TRAGEDY 

We met with Volodymyr near his house in a quiet village street, not far from the local graveyard. Of medium height and looking tired, he was filling a bucket at a hydrant. Parked by the gate was the KamAZ truck. It was lunchtime and Volodymyr had driven over to help his wife with household chores. He listened to us gloomily and was silent for quite some time. Finally he sighed and invited us into his small village home. Inside the furniture was more than modest, yet the place looked neat and spotlessly clean. Chain-smoking (the man had had obviously more than he could digest the last couple of weeks), he told us about himself and what had happened on that highway near Kyiv.

Volodymyr was born into a rural truck driver's family in Mykolayivka, a village in Novomoskovsky district where Pavlo Lazarenko would eventually head the local collective farm (and where the post is still held by his brother Ivan). Before long the family moved to the neighboring village of Hubynikha. The boy grew up there, was then drafted into the army where he was a truck driver with a motorized battalion stationed at Ussuriysk (Siberia). After demobilization he worked as a truck driver in Novomoskovsk and Dnipropetrovsk where he met Olena, his future wife. Eight years ago, fed up with renting rooms in the city, without a home to accommodate the family (they had two children), they decided to live with Olena's parents in Oleksandrivka. It would be easier to keep the family in the countryside than on city asphalt.

Gradually, their life took a more or less steady course, but then he was sent to Volyn and the most horrible thing in his life happened. According to Volodymyr, they had driven there on several previous occasions, as the local farming Luhovske Co. practiced barter deals, sending truckloads of grain to Manevychi and bringing back spare parts for the tractors. That time, too, they were sent with grain (the spring campaign had started and spare parts were in short supply). There were three of them in the KamAZ cabin: Volodymyr at the wheel, Viktor Chernetsky, Luhovske's chief engineer, and Ivan Sholom, a tractor driver. They set off around noon, March 25, and made two stops on the way for gas and lunch. They reached the Zolotonosha-Boryspil highway at 11.30 p.m., past the crossing with the Kharkiv-Chernihiv highway. It was then Volodymyr noticed the road sign reading "Freight transit prohibited." Since the centerline was broken, he decided to make a U-turn. He let a car race by and started turning with head, rear, and side lights on. In the distance he spotted a pair of headlights, but Volodymyr thought nothing of it; time and distance enough to slow down and stop. And then the car smashed in between the truck and trailer. There was nothing Volodymyr could do. His was a heavy-duty truck, fully loaded, and there were deep ditches on both sides of the road. As a driver with 20 years of professional experience, Volodymyr Kudelia thinks that the man at the Toyota wheel must have dozed off or turned his attention from the road, and since he was doing 160-180 km/h the tragedy was unavoidable.

The impact was so powerful the Toyota bent the thick and strong coupling rod and got stuck underneath.

One of the surviving passengers identified himself as Udovenko and said that inside the green Toyota was Vyacheslav Chornovil. He had a mobile telephone, so they called for the ambulance and highway patrol. They broke down the car doors and pulled out the driver and a passenger who was sleeping in the back seat at the time of impact. They put the driver on top of the grain, he was still alive, but soon his heart stopped. They could not revive Vyacheslav Chornovil until a truck-mounted crane arrived. Judging from bodily injuries, his death was instant, on impact. The police took
Volodymyr Kudelia to Boryspil for questioning and he spent several days at a hotel. He says he was also questioned at the Kyiv City Police Department. Finally he was released on his own recognizance. He drove the KamAZ truck and trailer home and his fellow travelers, Chernetsky and Sholom, left Boryspil earlier, after reloading the grain on another truck sent from Dnipropetrovsk oblast.

Volodymyr lives in constant nervous expectation, unsure of what lies ahead, although he is positive that he did not violate any traffic rules (and the highway patrol examining the scene seemed to agree). However, one of the interrogating police officers pointed out that two dead bodies were something to reckon with and that he should find a lawyer. This last remark was an especially heavy blow to the family; the unfortunate driver told us he has been paid practically nothing by way of salary for the past four years. Olena added that the family lives on what he can earn in the city and what little they can get from their vegetable garden and sell on city street markets. Their children, 15-year-old Yuri and 10-year-old Anton, will need a hundred hryvnias each for textbooks next year. Two hundred hryvnias. Where will they get it, considering that there is not enough money for clothes and shoes? True, the management promised to let them use a minibus in case of court hearings in Kyiv...

No one in the village believes stories about a "contract job" or "planned road accident" and Kudelia's wife just smiled sadly, "Who? Volodymyr? He won't cut off a chicken's head. I always do. You've got to be kidding."

It was time to leave. We shook hands in the yard and wanted to take pictures, but Volodymyr was adamant. No pictures. Never. He even hid behind the KamAZ. It was thus we learned that the family fears retribution from Vyacheslav Chornovil's associates. We looked at each other and shrugged. We left Oleksandrivka and rode back to Kyiv, careful to keep to the speed limit, reading every road sign.

By Vadym RYZHKOV, The Day