by Gordon M. Hahn
On the Friday evening broadcast of the popular Ukrainian television talk show Black Mirror on channel ‘Inter’ Aleksandr Velichko, the head of the legal department of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk Oblast run by President Petro Poroshenko-appointed governor, oligarch Ihor Kolomoiskiy, said that his scandalous recent nine-day abduction had been organized by Kolokoiskiy’s deputy Gennadii Korban and the neo-fascist ‘Right Sector’ (PS or Praviy Sektor) party headed by Dmitro Yarosh and generously funded on and off the battlefield by Kolomoiskiy (www.youtube.com/user/podrobnosti).
Velichko, claiming to be hiding abroad, detailed his captivity at the hand of the PS goons while being held at PS’s base, which he said was “rampant with Kolomoiskiy people” and is located in Donetsk’s village of Peski. According to Velichko, he was told to write and sign a note with a negative information on the mayor of the city of Dnepropetrovsk, Maxim Romanenko and was threatened with physical violence and the use of “cold weapons” (knives, blades, etc.). They also threatened to shoot his knee, cut off his finger, make me an invalid, cut up my family and force him to listen over the cell phone while they “cut his family “into pieces.” He said he therefore signed and was let go, adding: “After the horror I fear for my life. And only under the guarantee of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine am I ready within the law to testify against Korban. If the Attorney General’s Office will not stop Gennady Korban, he will kill me and my family. And as long as Korban is at large and represents the interests of the regional authority, not a single resident of Dnipropetrovsk region can be safe” (www.youtube.com/user/podrobnosti).
This occurred on the background of no less than seven ‘suicides’ of former Yanukovich regime officials in the last month in ‘democratic’ Ukraine.
One definition of fascism is the overlap of authoritarian state power and large capital interests. It appears that here too Ukraine is developing in the ‘right’ direction, driven by corrupt and criminal oligarchic clans that have and continue to privatize the state and violent neo-fascist para-military groups like PS functioning as their political and business shock troops.
Velichko’s abduction, accordingly, appears to be part of an intensifying struggle for position as Ukraine prepares to carry out ostensibly over the next few years a major privatization that Kolomoiskiy and other oligarchs seek to gain from. Thus, Dnipropetrovsk mayor Romanenko is said to have been tied to local Dnipropetrovsk oligarchs loyal to former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich that Kolomoiskiy seeks to defeat (www.ng.ru/cis/2015-03-16/1_ukraina.html).
It should be noted that new Ukrainian Finance Minister and former American USAID official Nataliya Yaresko will play an important role in designing the privatization mechanism. She is believed to have received government grants from the State Department immediately after leaving USAID and used them to build her own business as well as a cadre of businesses and business people who would be interested, perhaps, in overthrowing Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich (http://johnhelmer.net/?p=12317 and http://johnhelmer.net/?p=12437).