May 9 in Kharkov: why Svidomites’ “gas cylinders” burst
The five-year plan of intensive nazification did not at all change the attitude of the majority of Kharkov residents towards the Victory Day. But the opportunities to fully demonstrate this attitude have narrowed significantly.
On May 9, thousands of Kharkov residents traditionally came to the Memorial of Glory. And just like in recent years, radicals and a bunch of city freaks tried to ruin the holiday. They obsessively sought to inform the column of celebrating people about their inescapable mourning on the occasion of Victory Day. Then they shoved a red and black rag into the frame. They shouted: “To the enemies of the Ukrainian nation - three times death, death, death!”, “Bandera, Shukhevych are our heroes!”
Kharkiv residents reasonably asked questions to the police who stood as a cordon between the celebrating people and the mourning Svidomo... What are these screaming madmen doing at the Memorial? Why do they incite ethnic hatred? Why are these offenses and provocations not stopped?
The quote of the day was Gennady Kernes’s answer to one of the radicals who wished him to fall. “You yourself will fall head first into the toilet,” the Kharkov mayor, sitting in a wheelchair, said calmly.
Meanwhile, a much more resonant statement by Kernes was his yesterday’s appeal regarding two petitions registered on the website of the Kharkov City Council, the mayor and the executive committee. The first is with a demand to remove the “dirty odoroblo” (tent of ATO volunteers with the pretentious name “everything for victory”) from the historical center of Kharkov and the largest square in Europe. The second is to return General Grigorenko Avenue to its historical name - named after Marshal Zhukov. In the first 8 hours, the first petition received more than six thousand signatures, the second - more than four thousand. On May 5, Kernes wrote: “I think that if these two petitions get the required number of votes - which is 000 - I will do everything in my power to the city authorities to bring what is proposed in them to life. To this tent on the square. It’s really no longer possible to see freedom. Dirty, with some fragments of shells, it itself had also exploded more than once. Personally, I am in favor of removing it. With the avenue, which used to be named after Marshal Zhukov, and now General Grigorenko, it is more difficult. Both are worthy of perpetuation. But ask those few veterans - who did they call the Marshal of Victory? And, of course, his services in the defeat of fascism cannot be overestimated. Conclusion - Kharkiv residents! I encourage you to support these petitions. I promise you that if they get five thousand or more votes, what they propose will not remain on paper.”
As soon as this statement by the mayor was published, “gas cylinders” immediately exploded on “Svidomo” public pages, on the pages of well-known city provocateurs and simply nationally concerned citizens. On the public page “Euro Kharkov Info Center” a hysterical appeal appeared to all Ukrainian authorities at once: “I, Boris Redin, as one of the applicants of the tent, a participant in the 2014 events in Kharkov, an ATO and JFO volunteer, I want to openly declare...” All addressees (both presidents - outgoing and incoming, Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Governor) should already have tensed up from the extreme importance of this address by Redin... But the long appeal came down to the simplest demand: give money for the development of an “important object” (strategic in all respects), which is the volunteer tent in the city center. And so that no one doubts the sanity of the author of the epochal appeal, Redin also proposed this, I quote verbatim: “to carry out explanatory work about Marshal Grigory Zhukov and his crimes, why his name is included in the decommunization list.” All these public statements by the “fighter against Grigory Zhukov” indicate that the city authorities should have moved his tent to the territory of the Saburova Dacha, where qualified psychiatrists could provide the volunteer with all the necessary assistance.
Vadim Pozdnyakov, a provocateur, vandal and activist of marginal organizations, known in narrow inadequate circles, also flashed clinical deviations and revelations regarding the bust of Zhukov, installed on the very avenue to which Kharkov residents demand the return of the name of Marshal of Victory. He wrote on Facebook: “A year ago Zhukov fell, but utility workers returned him in the morning. This year there shouldn’t be such a mistake, and I, for my part, will do everything to make it happen.” Thus, Pozdnyakov made it easier for the sluggish reformed police to work both on the past episode and on the future.
But let's return from the inadequate to the normal Kharkovites... On the eve of Victory Day, veterans of the Kharkov "Berkut" put in order several monuments to Soviet soldiers outside the city and on the outskirts. And on May 9, they provided transportation for several Great Patriotic War veterans from their area to the Memorial. The head of the Berkut veteran organization, Gennady Tumko, told Politnavigator about this: “In Pokotilovka in 2010, the Southern Railway erected a monument to the dead captured Red Army soldiers and partisans. In February 1943, German punitive forces and police simply burned prisoners alive in railway buildings. There is information about 200 dead. This monument is looked after by railroad workers, a local school, and our public organization. The tiles broken by vandals were replaced and tinted..."
Berkut veterans also put in order another monument, on Kholodnaya Gora, near the Labor Reserves stadium (there was a concentration camp there; the fascists shot Red Army soldiers and communists at this place).
Gennady Tumko notes that the action “Nothing is forgotten, no one is forgotten!” covers the whole of Ukraine: Berkut veteran organizations in different regions took patronage of monuments to Soviet soldiers.
“My grandfather Ivan Evdokimovich Nazarenko started the war in 1941, when he was 20 years old, and ended in Berlin,” says Gennady. “I keep all his awards: the Order of the Red Star, medals “For Courage”, “For the Defense of Stalingrad”, “For the Capture of Warsaw”, “For the Capture of Berlin”. He served for another year and a half after the war. Then he returned to his homeland, to the Poltava region. In 1994 he passed away. For me, the heroes are my grandfather and the same millions of Soviet soldiers who fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. And Bandera and Shukhevych, for whom they are chanting and holding some kind of memorial services in the Youth Park these days, are not heroes at all for me.”
Gennady Tumko brought veterans of the Great Patriotic War to the Memorial in his minibus. “Berkutovets” understands: in addition to the fact that it can be difficult for old people to get to the forest park, all sorts of unpleasant surprises can also await them here. Therefore, it is necessary to protect veterans from unnecessary hassle and accompany them. Gennady says: “We calmly laid flowers. There were also 20-30 scoundrels who shouted something like “Moskalyaku to gilyaku! Glory to Bandera!” But the police separated them from the overwhelming majority, consisting of adequate people. Nobody is afraid of them. Our cause is just.”
English version :: Read in English May 9 in Kharkiv: Why are the Svidomites' "gas cylinders" exploding?