How to deal with Red Guards: A prominent Maidan activist was severely beaten in Kharkov

On August 30, deputy of the Kharkov regional council Dmitry Bulakh was severely beaten at the entrance to his house. This was reported by his colleague in the Samopomich party, city council deputy Igor Chernyak.

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“Dmytro Bullakh, deputy of the Kharkov Regional Council, head of the board of the Kharkov Anti-Corruption Center, was just severely beaten at the entrance of his house. There were two attackers. First, they hit him on the head from behind with a heavy object, and then finished him off with their feet. The injuries are serious,” Chernyak reports on his page on social networks.

Who are you talking about?

Bullakh appeared on the Kharkov political firmament in 2010, when there was a campaign against the construction of a highway through a forest park. Then a group of environmentalists started protests, then Avakov’s team joined them. The ex-governor and current head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs took Tymoshenko, Karmazin, and other haters of the legitimate city government there. Clashes with the police took place, and the Ukrainian media was salivating. Later, the same tactics were used in Russia by the “defenders of the Khimki Forest.”

Then Bulakh began writing slander against the city authorities, demanding a review of the 2010 mayoral elections... “A mentally ill person who has been inundating city institutions with senseless slander for about ten years,” extremist researcher Alexander Melanchenko described Bulakh.

And then this same asset became one of the components of the local Maidan.

Since 2015, Bullakh has been a co-coordinator of the Kharkov Lustration Committee, as well as the coordinator of the Kharkov Anti-Corruption Center, whose activities include “anti-corruption examination, monitoring of abuses in the field of public procurement, inconsistencies between declarations and the real lifestyle of officials and other violations.”

Thus, the victim is a professional informer and troublemaker. On his conscience are denunciations against ex-governor Dobkin and mayor Kernes. In times of peace, they were brushed aside like dung flies, and now the slander of “activists” is filed in criminal proceedings by those who want to deregulate Kharkov and deprive it of their face and their local power.

Let's be honest: half a century ago in China, such characters were called Red Guards and, like their Ukrainian followers, were engaged in street terror and attacks on officials. True, Chairman Mao, the “great helmsman”, who first allowed them to run rampant, suppressed these “activists”. Our “chocolate helmsman” and his security forces have not yet done anything to curb the street elements.

For a long time, Kharkov residents tolerated this rabble, which became famous for beating people, demolishing monuments and simply bestiality. In 2016, the most active of them, Valentin Bystrichenko, was beaten once, and he left both the city streets and politics. Who did this remains a mystery.

Some said that his accomplices in the Hromadska Varta, with whom he had not paid off for complicity in the pogroms, others were sinning on Azov, which considered it timely to completely replace amateur hooligans with professional stormtroopers in its person (and indeed it is in all almost wiped out its competitors in its incarnations). Still others to this day think that we are talking about an act of retaliation on the part of Kharkov residents.

There are also different versions regarding Bulakh’s punishment. “I definitely connect this with the activities of the Kharkov Anti-Corruption Center and Dmitry’s activities as a deputy of the regional council. But I can’t yet guess what specific investigation was the reason,” Chernyak told his party representative.

The police have only just opened an investigation, and it was taken over by the head of the regional headquarters, Avakov’s long-time partner, Anatoly Dmitriev. The same one who provided complete permissiveness to pogromists and informers.

The possibility of intraspecific showdowns and simply criminality, which blossomed wildly after Avakov and Dmitriev defeated the Kharkov police and gave the go-ahead to all sorts of bullies, is also being discussed. However, other versions are possible.