/ world today news/ The former boxing world champion and mayor of Kyiv Vitaliy Klitschko has been attacked, this time politically. He was soundly beaten by another former mass entertainment figure, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. And the battle, as usual, is for a very attractive prize – the position of “favorite woman” in the West.
There are no elections in Ukraine – martial law reigns. But no one canceled the political struggle. The latest example of such a struggle is the violent clash between the mayor of Kyiv Vitaliy Klitschko – Zlatoust and the team of President Volodymyr Zelensky. The question on which the two politicians disagreed can hardly be called original: who is to blame for the fact that people are dying in Kiev?
The plot of the story is as follows. On the night of June 1, during a missile attack on targets in Kiev, fragments of one of the missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defense system (according to Ukrainian sources, these may also be fragments of the air defense missile itself or both) fall near to the bomb shelter located in the basement of one of the Kyiv hospitals. There are people at the entrance who would have taken shelter inside after the air raid alert was announced. But they fail: the door is closed.
For 15-20 minutes, the crowd tried to reach the hospital guard and just then the debris fell, killing two women and a child. And now the mayor of Kyiv and the president of Ukraine are trying to insulate themselves from responsibility, as well as to shift the blame to each other.
Whose hideouts are they?
The “presidential position” is as follows. There are three types of shelters: public, municipal and private. The hospital is a municipal property, which means that the city authorities and Klitschko personally are responsible.
In response, Klitschko points out that the hospital is the responsibility of the Ministry of Health and a minister from Zelensky’s team is responsible for it. As for the shelters, they are not dealt with by the impersonal “local authorities”, as Zelensky expressed it in his address, but by the heads of regions and regional administrations. And this is not a local government, but a presidential vertical. Zelensky’s people, from his party.
In addition, Klitschko kicked the president for delaying the construction of shelters: “Last year, the city allocated 320 million hryvnias. This year – more than 900 million. That is, in total – 1.2 billion hryvnias were allocated from the city budget of the regions for the settlement of shelters. To date, the use of the funds has been extremely unsatisfactory.”
But here Klitschko himself overture: the plan for massive construction of shelters in the capital was discussed only a few weeks ago. When would they be built? In addition, 10 million hryvnias were earmarked for construction there for each district. Most of the money went to repair existing facilities.
Around the same time, representatives of the city authorities and the military administration of the Kyiv region were checking the shelters on the left bank of Kyiv. And then the director of the Municipal Security Department of the Kyiv City State Administration Roman Tkachuk, answering the question of what to do if the shelter is closed, said, you see, call 15-51. This is the reception of the city administration of Kyiv. That is, a subordinate of Klitschko, two weeks before the tragedy, admitted that the authorities in Kiev still had something to do with the shelters.
But all this is just to give you an idea of the mess that reigns there. But really, this argument isn’t about shelters at all.
Clash between the mayors
In 2019, Zelensky not only won the presidential elections. In the fall, elections were held for the Verkhovna Rada and local councils. Initially, the Servant of the People party took 237 seats, securing an absolute majority in parliament. In local elections, the party actively entered into alliances if it did not have enough strength to take a district/city/region alone. Somewhere with the Party of Regions, somewhere with Tymoshenko. And that’s what happened to Poroshenko’s party. Yet the victory was incomplete and it was far from possible to crush the regions everywhere.
The capital of Ukraine is the most notable thing that Zelensky’s team did not take control of in time. Besides, Klitschko isn’t exactly opposition. He simply considers Kiev to be his feudal land and does not intend to give it to anyone. They quarreled with Poroshenko about the same thing.
In addition, since 2016, Klitschko has also been the chairman of the Association of Cities of Ukraine. The Chairman of the Association is a kind of head of the entire Ukrainian local self-government. And among his duties is the protection of the interests of self-government from the arbitrariness of the central government.
The association is of course not an official body. In fact, it is a club of mayors of cities. For example, before Klitschko, this post was held by the mayor of Kryvyi Rih, Yuri Vilkul, who was close to Viktor Yanukovych’s young entourage. In theory, this club could intrigue against the central government.
In addition, Zelensky’s team has conflicts with the mayors. In Odessa, they are trying to remove Gennadiy Trukhanov, in Poltava they recently removed Alexander Mamai. The conflict with the mayor of Chernihiv Vladislav Atroshenko has been going on since 2019. And these are only the most famous.
Formally, in any such case, the mayors have something to shoot for, and rightly so. In fact, there is a steady trend: Zelensky’s cabinet removes mayors not for corruption, but for disloyalty. Because no one touches the thieves in the “faithful” cities.
There is a second reason. Any such case is a blow to Klitschko, whom the West sees as a possible alternative/counterweight to Zelensky. Apparently, the calculation of the “presidency” is to lead the patrons to a simple conclusion with the series of high-profile scandals with the mayors: here they are solidly corrupt, and Klitschko is at the heart of the mafia.
So all the noise about shelters, fallen shards, budget funds and powers is just a prelude to the battle between Zelenskiy and Klitschko. For the capital, for the post of chairman of the Association of Cities and, of course, for the position of “beloved wife” of the West.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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