Can Talkathons Get Tymoshenko Out of Jail?

Yes, they can. The opposition clearly thinks so.



It's all talk and no action for Tymoshenko apparatchiks. Any surprise there? Just like the Yanukovych crowd, they all want to talk their way back into Ukraine’s parliament. Does anyone of them feel like talking about how they screwed up? Not really. Just vote for them again, OK?

Will that work for Dnipropetrovsk subway construction workers who have gone without pay for six months? 




For most voters, it’s vacation season. Anyone willing to sit through 3:37:17 hours of “middle class this and that” opposition talk? Not me.

If there’s one grassroots Ukrainian who can remotely relate to Tymoshenko’s “overboard” experience, it’s this lady. Watch her fall off a jam-packed marshrutka in Dnipropertrovsk, Tymoshenko’s hometown.



And boy did she know how to dust herself off!

Chase her. Make her endorse Tymoshenko.

Sources:
http://censor.net.ua/video_news/212020/predprinimateli_finansiruyut_ne_byudjet_a_stroitelstvo_osobnyakov_dlya_chinovnikov_obedinennaya_oppozitsiya
http://censor.net.ua/video_news/212041/v_dnepropetrovske_buntuyut_metrostroevtsy_my_kak_raby_vruchnuyu_kopaem_a_deneg_ne_videli_polgoda_video
http://censor.net.ua/video_news/212117/jenschina_na_hodu_vypala_iz_perepolnennoyi_marshrutki_pod_kolesa_avtomobilya_video

Tymoshenko Visits Mom, Changes Hairstyle

Girl falls in love with boy. Boy dumps girl. Girl loses to boy. Boy grounds girl.

On International Women’s Day, boy yields to girl. Girl roams free, heads back to her native Dnipropetrovsk for a family reunion.

Foreign travel? No way. You can take the hair out of the girl, but you can’t take the girl out of his hair.

Tymoshenko: I had to go through a whole variety of Nechvoglods (that’s the investigator’s name, Nichvoglod). So I had to go through a lot of Nichvoglods to get that special slip that allows me to visit mom.

Oh boy...banning *the* opposition leader from foreign and domestic travel? What a mood killer! Even for John McCain, whose associates have lobbied on your behalf?

You can take the girl out of the West, but you can’t take the West out of the girl.

It’s just that some girls wanna have so much fun that others have no business left in this country.

Meet the other Yulia. Yulia Smaga.




Ukraine's got talent! In Spain.

Sources:
http://censor.net.ua/ru/video_news/view/159367/timoshenko_pozdravila_mamu_v_dnepropetrovske_i_sdelala_novuyu_prichesku_video http://tsn.ua
http://life.pravda.com.ua/person/2011/03/9/74533/

9 Dead, 11 Hospitalized in Dnipropetrovsk Slot Machine Fire

Nine people died and eleven were hospitalized after an explosion set ablaze a slot machine outlet in Dnipropetrovsk at about 1:00 a.m. local time Thursday.

In this Channel 5 footage, three victims recall being covered up in smoke and struggling to find their way out.



Lives could have been saved had the emergency exit not been sealed. (Gambling with their lives, weren’t they?)

Local authorities have ordered all gambling operations and entertainment centers in the city closed pending investigation and inspection.

Sources:
http://5.ua/newsline/230/0/59441
http://tsn.ua/ua/ukrayina/u-dnipropetrovsku-zakriyut-vsi-gralni-avtomati.html
Video uploaded from: http://5.ua

Gas Blast Kills 23 in Dnipropetrovsk (Last Updated Oct. 20)

A natural gas explosion on Saturday, Oct. 13 took the lives of 23 high-rise dwellers, seven of them children, in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine’s third-largest city. (Rescue efforts ended Friday, Oct. 19.)

The explosion blew apart an entire section of the 10-storied condo complex, leaving more than 70 people injured. The shock wave has damaged neighboring buildings. According to preliminary findings, the accident was caused by the utility company’s negligence. Two company employees have been arrested.

PM Viktor Yanukovych, who came to ground zero, did not receive a warm welcome. Eye witnesses claimed that the fire engines summoned to the scene had lacked the fuel to extend their turntable ladders, a drag on rescue efforts at a time when every second counted. The victims surrounded Yanukovych and demanded that he sign a written obligation to reimburse them for their loss, Ukrayinska Pravda reports.

Local authorities have vowed to provide replacement apartments to all victims. BYuT leader Yulia Tymoshenko, a native of Dnipropetrovsk, has also visited the site of the tragedy. President Yushchenko has declared Tuesday a day of mourning.

I just watched Channel 5, and they said that people had been calling Dniprogaz, the utility company for two days, asking them to fix the broken gas valve. No response. Now you know what it takes to grab the utility company's attention in Ukraine. A total of 5,200 buildings were cut off from the gas supply.

The accident was followed by days of silence from Dniprogaz stockholders, the most prominent of which is Viktor Vekselberg. His Gazeks company, which controls Dniprogaz, is offering a payment of 500,000 hryvnias ($100,000) to every family, without accepting blame for the accident "until proven otherwise."

Gazeks is in turn owned by Renova, a company that positions itself as "Geography of Responsibility. Ideas, (sic) that shape the course of history."



Photos courtesy of Natalia Kovalchuk of AFP

Learn more:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7043017.stm http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/14/2058951.htm

A Trip to Kuchmaland
Lutsenko Rallies in Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk Obstructed by Pro-Yanukovych Local Authorities

Half-pregnant with new parliamentary — and perhaps even presidential — elections, 2007 looks very much like 2004. “Narodna Samo'oborona,” or “People’s Self-Defense,” an opposition submovement headed by former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko that is haunting Ukraine in the runup to the long-awaited March on Kyiv, helps discover that similarity.

Talk about putting spokes in those wheels. Yanukovych and his allies seem to be intent on putting eastern Ukraine on the 2004 track.

But not all people take orders from Yanukovych there. In the three rounds of the 2004 presidential election, Kharkiv voted Yushchenko by 31.10, 21.11 and 26.12 percent, respectively. The figures for Dnipropetrovsk are 18.72, 29.62, and 32.01 percent.

Lutsenko’s roadshow in Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk gathered from five to ten thousand people. Of course, those estimates do not include the brotherly legions of Communists and Regionalists (read: Capitalists) who stormed the streets to protest the project that threatens to shatter their highly profitable partnership.

Securing a venue turned out to be a major problem in Kharkiv: Mayor Mykhailo Dobkin answers to the PRU. In Dnipropetrovsk — the city where Kuchma, as head of Yuzhmash, had spent most of his pre-presidential adulthood making ICBMs — Lutsenko survived a retaliatory egg attack. (A single egg to Yanukovych’s chest in fall 2004 downed him in one fell swoop and kept him in the hospital for several days. Watch Tymo’s eggsperience.)

Interior Minister Vasyl Tsushko, SPU, who has stocked up on police clubs and water cannons, and has populated his staff with Kuchma’s knights, has adopted Kuchma’s rhetoric as well. Speaking at a press conference that marked his first 100 days in office, he advised Ukrainians against participating in the March on Kyiv, calling it “political schizophrenia.” Well, look who’s talking. Hadn't Moroz, his party boss, shared the same stage with Lutsenko at Maidan?