Step 1: Construction company buys whatever land permits it can.
Step 2: Construction company hires goons and police.
Step 3:Goons and police clash with activists.
Gorky Park, Kharkiv, May 28: Chanting “Militsiya z narodom!” (“The police are with the people), activists try to appeal to police officers’ better selves.
So much for the Orange Revolution slogan. Unmoved, the police start making arrests. A woman gets hysterical: “What ‘people’ are you talking about? They’re grabbing you!”
2:47: “It’s not a construction site! It’s a park, man,” insists one activist. 8:42: An activist gets quietly robbed by a fast-fingered goon. 9:92: With the bulldozer already running, an activist concludes in dismay: “It’s called ‘Ukraine for the People.’”
Protests resumed amid chopped trees. People sang, bonded and grieved, sharing ideas, slogans and poetry.
Jun 2: Cops for construction continue arresting peaceful activists, in a blatant violation of their freedom of assembly rights.
Maybe the second edition of The Audacity of Hope will mention Kharkiv, too? (The first one mentions Donetsk 1 time, Kiev [sic] 2 times and Ukraine 10 times.)
Andriy Poltavets, 37, the heavily drunk man who killed four adults and two children after plowing his SUV into a crowd at a tram station in Kharkiv, has received 10 years’ imprisonment. That’s less than two years for every person killed by Poltavets, who has a past history of DUI.
The ruling, which includes a 3-year suspension of driver’s license, was made today, Channel 5 reports. Asked about how she felt, a relative of one of the victims expressed feelings of injustice and insecurity.
So here’s what “one law for all” means in this case: Once you get drunk and get in that car and start killing people, there’s no limit to how many people you can kill. You’ll only get 10 years, plus a 3-year suspension of drivers’ license. Well, perhaps you’ll even get paroled, which means you can start killing even sooner!
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?
