How Tough Is Tymo?

She’s back. But is she tough enough?

Aside from Putin's history class, one of the major events I missed while being out of town was Tymoshenko’s peace voyage to Donbas. In a move highly reminiscent of the maiden voyage she had pulled on the eve of the Dec. 26, 2004 rerun, weeks before being catapulted to her first PM term, she started her second PM term on a soft, conciliatory note.

With a stronger personal support and a stronger opposition — both in and outside of the Orange Coalition — she faces a reality very much different from the euphoric landscape of the early 2005. The Orange Revolution is now history, but another presidential election is just a dream away. And there she is, ready to make that dream come true, ready to make history. So, the first thing she does as PM — her suitcase full of presidential ambitions — is beard the lion in his own den.

And she seems to have brought some pacifist Kitekat with her, Donbas being a region full of growth opportunities crucial to her nascent presidential campaign.

Judging from the soundbites that she spilled down the mineshafts of our minds, she is picking her battles carefully. She demonstrated a willingness to strike a deal with neutral Regionalist factions, a nonaggression modus operandi that would win allies and keep her focused on the coveted presidential prize.

Meeting with the victims’ families at the Zasyadka Mine, she echoed Donetsk Mayor Lukyanchenko, who embraced Zvyahilsky’s theory that shutting down the Zasyadka Mine may cause methane buildup with a far greater explosive potential. Below are some of the noteworthy statements she made there, a mishmash of activism and appeasement:

We believe that the Zasyadka Mine should not be closed. Instead, it should be developed, using sophisticated safety systems. We are to build a system of quality control in support of the safety system that will never again allow for such tragedies.

Despite grave violations of the leasing agreement, we can’t just shoot from the hip. It is necessary to carefully sort out things, and only then should we make decisions.

I want to uncover every fact, every detail.

In the next couple of days, I will set up a working group answerable to the Vice-Premier that will work on the legislation.

We will conduct a full-scale checkup of how the mine equipment was procured, of what funding was used in the procurements, and of how, basically, all the cash flows are moving. We will not leave anything unchecked.

We will set up a special housing commission that will analyze the living conditions of each of you.

After a while, once we’ve put in some work, we’ll meet in the same arrangement as now, perhaps as soon as a month from now.

We need to do things. Whoever wants to keep on struggling, let them struggle. I want to do practical things and bring order to the country, so let elections be on someone else’s mind.

We’ll be working further, and will make it so that being a miner in our country will be fancied by youths and children.

Just how many Cabinet members’ kids will want to become miners? Is she absolutely positively sure those safety systems will work? If methane buildup indeed happens to be the case, should we burn off the gas, or should we burn off the miners’ lives?

As long as these questions remain unanswered, they beg the question of whether the Prime Minister should endear herself to the miners at the cost of endangering their lives.

Meanwhile, PM Tymoshenko appears to have quietly abandoned her widely publicized campaign promise of abolishing conscription as early as 2008. Her burying the hatchet on this issue can be seen as an attempt to lessen friction with the slow-paced NUNS coalition partners, who control the military.

For people on the front lines, the status quo comes at a high price. A conscript died recently in a bullying incident, followed by the death of another miner at the Zasyadka Mine.

When you try to be all things to all people, you may eventually become president, but more people may die along the way.

Sources:
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/12/23/68888.htm
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/12/23/68880.htm
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/12/23/68867.htm
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/12/23/68878.htm
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/12/23/68875.htm
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/12/23/68874.htm
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/12/23/68873.htm
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/12/22/68866.htm
http://bayki.com/im/lica/timoshenko_matrix.jpg

The Miners' Misery

Below is a video of real people who tell us how the smell of profits sucks the safety out of the Ukrainian mining industry. (H/t Luida)

Miner 1: What do I do? Guys, you tell me. What do I do at home? Where’s my Roman? Where? I want…I want to know where Roman is. He went off to work. Mother’s waiting for her son. I'm waiting, too. Where is he? Why holler? [shrugs off a man trying to calm him] And what should I do? Please understand, I only have one [son]. I won’t have another one.

Brother, there won’t be another one. That’s it. I had hope, I had support. Now I d-o-n-’t! And what am I supposed to do? Maybe I should treat you to bread and salt? Where’s this Yushchenko? Where are they? Have they arrived? Let them explain. I’ve lost my son! He didn’t fool around. He didn’t throw around hundreds of dollars [refers to college bribery]. No he didn’t. He honestly worked together with you guys here, at Section 7. He did honest and good work. He’s no loafer. Because I’m no loafer. I did 20 years of work. Look at these hands here! Look here!

The gas level at their drift ran at 80 percent. Everybody came running. I say it’s an unhealthy situation. Get out of there! Yeah, he promised me, he promised. He lied, he lied! Now let him come out. Let him look the people in the eye. Let him look! [probably refers to the man who controls the mine].

It’s in mines like yours — in high-methane ones — that not a single cable should be pegged. And how many pegs do you have on those cables? How many? How many jumpers do you have on those indicators? Plan! Plan! It’s unachievable for such depths and…it’s unachievable!

Other miners: Guys, we work here at the Zasyadka Mine. What should we do?
Miner 1: Jail him, jail him! Think of all the lives he destroyed!
Other miners: No one will jail him. No one will jail him.

Miner 2: I was in ICU. He’s telling the right thing, guys. I was in ICU. They brought me a small TV, they showed me: an explosion at Zasyadka, a government commission is conducting a probe. And they said a trolley exploded at a mine horizon. How could a tram explode at a mine horizon? That particular trolley, I hereby report to you — I’ll show you my ID, here’s my ID [states his name].

I was in delivery. On May 24, 1999 I was told to leave the tram. It’s remains there to this day. Don’t fool us. He’s telling the right thing, this man. I quite agree with him. I share his views. By the way, I now would like to…[struggles to speak] ever since, my nerves are not OK. You can check my ID. I’m not hiding. This is where I work. I work at the SEA, or Sanitary-Ecological Area. I was assigned here in 1990.

Zvyahilsky Statement Wishful Thinking!

November 21, the day of the rigged 2004 presidential election, marks the third anniversary of the Orange Revolution, officially celebrated on Nov. 22. Still, with miners dying by the dozen and with the smell of shyrka in the air, few fell like celebrating. Ukraine’s circle of life hasn’t changed much.

Donbas, which overwhelmingly supported Yanukovych, made no peace with the Orange Revolution. Now that the Yanukovych’s Party of Regions has been in power for a while and will probably remain so, will Donbasians make peace with coal mines that send them to death?

Ukrayinska Pravda quotes a Delo report in which Yukhym Zvyahilsky, the man who controls the Zasyadka Mine, denies expressing willingness to close the mine. In fact, Zvyahilsky issued a full denial at a funeral ceremony yesterday.

Delo traces the previous statement to Anatoliy Akimochkin, leader of an independent labor union, who, in his own words, overheard it during Zvyahilsky’s conversation with head of the Secretariat Baloha and national security chief Plyushch.

The Zasyadka Mine produces 4 million tons of coal annually, but has a casualty rate 7 times above the industry average.

The poster caption reads:
“Life’s gotten better, comrades. Life’s gotten more fun. And when life is fun, work gets done.”

— Joseph Stalin

Stakhanovtsy, expand the ranks of the Stakhanov movement!
(Note: From 1924 to 1961, Donetsk bore the name of Stalino.)


Sources:
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/11/21/67123.htm http://delo.ua/news/economic/theme/info-60173.html
Image uploaded from: http://sovmusic.ru/p_view.php?id=415

Zvyahilsky Offers to Close Mine

Just listen to this open-minded guy:

I can’t provide any explanation for the accident that happened. If so many people die, and nobody knows the cause, maybe we really should close this mine.

Proactive, isn’t he?

