All was not humor in Odesa.
Yanukovych: Please let the people through, will ya? I asked you. Or I didn’t make myself clear? Or you’re not managing anything?
Incumbent President Yushchenko: Obviously, I'll win. [applause] Obviously. And...and I want to explain why. Because there’s you. And there are millions of people like you — millions in this country — who understand why tomorrow, over Ukrainian soil, the sun should rise.
If you follow the sausage, you will lose both freedom and the sausage. If you follow freedom, you will gain both the sausage and independence.
ATV Reporter: Viktor Andriyovych, could you...could you please tell us: Is this a working visit or a campaign event?
Incumbent President Yushchenko: A working visit.
ATV Reporter: With elements of campaigning?
Yushchenko: A working visit, young man. A working visit. You have a Ukrainian cap! A working visit.
As Dmitry “Dr. Kremlinzer” Medvedev tries to fix Yushchenko's pro-Western head, Tymoshenko serenades her lovelorn voters — with her cleavage.
The charming braidless white-clad lady debuted at the opening of the Odesa Opera Theater's 200th season. I said debuted because, to the best of my knowledge, she had never exhibited that vote-getting part of her body before.
Now, if she jokingly calls her campaign ads “social advertising,” what does she call her recent public appearance? Social therapy? 
Bravo, Yulia! You know I don't love you anymore. But I do think it's a much healthier lifestyle than staying at home, Kremlinizing neighbors, vlogging a dead horse and master Russia/slave Ukraine-bating.
UPDATE
Can she keep up with Vera Lengsfeld?
Sources:
http://tabloid.pravda.com.ua/photos/4a890e644657d/
http://www.kmu.gov.ua/control/uk/photogallery/gallery?galleryId=235700356&
http://daylife.sky.com/imageserve/022s9Utgrp1ZX/340x.jpg
http://www.gomopa.net/GMPCMS/attachment/GoMoPa.NET_3512795659495983.jpeg
The city that owes much of its history to Duc de Richelieu has brought upon itself a history of déjà vu malapropisms by Yanuk de Regions.
While visiting Odesa in 2006, Viktor Yanukovych called Anna Akhmatova "Anna Akhmetova," in a Freudian slip that added to his already impressive “proFFessor” credentials. (In 2004, presidential candidate Yanukovych filled out an application form in which he claimed to be “proffessor of economics.”)
This year, he referred to the famous Odesa-born Soviet journalist-writer Isaac Babel as "Bebel."
Voiceover: Viktor Yanukovych confused writer Babel with revolutionary Bebel.
Yanukovych: And I want to quote this phrase from one of Bebel’s characters: “If you want to observe something from life, come to our yard. There’s enough to be laughed at.”
Narrator: A grand and a half. That's the price she put on her son. It’s not the first time that the 30-year old mommy dumps her kids. She left her first-born in the maternity hospital. As for her second child, the 4-year-old Maksym, she decided, as she puts it, not to torture him and just sell him.
Mother: Because he [the buyer] told me that he [my son] will go to good people, that he’ll be in rich people’s hands, that he’ll be living out there in America, and so that uh… that I wouldn’t have to suffer with him. He told…he first gave me an advance of 100 dollars and then, today, he gave me these fifteen 100-dollar bills.
Narrator: The woman was caught red-handed during the transaction. Criminal charges are now being brought against her. In the few days that the kid has spent at the shelter, nobody has made inquiries about him. Relatives never called and never came. Among the fifteen kids in his group, he clearly looks lost and depressed.
Reporter: Maksymchyk [diminutive], who brought you here?
Maksym: Mom…police. I want to go home.
Narrator: During the three months that Maksym Malyuk will be spending in the children’s shelter, his mother will most likely have her paternal rights revoked. And the future of the kid depends on whether he will find a real family someday.
Kids, chanting in chorus: G-o-o-d-b-y-e!
Deadly Déjà Vu: 18-Year Old DUI Kills 1, Wounds 2
On Jan. 12, an 18-year old Odesite crashed his Toyota Prado into a Daewoo Lanos moving on the opposite lane, killing one person and wounding two others in an accident that involved a total of eleven vehicles.
This brings to mind the case of Serhiy Kalynovsky, a high-profile 21-year old whose reckless driving killed last year his girlfriend and another driver, father of two young children.
