature. In all probability, we will not have to speak about Ukraine and the Ukrainian people in the very near future and, consequently, there will be no Ukrainian problem because Ukraine will in fact become part of Russia.
Gradenigo saw it coming. The Holodomor did just that: It broke the will of the largest non-Russian ethnic group in the USSR, altered Ukraine’s ethnic makeup, and destroyed a potential stronghold of resistance to the Soviet regime. In line with Stalin’s thesis about intensified class struggle, the Holodomor wiped the kurkuli (well-to-do farmers, kulaks in Rus.) off the face of the earth, along with much of the selyanstvo (peasantry), thus finalizing collectivization.
The exact number of the dead will never be known. Moscow archives remain off limits to Ukrainian scholars. Decades of Soviet secrecy add up to more than a decade of unwillingness by post-Soviet Russia’s to cooperate on the matter.
Death toll estimates vary from 3 to 7 million. Some stats speak for themselves.
In 1933, the average life expectancy in Ukraine dropped to 10.8 years for females and 7.3 years for males. The 1926 Soviet Census put the number of Ukrainians at 31,194,976. By 1937, that number had shrunk to 26,421,212. In contrast, over the same period, the number of Russians rose from 77,791,124 to 93,933,065.
These numbers set the manmade famines in Ukraine and Kazakhstan apart from the deadly natural famines that raged on in Russia at the time and were caused by crop failure rather than collectivization.
Aside from achieving Stalin’s genocidal goals, the Holodomor also helped achieve some of his modernization ambitions. The requisitioned grain contributed to Soviet grain exports to the West, allowing the Soviet government to import the equipment and know-how for industrialization.
The Western public totally missed the Holodomor. Much of the credit goes to influential reporter Walter Duranty of the The New York Times. Being a Stalin apologist, Duranty, painted rosy pictures of the “communist experiment,” but privately admitted that 10 million might have perished from food shortages.
Western correspondents Malcolm Muggeridge and Gareth Jones tried to get the message through — only to be ignored or dismissed. In 1933, the United States established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union — as thousands of Ukrainians were dying every day. The West got the grain, Stalin got the glory.
Meanwhile, Russia leads the way in Holodomor denial.
Russia’s strategy: deny the artificial nature of the Holodomor; lump the Holodomor together with the natural famines of the era; use its leverage with the UN, EU, international organizations, foreign governments and Western media to thwart Ukraine’s Holodomor recognition efforts.
Naturally, Russia fears the legal responsibility that would arise from admitting guilt while being the sole legal successor to the Soviet Union. What Russia does not seem to fear is Stalinism repeating itself.
At a time when Germany is doing everything to shake off Hitler’s legacy, Russia is doing everything to make Stalin’s legacy shine.
Putin-era history textbooks rationalize Stalin’s repressions as a managerial expediency. In fact, the new edition of textbooks for Russian school children describe Stalin as a “successful manager.” So how long before the Stalin school of management makes a successful comeback?
Can Russia be at peace with itself and its neighbors without recognizing and repenting the wrongs committed by its regimes?
Kyiv Mayor Leonid “Kosmos” Chernovetsky: I think I’ll be able to convince the President that the decree was emotionally charged. I regret that politics interferes with the conduct of the nation’s leaders. As long as I’m Mayor, casinos, strip bars and other trash on Kyiv’s territory will definitely have problems [grins] — until I put them out of business completely. It’s not my will. It’s God’s will.
At the UN Millennium Summit, Ukraine undertook, by 2015, to reduce poverty, to raise the quality of education, to improve maternal health and reduce infant mortality, to secure sustainable environmental development, to curb the AIDS and TB epidemics, and to ensure gender equality. We have seven years left to make Ukraine better.
Not all people protest out of passion like we did it in November 2004. Some do it on a paid basis like they did in April 2007, sponsored by the Party of Regions. See for yourself.
With the country in crisis and the Oranges in disarray, the demand for rent-a-Maidan protesters may rise dramatically.
Male protester 1: They signed me to be up there. What’s my number? Female coordinator: Yours is row 24.
Male protester 2: Unemployed. [grins] Reporter: Where did you work? Male protester 2: Nowhere. Reporter: What are you doing here? Male protester 2: What am I doing here? I’m working! [giggles]
Male protester 3: We’re striking! Reporter: So for whom? Against whom? Male protester 3: Well, it’s hard to say for whom…forrr…just in general, that’s it.
Male protester 4: We’re rallying! Reporter: For what? Against what? Male protester 4: Whatever pays more!
Male protester 5: There’s one…one thing I’m doing here: justice. Our government… Male coordinator: Okay, get over there, get over there! Why did you step out? Get in the crowd like you were told! I beg your pardon.
Reporter: What are they doing here? Male coordinator: They’re rallying.
Thank you for this wonderful vox populi report, STB!
The threat does not even lie in the economic crisis, but in the huge imbalance between the richest and the poorest. In our country, the gap between the richest 5 percent and the poorest 5 percent, according to various data, ranges from 38 to 70 times. It’s the most critical figure in Europe.