Sources:
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/11/20/67065.htm

More on Yukhym Zvyahilsky

Want to know more about the man who controls the Zasyadka Mine and who called in sick yesterday? Here’s a quote from "The Theft of the Truth," a 2001 article by Julian Evans published in New Statesman:

Zvyahilsky is an old political colleague of President Kuchma's, having briefly been prime minister in the mid-Nineties. When his political career ran off the road after he was said to have diverted somewhere between $40m and $250m of state funds into his own pocket, he avoided the hue and cry by emigrating to Israel for two years. The case against him was dropped for "lack of evidence", and he returned to Ukraine, where he became the mine chairman.

Some of the miners I spoke to said Zvyahilsky had agreed to pay back some of the allegedly stolen money, and that Kuchma forgave him. Other versions say that it was Kuchma himself who told him to leave the country for a few years, to allow things to settle down. It is said that he has acquired 60,000 hectares of prime Ukrainian farmland since his return. An informant who works in the agricultural sector has proof that Zvyahilsky owes 400,000 hryvna (£51,000) for seeds purchased for use on his farm.

There is no doubt that Zvyahilsky is a powerful man. At the offices of a Donetsk newspaper, I spoke to a journalist, who preferred not to be named. "Put it this way," he said, "in this region there are two clans. Mr Zvyahilsky is the head of one of them." He, too, was nervous of saying more. Would his newspaper publish anything negative about Zvyahilsky if it had proof? "No."

Zvyahilsky is indeed a powerful man. You can see his power here, here, and here. So how many more people have to die before we stop stabilnist?

Sources:

http://www.newstatesman.com/200111050020
http://photo.unian.net/eng/keywords/5113
http://wap.president.gov.ua/en/news/data/1_8627.html
http://blog.kievukraine.info/2005/07/yushchenko-visits-hostile-donetsk.html

Methane Blast Kills 100 in Donetsk Mine (Updated)

A massive explosion at the Zasyadka Mine — some 1,078 m (3,537 ft) underground — at 3:11 a.m. Kyiv time on Sunday took the lives of 100 miners in what has already become Ukraine's deadliest mine accident.

As of 3:09 p.m. Tuesday, the bodies of 10 more miners have yet to be recovered. 32 miners have been hospitalized; 53 bodies have been identified; 28 were buried today. Body recovery efforts are hampered by the fire that still rages on deep inside the mine shaft.

Tuesday will be a day of mourning in Ukraine. (Read the CNN report. View UNIAN photo reports here and here.)

According to experts, the casualty rate in the local mining industry puts Ukraine second only to China. Here's a quote from the CNN report:

Since the 1991 Soviet collapse, more than 4,700 miners in Ukraine have been killed. For every 1 million tons of coal brought to the surface in Ukraine, three miners lose their lives, according to official data.

The Zasyadka Mine is rented by Yukhym Zvyahilsky, a member of the Party of Regions.

Listed below is the death toll from major mine accidents in Ukraine during the last sixteen years:

Jun. 1991 Pivdenno-Donbaska Mine, Vugledar, Donetsk Oblast: 31
Sept. 1994 Slovyanoserbsk, Luhansk Oblast: 30
Apr. 1998 Skochynsky Mine, Donetsk: 63
May 1999 Zasyadka Mine, Donetsk: 50
Mar. 2000 Barakova Mine, Luhansk: 80
Aug. 2001 Zasyadka, Donetsk: 55
Jul. 2002 Ukraine Mine, Ukrayinsk, Donetsk Oblast: 35
Jul. 2004 Krasny Lyman, Donetsk Oblast: 37
Sept. 2006 Zasyadka Mine, Donetsk: 13
Oct. 2007 Krasnodonvugillya Mine, Luhansk Oblast: 4



Sources:

http://unian.net/ukr/news/news-222612.html
http://unian.net/ukr/news/news-222523.html
http://unian.net/ukr/news/news-222495.html
http://unian.net/ukr/news/news-222322.html
http://unian.net/ukr/news/news-222296.html
http://photo.unian.net/ukr/themes/5485
http://photo.unian.net/ukr/themes/5510
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/11/18/67002.htm
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/11/18/66999.htm
http://www.gpu.ua/index.php?&id=131178&eid=212
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/11/19/ukraine.mining.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/11/18/ukraine.mining.ap/index.html

Video uploaded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/68480.html
Photo courtesy of: AP