“This conference was attended by such guests as… Glazyev”

The Viktor Pinchuk Foundation will hold the Yalta meeting-2014. The 11th economic summit, which is “homeless” this year (it is clear from the title that the previous meetings were held in the currently annexed Crimea), will be held in Kyiv. Until recently there was no exact program or the list of the participants of the event mentioned on the official website of the event. But the meeting of “admirers of Davos varenyky,” like The Day’s editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna calls them, has made a considerable stir.

On the weekend a well-known social activist, one of the initiators of the social movement “Reanimation Package of Reforms,” Hanna Hopko posted on her Facebook page a letter to the former president of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski, who is the head of the monitoring council of the YES, in which she notified that she refuses to take part in the Yalta meeting and, mildly speaking, does not recommend him to do that.

YES Executive Director Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze hurried to defend her employee and responded to Hopko’s refusal: “Hanna, the country is getting united namely for the sake of defense from the external aggression and internal fifth column. We all have things to fight with and for every day, and everyone is trying to make his own contribution to this cause,” she wrote, noting that Hopko has the right either to accept or not to accept the invitation to the event, but the director of the YES considers that Hopko’s boycott of the meeting is for sure not in the favor of the state. For, Klympush-Tsintsadze did not forget to underline, the YES “for many years has been by far the only window of Ukraine’s serious communication with the world, and now with the help of diplomacy of second level continues to gather in Ukraine all caring people in order to present the unbiased voice of the state decently in the world.”

The user of the social network Facebook Oleksandr Serhieiev immediately replied to, as he put it, “cynical commentary” of the director of the YES. Here is the original of his answer: “First, Ms. Klympush-Tsintsadze should not mix the interests of the Kuchma family and of its serving staff with the interests of Ukraine and Ukrainian people. The Kuchma family is actually the internal fifth column (about which Hanna Hopko wrote in her blog in the newspaper Den thoroughly, providing concrete undeniable facts). Secondly, it was the Kuchma family who made the YES purposefully the ‘only window of serious communication of Ukraine and the world,’ so that such people as Glazyev could push through Putin’s ideas into our information space, where in combination with the freedom of speech these ruinous for the country raving ideas were retranslated by Tsariov and Kolesnichenko, Symonenko and Kilinkarov, Kornilov and Chalenko, Ishchenko who is openly calling to the occupation of Ukraine at the moment (!)… One of the main tasks of Hanna Hopko’s generation is creation of a principally different communication of Ukraine with the world, a communication where real voices and faces of the country will not be substituted by oligarchs’ puppets, who have not realized how deep they have sunk. Secondly, the public boycott of the events organized by the Kuchma family and protest actions while it is being held will complicate the fulfilling of a new ‘homework’ by Kuchma he received from Putin in Minsk – participation in legalization of terrorist organizations in the Donbas and another sale of a ‘piece’ of Ukraine. Fourthly, it will become a serious warning for unscrupulous Western politicians who have been caught on ‘Pinchuk-style friendship’ and encouraged the blossom of corruption in the post-Soviet space and its spreading into the countries of developed democracy. Finally, the stand taken by Hanna Hopko is a real civil stand of a Person and Citizen, for whom the notion of European values and God’s commandments are not a shield, but an instruction for action. But those who have been for a long time faithfully serving the Evil are unable to understand this.”

On September 1 Hanna Hopko explained in a conversation with The Day in detail why she refused to take part in the “homeless” Yalta conference organized by Viktor Pinchuk and why she recommends the European and Ukrainian politicians to do the same.

“I think the participation and involvement of any key politicians of the EU and Ukraine in the YES are lagging behind the changes that have taken in the minds of people and contradict the demands of time, the demand of the society for the verification of respect to the country, Hopko noted. Pinchuk and his father-in-law Kuchma have put efforts for Ukraine to find itself in the state it is now,” the activist underlines. “Previously the conference was attended by such guests as a famous Ukrainophobe, Putin’s advisor Sergey Glazyev,” she notes.

She say that the participation in the conference will remind a vanity fair, which will continue to whitewash the reputation of the oligarchs as benefactors. But this is not true. Namely the oligarchs have been killing the country for many years and drove it to two Maidans. “Pinchuk’s channels, like ICTV, continue to show cheap Russian films instead of making TV products aimed at glorification of the defenders of Ukraine, popularization of our soldiers as real representatives of the new elite. Besides, Pinchuk’s channels promoted such adherers of the ‘Russian world’ as Rostyslav Ishchenko, Oleksandr Chalenko. Together with Russian channels they were translators of the Kremlin propaganda, etc.” Hopko notes. The activist is convinced, if the television shows the truth about the challenges the country is facing, its success and defeats, real heroes and antiheroes – it will be impossible to turn citizens into fools. By the way, the media controlled by Pinchuk have been doing this successfully.

“The Maidan, the annexation of the Crimea, the war in the east are the tests which, besides bringing sorrow, have created new opportunities for the country to develop and find allies,” Hanna says in her commentary to The Day. But she noted that this search should take place on new platforms, where the initiators have a clean reputation and have proved with their actions the readiness to serve the country’s interests.

Therefore, Hopko considers, Pinchuk, like the rest of Ukrainian oligarchs, should not be trying to buy the Western elite, something they have been doing successfully for the money they stole from Ukrainians, but after all start to work together on saving the country which has made them rich. “Make a step for cleaning of Ukraine, which has paid for human dignity and defense of fundamental values with its blood,” she appeals.

Hopko says that Pinchuk, in particular, can do a lot for Ukraine, first of all, donate half of his possessions, give one of his channels for Hromadske TV and start a new tradition among the oligarchs: at the critical moment for the country, when something threatens its integrity and there is a risk of default, to invest into the army, create large-scale social projects. The society will accept this donation, without PR, like a part of paying the accounts.

And according to Hopko the politicians, in particular the Western ones, in their turn should orient at the values, not be sold for the checks of the Kuchma-Pinchuk family written out for their election or patronage foundations as honoraria. Actually this is what Hanna Hopko has written in her letter to the ex-president of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski.