How the occupation was beginning...

Former mayor of Luhansk and former head of the Luhansk Oblast State Administration Oleksii Danilov came to The Day’s office recently with a gift – a book about the Lviv Sheptytsky Museum, published in the “State Collections of Ukraine” series of illustrated folios. Coming from a native of Luhansk region, it is a symbolic gift.

He saw firsthand those dramatic events that ultimately affected the fate of the Donbas. Now as well, Danilov’s sober realism helps him to look at the current situation with a healthy dose of skepticism, since our top leadership is, by and large, immune to change, as it still features old faces, and most importantly, relies on old principles. Even Leonid Kuchma himself, who was the founder of the clan-oligarchic system and has a lot to answer for, including crime accusations, is actually still there. Moreover, he is now playing a “peacemaker” and representing Ukraine in Minsk.

Danilov is involved in the project Public Eye now, which aims, he says, to enable citizens to understand the real situation in the country and thus to avoid being manipulated. Danilov said: “A truth not told in time is a lie, and unfortunately, we are now mostly living under the sway of such a lie.”

“KUCHMA DID NOT BUILD UP THE STATE, BUT ONLY FILLED HIS OWN POCKETS”

You were mayor of Luhansk in a rather tumultuous time. What happened then, in the late 1990s, when you left the office?

“It was nothing out of the ordinary. After two years in office, Kuchma turned from state-building to exclusively filling his own pockets. Of course, guided by this objective, the Kuchma group selected people who helped them to achieve it and allowed them to join the system. Their man in Luhansk was Viktor Tykhonov. Thus, my forced resignation came as a result of the fight for a place under the sun, that is, a place near Kuchma. I have never been a supporter of Kuchma, in fact, I opposed him. When he was president, I told him frankly what the real situation was when summoned to meetings that took place at the Presidential Administration. But then, I was still quite young, inexperienced and did not realize that he simply would not tolerate it. I thought that when people communicate, they do it in order to express sincere thoughts to each other, because it is concrete actions and concrete results that are at stake. As it turned out, one should have said only things pleasing the boss. Doing otherwise was dangerous. And I tell you that over time, nothing has changed. You are either with them or against them. But this practice has never resulted in good outcomes and will never do so. As a result, there have been many mistakes made.”

 It is believed that Oleksandr Yefremov, when he became chairman of the Luhansk Oblast State Administration in 1998, was actually a Kremlin appointee. That is, the Russian government guaranteed certain preferences to Kuchma, and the latter appointed pro-Kremlin people to govern eastern and southern regions of Ukraine who also worked to get their fiefs to vote for Kuchma.

“I would say it was much simpler. Here is an example. Yefremov contacted me in 1994 to help him buy Ukrkomunbank. Before my election as mayor, I was in business and was quite a wealthy man. I heeded Yefremov’s request and loaned him 250,000 dollars for the purchase of the said bank. The loan was subject to certain agreements, and of course, they had to settle their debt at some point. But they have never paid. At that time, Kuchma campaigned for the second term, and they formed the local campaign headquarters at the public’s expense. That is, it was the government’s illegal involvement in the election. Tykhonov was the first to get this offer, but being a cunning person who never had the desire to occupy official positions higher than the chairmanship of the oblast council, he refused the offer. He thus set his partner Yefremov up for the governorship. Everything in life is more prosaic than we imagine. Yefremov’s failure to repay his debt in a year, as per our agreement, shows his inner self, which eventually led him to his current position.”

“CERTAINLY, THE MURDER OF YEVHEN SHCHERBAN WAS POLITICAL IN NATURE, BECAUSE HE WAS ALREADY QUITE POWERFUL”

 In the mid-1990s, a number of people were murdered who had a great influence in the Donbas at the time. In particular, I mean Yevhen Shcherban. If he had survived and implemented his plans, might we have seen the Donbas going the other way?

“By the time, the Donetsk group was having a great time. They had their own party, they had legislators in the Verkhovna Rada, including Shcherban. Certainly, his murder was political in nature, because he was already quite powerful, not only in business, but also in politics. Moreover, he offered a meaningful alternative. Similarly, Yevhen Kushnariov died many years later, who was also a charismatic personality. They were killing competitors then, people who could have hampered the Kuchma regime’s plans and would not allow him to rule this country for long. I know it for sure, and I will never be convinced of the opposite. I personally knew Shcherban and Kushnariov, knew how capable they were and what their visions of the ongoing processes were. Now we have a lot of people who want to be called politicians, but are so blinkered and narrow-minded that they cannot see anything else. This is a major issue, because it is necessary to see these processes from every angle. We should not see ourselves on the sidelines of global processes and think that nothing affects us. We are part of these processes and must look deeply and widely, not narrowly and superficially. People’s limited perspectives are usually due to the fact that they live guided solely by changing needs of enrichment and use of public offices for their own sordid purposes. This is dangerous for everyone.”

“UKRAINIANS HAVE NO INFORMATION ABOUT THE REAL SITUATION IN THE STATE”

 You are involved with the project Public Eye which is actually a census of the resources available in this country. Do Ukrainians realize to any extent what they have at their disposal?

