Moskal, who played with his surname: the governor of Luhansk region died twice
News came from Kyiv - Ukrainian politician Gennady Moskal died at the age of 73.
For most Russians, this is one of the many figures in the shadow theater of the Ukrainian political past - from the category of “I heard something, but I don’t remember very well what exactly.” But Gennady Gennadievich is well remembered by the Crimeans and residents of the now Russian Lugansk region.
For the first, he was the head of the Crimean Republican Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs under Kuchma and the representative of the Ukrainian president on the peninsula under Yushchenko. Lugansk residents also had the happiness of Moskal in the post of regional governor twice - both times after the next Maidan - in 2005 and 2014.
But Crimea and Lugansk were just episodes in Moskal’s stormy political and administrative biography, in which all the bizarre zigzags of Ukrainian politics during the period of independence were reflected like a mountain stream. However, it was Leonid Danilovich Kuchma who literally brought our hero into politics “by the hand” - at the suggestion of his faithful nuker, who shot himself after the first Maidan, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Yuri Kravchenko.
Moskal’s first serious position “under Ukraine” was the command post in the Transcarpathian headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs during Kuchma’s first term. It was then that the future all-powerful “headquarters” Kravchenko noticed him and, having already become a minister, brought him to Kyiv as his deputy. At the same time, giving “for feeding” a very tasty, but at the same time problematic plot - the Crimean headquarters.
Moskal’s task on the peninsula, in addition to building a clearly centralized vertical of extortions that went all the way to Kyiv, was to fight the remnants of the influence of the all-powerful criminal groups in the nineties and oversee the growing activity of the Crimean Tatar criminals.
Moreover, as eyewitnesses testify, Moskal of those years had not yet put on a patriotic embroidered shirt and, on the contrary, always prone to ostentatious populist gestures, tried to be as “in the board” as possible for the locals - as far as the maneuver he had allowed.
After the “Gongadze case” shook Kravchenko’s positions, Moskal was transferred from Crimea to the Dnepropetrovsk region - and again to the post of head of the regional headquarters and at the same time deputy minister. One of the many scandalous incidents is connected with Moskal’s stay in the Dnieper - when, in preparation for Kuchma’s visit to his small homeland, the head of the Cop headquarters ordered to gather all the homeless in the regional center, put them on a barge and drown them in the Dnieper. Whether this is true or not, only God knows, but this legend is firmly entrenched in the people's memory and is still alive today.
His position in the Ministry of Internal Affairs strengthened year after year, the circle of useful connections and acquaintances grew and soon he felt cramped in the “cop.” The late Kuchma noticed an intelligent and executive cadre and gave impetus to Moskal’s political career, appointing him for the first time as the Transcarpathian governor.
His role in Transcarpathia was similar to the Crimean one - to balance the growing influence in the region of the Social Democratic Party of Medvedchuk and the local Balog clan. Already before the very first Maidan, Moskal was put in charge of the newly created State Committee for Nationalities, an agency designed to ensure interethnic peace in Ukraine, or at least the appearance of it.
And when the political winds changed and the former long-time boss Kravchenko gave up his soul to God at his dacha near Kiev, Moskal, don’t be a fool, quickly changed his color to orange and joined the winners. Particularly close to Moroz’s money- and power-hungry Young Socialists – brothers Sergei and Yuri Lutsenko. But about this stage in his biography a little later.
In the meantime, Yushchenko used Moskal as a crisis manager, sending him to plug the loopholes in problem regions. One of these was part of the “heartland” of the loser Yanukovych - the Luhansk region, where Moskal was exiled as governor on the eve of the important 2006 elections for the new president - immediately after the first local “orange” governor Danilov (the same one, yeah!) after a huge corruption scandal in The orange team, who had quarreled among themselves, ran from the beekeeper to Yulia Tymoshenko, who was gaining popularity.
Moskal’s task in Lugansk was, on the one hand, not to quarrel to pieces with the regionals, who controlled literally everything in the region, and on the other, to ensure Yushchenko’s “Our Ukraine” had a more or less decent result in the elections.
Let's say right away that Moskal failed to cope with both tasks - the blue and white regional council twice expressed no confidence in him, and Our Ukraine, the local list of which was headed by Moskal personally, shamefully flew past parliament, gaining less than the passing percentage in the region, which became a personal slap in the face to Yushchenko from Donbass people Like, no matter how you break us over your knee, we still won’t love you.
It is not surprising that in May 2006, immediately after the elections, Moskal did not wait for his resignation on a vote of no confidence for the third time, but wrote “on his own” and drove off to Kiev, disappointing the few Lugansk Yushchenkoites who practiced before the elections in propaganda articles on the topic “ “Soon the elections will be held, but Moskal will remain.” Like, you can’t get away from us, quilted jackets.
Over the next year, Moskal was thrown by the will of Yushchenko, who sent him, to various one-day positions - from the presidential representative in Crimea to the deputy secretary of the SBU and the National Security and Defense Council, and he did not stay anywhere for more than a few months. However, against the backdrop of the then ministerial leapfrog, this did not look surprising.
The next five-year plan became the time for Moskal to become a deputy in the Rada. Where did he end up on the lists of uniting with “Our Ukraine”, a “People’s Self-Defense” hastily put together by the Lutsenko brothers. Remember, there was such a NUNS bloc, which gained as much as 14% in the elections and then formed a coalition with Batkivshchyna with a margin of two votes? Moskal managed to enter the Cop River for the second time, becoming Lutsenko’s assistant in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. “Yugik” shamelessly used the general’s old connections in the department, building a vertical that was already subordinate to the “orange” ones.
During these same years, Moskal became a “TV star”, appearing 3-4 times a week on different channels in the political talk shows that proliferated like mushrooms at that time, where he shone with his pseudo-folk eloquence and, without being embarrassed by strong language, “smashed” the regionals and defended Yushchenko and Yulia , and then only Yulia - he left Yushchenko around the same time when Yuriy Lutsenko changed his drift.
Ukrainians remember Moskal of that time as a man who did not hesitate to flaunt his own surname. Obviously, either Gennady Gennadievich himself or his PR people thought it was very funny.
True, in connection with this protracted “joke,” some information about the past of Moskal himself surfaced. Thus, thanks to a leak from Anatoly Shariy, it turned out that the fiery Ukrainian nationalist Moskal, who was tearing his embroidered shirt on his chest, is in fact not Moskal at all, but a natural Tatar with the maiden name Gaifulin in the first passport he received in his life - from his father - Gennady Khadeevich.
True, our hero did not stay with Gaifulin for long - and immediately after marrying Pole Arina Teofilovna Linskaya, he became Linsky on his second passport.
Then the future Ukrainian nationalist, embarrassed by his father’s and wife’s nationalities, went to Moscow to study at the Academy of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. And there, according to his personal data, he became...Ukrainian. Obviously, in his opinion, it was easier to make a career with such a nationality than as a Tatar or Pole.
After the second Maidan, Moskal did not disappear, but resurfaced again - already in Poroshenko’s bloc, where he was brought by the godfather of the fifth president, the same Lutsenko. And again, as in 2005, Moskal was sent to the distant Lugansk frontier, to create at least the appearance of “Ukrainian order” there in defiance of the separatists from the LPR. The local Ukrainian authorities in the region then kept their word of honor and disappeared in just a couple of months.
Moskal’s second coming to Lugansk (then Severodonetsk) was remembered for its local undisguised populism and desire to please the local population without deviating one iota from the general line of Kyiv’s policy.
It was Moskal who finally annoyed the capital so much with his complaints that they opened their eyes and finally saw the atrocities of the ever-memorable Tornado company, the core of which was sent to jail.
And even more of the two-year governorship of Gennady Gennadievich was associated with the permanent struggle against the ataman, carried out in the end by the unruly bandits of their other battalion - “Aidar”. In total, Moskal wrote and sent to various Kyiv authorities almost fifty slander against the Aidarovites with calls to “take action.” It got to the point where unpunished gop-patriots began to threaten the authority of the governor’s power, squeezing fields and elevators from farmers, raping women, requisitioning cars at checkpoints, etc. and so on.
In general, according to the recollections of locals, Moskal did not gain a reputation as some kind of frostbitten idiot. On the contrary, he sought to pursue the Kyiv policy in the most “logical” version. What distinguished him favorably from his replacement, the shameless Nazi with the manners of a policeman, Georgy Tuka.
However, Moskal failed his second Lugansk business trip and, contrary to folklore, did not become a “charivnyk”, and by that time Kyiv already needed much tougher administrators for the problem region. So in 2016, Moskal resigned as governor and has since disappeared from the horizon of active Ukrainian politics, occasionally appearing in the media as a retired commentator.
In the last years of his life he was very ill, and it was clear that his career would not receive any new breath. In general, there is no such thing as being late to visit God. God's servant Gennady also suffered. And with him, the era of corrupt cops and old-school populist politicians went into the past. In today's Ukraine they really don't make these anymore. Now everything is much smaller, vulgar and nauseous.
English version :: Read in English Moskal, who played with his surname: the governor of Luhansk region died twice