Both stories share one thing: abusive language and disorderly conduct on the part of the perpetrator at the time the police arrived. A report in Segodnya states that it took the paramedics 40 minutes to “rush” to the scene. And by the time the firefighters came, an hour had already passed.
When the police arrived, the 18-year old showered them with profanity and demanded his cell phone, saying his dad would fix things quickly. On his way to the precinct, the bad boy was escorted by a trail of luxury cars.
According to Dmytro Fuchedzhy, deputy chief of Odesa oblast police, the subject was DUI. Now hear this: The young man reportedly attends law school. He is also the son of a wealthy businessman who holds a seat in the local assembly under the wing of the Party of Pensioners. (Just how many Ukrainian pensioners enjoy this kind of lifestyle?)
The episode raised a firestorm of indignation at Ukrainian forums, with many netizens gloomily expecting the Odesa offender to get away with murder, Kalynovsky-style. (A few weeks after the accident, Serhiy Kalynovsky escaped from custody, which didn’t seem particularly tight, and left the country. He is now wanted by Interpol.)
So, the burning questions would be as follows: Are those NUNS-sponsored ambulances coming on schedule or not? Will the killer kids get jailed or will they remain untouchable? A single ambulance for Chernovetsky doesn’t get this country too far unless a holistic course of treatment will follow.
Approximately 78,000 Ukrainians were injured in car accidents last year. Some 9,500 people died, up from the previous year's 7,600.
IF YOU DRIVE, DO NOT DRINK!
Source:
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2008/1/18/69980.htm
http://www.autocentre.ua/content/view/10609/2/
http://blog.kievukraine.info/2007/06/another-litmus-test.html
http://www.segodnya.ua/news/816229.html#comments4 http://www.obkom.net.ua/news/2008-01-18/1515.shtml
http://insurhouse.com/ru/layout/set/print/press_centr/pressa_o_nas/de_vihid_iz_dorozhn_o_avarijnogo_kuta
http://www.ictv.ua/ukr/news_ukraine.php?news_id=107651
Yushchenko Speaks Against EvilIn Odesa, there’s a 10-storied building that was grabbed by a deputy from a “democratic” faction. He makes these threats, “I’ve bought all the courts. You won’t win anything. You’re a nobody, because I’m a deputy.” And you know, there are thousands of cases like this. A whole system is at work here: prosecutors, courts, the High Council of Justice. This is evil, and nothing will stop me from abolishing it.
Amen to that, Mr. President.
Video uploaded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/71163.html
Monument to Catherine the Great Polarizes Ukraine
Odesa, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city, on Saturday paid tribute to its official founder, Russian empress Catherine the Great, Korespondent reports.
The restoration of a tsarist-era monument has again highlighted Ukraine’s bipolar identity, a product of centuries-long Russian colonialism.
For most Odesites — their city being a hotbed of pro-Russian sentiment — the German-born empress indeed holds greatness. She, along with Peter the Great, belongs in the pantheon of Russian patriotism, and symbolizes Russia’s naval might and geopolitical glory.
To historically-minded Ukrainians, however, she represents the icon of Russian imperialism and oppression. Catherine the Great crushed the Zaporizhian Sich and further breached the Pereyaslav Treaty of 1654, thus eroding Ukraine’s autonomy. This makes her something of a red cloth in the eyes of Ukrainian Cossacks, Ukrainian nationalists, and Ukrainian Orthodox clergy.
Unfortunately, some of these people decided that the best way to demonstrate the anti-Ukrainianism of the empress’s historical footprint would be to obstruct the event by engaging in a little pushy action. The opening ceremony, attended by a few thousand people, featured skirmishes between monument opponents and police.
Local proponents included Party of Regions activists, Russian Orthodox clergy, and pro-Russian Cossacks, obviously unmoved by the heavy toll Catherine the Great had exacted on their Ukrainian counterparts.
The issue of political solidarity in the former Soviet Union can be noted for its bizarre proportions. In the roaring 90s, communists and monarchists held joint opposition rallies in Moscow, waving red banners and carrying portraits of Nicholas II.
These carnivals flew in the face of the well-publicized fact that the Bolsheviks had massacred the Russian royal family, not sparing even the tsar’s children, whom they stabbed with bayonets.
Sources:
http://ua.korrespondent.net/main/87303
http://www.russiatoday.ru/news/news/16106
http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/66435.html
