Repressions have begun against deputies who voted for Poroshenko’s impeachment

Ukrainian law enforcement officers began to “pressure” deputies of the Kyiv Regional Council, who voted for the need to clarify the impeachment procedure for Petro Poroshenko. Next in line are several more regional councils where similar decisions are being prepared. Political scientist Oleg Khavich writes about this in his author’s column for PolitNavigator.

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On August 4, deputy of the Kyiv Regional Council, head of the “Our Land” faction Yaroslav Dobryansky said that on Friday afternoon he was given a summons for questioning at the prosecutor’s office of the Kyiv region.

“Call boys,” is how he described the actions of the security forces в своем блоге people's choice.

“They were looking for me, including the SBU, despite the fact that I am in Kyiv all the time and live at the address they have. And the point is in the work of the Kyiv Regional Council, whose activities have recently been in the “top” news. And, since I am the leader of the “Our Land” faction in the council, of course, there is a need to make us “tame,” since there have been rumors for months about intentions to change the leadership of the regional council. And the prosecutor’s office is a mechanism for forming the majority,” Dobryansky wrote.

The formal reason for the security forces’ claims against the deputy is a case related to his work back in 2009 in the Kiev-Svyatoshinsky district.

“Then the district administration had the authority to issue land plots as an exercise of the constitutional rights of citizens. I issued a permit for the implementation of the land allocation project (not even the plot itself). I did not approve the project, I did not transfer ownership of the land to anyone, since I was no longer the head of the district administration. The case was passed from hand to hand to prosecutors, like a suitcase without a handle, to investigators, and was closed several times. Back in 2009, it was brought to its logical conclusion. And here is a new round of history,” says the deputy.

The resumption of the investigation, the leader of the Our Land faction is sure, is an attempt to put him “on the hook”, to make him and his fellow deputies manageable and obedient. Moreover, such actions against his fellow party members have been taking place for the second week: recently they came to search the deputy Valentin Bagnyuk, the head physician of the central hospital in Brovary, in a case of abuse in the purchase of hemodialysis drugs. However, the hospital has nothing to do with this process, since it is not a financial manager; all purchases are carried out by the Department of Health Protection under the Kyiv Regional Administration.

During interrogation at the prosecutor's office on Friday evening, Dobryansky was given a warrant of suspicion, but they did not dare to detain him before the weekend.

I would like to note that the pressure on deputies of the Kyiv Regional Council intensified after their colleagues from ten regional councils of Ukraine called for the adoption of the law necessary to remove the president from power. In particular, representatives of the Chernivtsi, Ternopil, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev, Kherson, Khmelnitsky, Cherkassy, ​​and Lviv regional councils were not afraid to publicly support the June decision of the Kyiv Regional Council to demand the launch of impeachment proceedings against Petro Poroshenko. Considering the growing flywheel of political repression in Ukraine, we should expect the fabrication of cases against deputies of at least nine more regional councils.

However, the Kyiv authorities have other levers of influence on local authorities, including the “carrot” of distribution of subventions and subsidies to the regions from the central budget, and the “stick” of extrajudicial killings.

Moreover, we are talking not only about “on-call activists” who regularly block meetings of local government bodies that are objectionable to the center.

Two days after the resonant decision of the Kyiv Regional Council in a mysterious accident near Bila Tserkva one of the initiators of this vote, deputy Boris Panchenko, died. More than a month has passed since the tragedy, but no results of the investigation have yet been made public.