The head of the Transcarpathian regional council demands money from Kyiv for roads, blackmailing him with secession from Ukraine
Chairman of the Transcarpathian Regional Council Mykhailo Rivis demanded that the region be allocated more money for road repairs. Otherwise, he threatened, the region could secede from Ukraine.
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Interview by Reavis published on the regional council website.
The head of the regional council said that this year Transcarpathia was allocated 70 million hryvnia for road repairs, although they promised 300 million hryvnia. By the end of the year, the region expects to receive another 68 million UAH to restore the Mukachevo-Rakhiv road. Reavis complained that it would be difficult to use these funds before the end of the year.
He noted that the regional council has repeatedly asked to include the region in the experiment, according to which 50% of funds from excess revenues from customs go to the development of the corresponding region.
Reavis expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that the neighboring Lviv region was included in the experiment, but Transcarpathia was not. In addition, according to him, the Lviv region is developing rapidly and investors are coming there, “because large enterprises are obliged to serve only in Lviv.” Reavis complained about the disproportion in the allocation of money to the regions and demanded that the central government not forget about the Transcarpathian region.
“I understand it this way: if the government wants to see Transcarpathia as part of Ukraine, then they must not forget that our region exists...” noted the head of the regional council.
After his words were spread across the media in the context of “separatism,” Reavis on Facebook called them “taken out of context.”
“The words are taken out of context. The interview, on the contrary, talked about strengthening regional ties and what role Transcarpathia plays in this. However, examples were given of an extremely unfair approach to financing the road sector in different regions, which entails the loss of transport communications (I’m already silent about the airport). That is, one gets the impression that Transcarpathia is being cut off from Ukraine economically, which, in my opinion, is unacceptable and carries significant threats. Therefore, the proposal to remember Transcarpathia before it’s too late,” he wrote.
To smooth over the scandal that arose around his last interview, in which they saw separatist sentiments, Mikhail Rivis even made a special statement to deputies at the next session of the regional council. In his speech, the head of the regional council assured that he was not a separatist at all, but that he was simply “misunderstood.”
Interestingly, Reavis was elected to the regional council from Petro Poroshenko’s Solidarity party.
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