“We have a project called the Encyclopedia of Areas, which lays out part by part 675 administrative units that exist in Ukraine. We are making this information open, and everyone is welcome to contribute to this work. After all, if we have no authentic information about some things that are on our soil, it makes manipulating reality easier.

“They manipulate numbers and information. For example, let us look into the issue of gas. It has been discussed a lot, especially by politicians. But if you ask how much gas is consumed in this or that area, you will not find exact numbers anywhere. If the public knew how much gas is consumed by every area and every sector of the economy and population, it would get a fairly useful picture, enabling people to understand how they should use this resource. However, hiding this information is very convenient for those who are sitting on gas money flows and making fabulous fortunes out of it. We are told that Ukraine extracts 20 billion cubic meters of gas a year, or maybe 24 billion. Nobody knows what the actual figure is. The authorities deliberately withhold this information from us. And this concerns not only gas.

DURING THE MOST RECENT BOOK FAIR HELD AT THE MYSTETSKY ARSENAL, OLEKSII DANILOV BOUGHT DEN’S TRILOGY, INCLUDING “THE TRAP”; I, AN EYEWITNESS; AND CATASTROPHE AND TRIUMPH. THIS TIME, THE FORMER MAYOR OF LUHANSK RECEIVED HISTORY BOOK RETURN TO TSARHOROD AS A GIFT FROM OUR EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ON COMING TO THE NEWSPAPER’S OFFICE

“There is another simple example. Kyiv City’s total area is 83,558 hectares. But no one knows who owns the land. There is no institution which would know the owner of every square meter in the city. Moreover, this land is not registered with Kyiv’s local government, because there is no such register in the capital city. And it is not just Kyiv’s issue, because the nation as a whole has no land register either. When land is ownerless, it is a free for all. In this way, power holders grab it for themselves. They do it in a very strange manner as well, granting it to new owners by a city council resolution instead of changing the land register records. One should first record it all, inform Kyivites how much land the city owns and list every square meter, and only then go on.”

“IF THE VERKHOVNA RADA WERE A REAL PARLIAMENT, THEY WOULD HAVE DEFINED CLEARLY EVENTS IN CRIMEA AND THE DONBAS, SAYING THAT WE ARE AT WAR WITH RUSSIA”

 In this very way, our oligarchs emerged who actually grabbed what they initially did not own. How should the oligarchs behave at this critical juncture?

“Firstly, we have to decide who these oligarchs are, and only then propose specific actions in this regard. All oligarchs should be named, because it may well happen that someone who is called an oligarch and gets a lot of press actually stopped being one five years ago. Meanwhile, another individual who owns many factories and holds real power may be trying to avoid TV appearances and be totally absent from talk shows.

“Of course, they grabbed public property and did so based on the laws that they themselves initiated. Meanwhile, we have a lot of laws which are never observed in this country. I am totally sure that we have no real Verkhovna Rada. I believe that MP status is currently a fake, an attempt to deceive people. If the Verkhovna Rada were a real parliament, they would have defined clearly events in Crimea and the Donbas by passing a law saying that we are at war with Russia. That is all. But when they start talking about something they call an anti-terrorist operation (ATO), sit at the negotiating table with bandits whom Nadia Savchenko calls ‘legislators’ of unrecognized ‘republics’ – no real parliament may do so.”

“IF WE CANNOT LIBERATE THE DONBAS AT THIS MOMENT, IT MUST BE RECOGNIZED AS AN OCCUPIED AREA, AND WE MUST CUT ALL THE LINKS WITH IT”

 The oligarchy is associated with gas, because vast fortunes are made precisely in that line of business. Looking at the present, one can mention another resource as well, I mean coal. As much as 80 percent of Ukrainian anthracite reserves are now in the occupied districts of the Donbas. How should the government act, considering this point?

“Note, please, that since the first days of the war, no government figure has been addressing the population weekly asking people to reduce electricity consumption. Now we are told that we do not buy gas in Russia. In fact, we just do not pay for it directly, but we pay for the same gas nonetheless to European partners and get it through reverse flows. If we look by how much the transit flow of Russian gas to Europe increased, it corresponds exactly to our imports from Europe. Regarding coal, we brought 8.5 million tons of it from the occupied territories in 2015. I have a question: how and with whom do we settle these accounts? This is 17 billion hryvnias a year. Banks do not operate there, but the miners still receive their salaries. So, for those people who own regional gas companies, reducing consumption means reducing their fortunes. By the way, an ordinary citizen may not even bring a cabinet from the Donbas to the rest of Ukraine, while these dealers ship trainloads of coal. These individuals are known and they do not act without the consent of the Security Service of Ukraine, Ministry of Internal Affairs, and other agencies. We should do our best to develop alternative energy sources and end the corruption in the industry.”

Perhaps it is because of it that the government calls the war an ATO?

“I clearly said at one time that if we cannot liberate that area at this moment, it must be recognized as an occupied area, and we must cut all the links with it. At the same time, the nation must take care of all patriotic citizens. It can be done, we simply must turn our efforts to it.”