Against a background of social problems, unemployment, falling incomes, falling purchasing power and living standards in general, this may lead to, if not clashes, then to social tension.
According to Chaly, this may happen “very soon because, in all objectivity, it’s impossible to come out of the economic crisis without layoffs and lowering government spending.”
That’s what needs to be talked straight. And the biggest threat is peoples’ subjective attitude toward the situation. Today, the overblown expectations have in effect led to apathy, and such early consequences can be witnessed. That refers to demonstrations, rallies involving labor unions’ socioeconomic demands as well as the illegal conduct of certain individuals — and one should be prepared for this.
So is it about the “overblown expectations” or the overblown income distribution gap — the bomb that the ruling elites have refused to defuse?
Anyway, it seems like stabilnist may be on shaky ground. If I understand Chaly correctly, the guys who screwed up the Orange Revolution may get screwed back in the Orange Revolution 2.0.
Here’s a guy who kind of echoes the President’s frugal rhetoric and, being his protégé, mentions the term inner circle, in a yet another Freudian slip.
Kyiv Mayor Leonid “Kosmos” Chernovetsky: You can’t be rich if you don’t control your expenses. Even if you make a billion dollars a day, you still will be destitute and your entire inner circle will be destitute. And if it concerns Ukraine, Ukraine, too, will be…
Objection, Your Kosmic Highness! That’s not the case in Ukraine! That’s absolutely dystopian!
Here’s a good example: MP Hanna Herman, PRU, a former spokeswoman for Viktor Yanukovych. As an MP, Herman makes $3.4K a month. Her family members do not report high incomes.
And still she wears a $50K Frank Muller watch and keeps up with Tymoshenko by sporting a $2K Dior handbag. (Well, according to Tabloid, Herman sometimes acts as the trendsetter.)
President Yushchenko: The Chinese hieroglyph for crisis is illustrated in two parts: The first part talks about ruin and the second part talks about opportunity. We should — I have no doubt about it — come out of the crisis stronger. We can live without expensive foreign-made cars, TV sets, and a whole variety of home appliances, but we need to save the national economy.
So whose belts should we tighten, Mr. President?
If your hieroglyph for we refers to your Brioni-clad brethren and the 5 percent of Ukrainians swimming in luxury, then I can only say “Amen to that!” It’s the Ukrainian Dream come true!
In a long-anticipated vote, the Verkhovna Rada today fired its Speaker, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, NUNS.
The effort gathered 233 votes: 175 from the Party of Regions, 1 from BYuT, 10 from NUNS, 27 from the Communist Party and 20 from the Lytvyn Bloc.
As it often happens, the voting process saw a brawl between rivaling PRU and BYuT MPs who scrambled to keep an eye on the computerized voting system.
However, the most common type of voting misconduct involves the use of absentee voting cards by fellow MPs.
According to Ukrayinska Pravda, today’s absentees included MPs Viktor Yanukovych, Yanukovych Jr., Nestor Shufrych, and Rinat Akhmetov. Neither of these Regionalists could be seen on the floor of the Rada during the vote.
Shortly after being voted out, Yatsenyuk made an I’ll-be-back statement: “They kicked me out to have me come back, but not to this place.”
The former Speaker also announced long-rumored plans to launch his own party. “This political power will be supported by a majority of Ukrainians,” he added.
A rally outside the Kyiv City Council on Sunday gathered left-wing youths and non-partisan Kyivites unhappy with the recent quadrupling of public transport fare.
The fare has skyrocketed from Hr. 0.5 to Hr. 1.5-2 ($0.25-0.30). In a city where a school teacher makes about Hr. 1,200 a month and monthly rent for a single-room apartment averages Hr. 3,600, the rally was surprisingly small and peaceful.
The protesters brought a “coffin of the bourgeois,” burned a few tires symbolizing the “fare yoke,” chanted slogans, and sang protest songs.
Riot police responded brutally, clubbing the protesters and dragging them by hair into detention buses, without sparing even minors and journalists.
Is that what Yuriy Lutsenko, today’s Interior Minister, meant when chanting “militsiya z narodom!” (“police with the people!”) during the Orange Revolution? Is he doing penance for hitting Mayor Chernovetsky “in places that men usually take pride in?”
When I said Obama should avoid the trap of a Moscowcentric “Chicken Kiev” foreign policy, I meant this (3:46):
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY): Now, we have not been willing, we have not been willing to put our priorities properly. We have not been willing to say to the Russians or the Europeans: "Hey Russia, we won't expand NATO into...into Ukraine and...uh-uh-uh...Georgia, right next to your borders, if you cooperate with us on Iran." We said the opposite. We said, in effect, that expanding NATO into Ukraine and Russia is more important to us than getting Russia’s cooperation on Iran. I think it’s the opposite way around. I think Iran and Israel are a hell of a lot more important than expanding NATO to Russia's borders. Why should we? What do we need it for? We've not been willing to say that.
Female voice: Because they invade Georgia. Nadler: So let them invade Georgia! It’s right next to them. Would we tolerate a foreign…a uh-uh-uh…a Russian army in Mexico? Which is more important to us: Georgia or Israel, frankly?
Male voice: What is more important to us: Czechoslovakia or Austria? Nadler: That’s a completely separate iss…completely different kind of question…
Male voice: Sorry about that. Nadler: …completely separate kind of question. You have to try to engage and you have to try to avoid war.
So what's the priority: appeasement or engagement?
The next time Rep. Nadler revels in illusions of zero-casualty appeasement and compares Mexico to South Ossetia, there’s something he should know.
Unlike Georgia, Ukraine possesses long-range missile technology that may fall into terrorists’ hands in case Russia invades Ukraine.
After relinquishing the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for non-aggression commitments from the U.S. and Russia, Ukraine joined the Missile Technology Control Regime in 1998.
Now, will Ukraine be able to control its missile technology in a state of war with Russia?
After reaching a rapprochement with the West, which ended two decades of isolation, Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi has explored the world outside, including the East.
Libya’s friendly relations with the USSR made Moscow the starting point of Gaddafi’s Eastern tour. The next leg of his tour took him to Kyiv, where he and President Yushchenko on Tuesday discussed trade, energy and defense.
Aside from the Bedouin tent in which Col. Gaddafi resides while on tour, the most interesting thing about him is the gender issue. Channel 1+1 takes an intimate look his security detail, staffed by female bodyguards.
Narrator: When the leader sleeps, the soldier stays awake, and it’s the women who do the fighting. Gaddafi trusts his security to ladies only. The head of the Libyan Jamahiriya has a total of 300-400 girls on his security detail. According to the official story, all of them are virgins. Selection is done by Gaddafi himself. This whim has an explanation for it: In ancient times, they believed that the best guards were either virgins or lesbians, the underlying belief being that they could sense threats, the so-called “wind of death.” The girls were even sterilized to make them more aggressive toward men. There can be different views on these stories, but it was the girls with Kalashnikovs who saved Gaddafi’s life several times. During the assassination, they shielded him from gunfire and grenades. One died, two others were wounded. The bodyguards are with Gaddafi day and night. Each of them can handle several strong men. According to some sources, most of the girls are Cuban.
Espero que this time our President watched his tongue.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky: In foreign policy, we hope there will be major changes. Barack Obama will not support the dictator in Tbilisi, because Saakashvili is the Georgian Pinochet. And there will be seismic changes in this area. I think America might just as well quit NATO sometime in the future. What good is NATO for them? America will not fight anybody. Barack Obama will start implementing his program of renewal — doesn’t he say change, change? It is this renewal that corresponds to our perestroika. He’ll do everything. In America, they like Gorbachev very much. Thus, Barack Obama will restructure America. He will make it totally different: when democracy will be for the colored, not just for whites. And America will never threaten anybody.
As you can see, Zhirinovsky keeps his expectations high. His vision of Obama’s foreign policy fits his own foreign policy agenda.
To a Soviet-born Ukrainian like me, the change-perestroika analogy sounds like a mixed blessing. Naturally, the quit-NATO prophecy should alarm the hell out of fresh NATO members, aka “fledgling democracies.”
Let’s just hope that Obama, if elected, will not fulfill Zhirinovsky’s foreign policy expectations.
The last “Svoboda na Interi” (“Freedom on Inter”) show featured Yushchenko, Yanukovych and Tymoshenko in a heated debate that highlighted the show’s name.
President Yushchenko: Don’t flirt with people. Your flirtations work for 5-6 months. Then comes this audience and asks these questions: Why do we have inflation at an annual rate of 22 percent? Who did it? The global crisis? That’s bull! The whole crisis is sitting right here.
PM Tymoshenko: I realize that as Premier I don’t get much sympathy from you — neither from your party nor from your owners. But I will see to it that that people are treated fairly.
MP Azarov, PRU, speaking in Russian: First of all, Yulia Vladimirovna, I want to tell you that personally, as a woman, you have my deep sympathy… [roar of laughter]… so there’s no need for the accusation that our faction does not like you and so on. But your proposals don’t have my sympathy.
Opposition leader Yanukovych: It’s very hard to believe. I do, I do want to believe you, Yulia Volodymyrivna, but it’s very hard because you’re a…
Talk show host: Viktore Fedorovychu, Viktore Fedorovychu*…
Yanukovych: …a nat…a natural opposition leader, and still you work in the government. You’re in the wrong business.
Tymoshenko: Frankly speaking, I’m disturbed to the bone by these huge men who left the country with a ruined economy, and we are now step-by-step putting it back on its feet.
Yushchenko: The government stayed in power for a year or half a year, piled up debt, pardon the expression, like a bitch piles up lice, and when the time comes to pay the government’s debt to NAK Naftogaz, we make it look like it’s not our responsibility.
*Inflected first name and patronymic as used in addressing a person; the host’s correct Ukrainian usage puts her at odds with most Ukrainian politicians, who rarely observe this rule of declension.
That’s a memorable expression for our President to seek pardon for in a live broadcast.
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!
