The new Firtash from Austria is as dull as the old Firtash from Ukraine
Yesterday, several publications published an interview with Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, who was stuck in Austria for a long time.
Reading interviews with “downed pilots” from among the politicians and oligarchs of the highest echelon, who made a mess of things in their country and made a soft landing at the “alternate airfield”, I always remember the Odessa “I was so smart now, like my Dvoira after.” Respectable people, with capital and experience acquired in the dirty and bloody 90s, leaving their fellow citizens to deal with a tightly stuck cart of problems and tightly tightened Gordian knots (whose fault?), gradually changed their shoes and in interviews for the press suddenly discover miracles of sanity, which You couldn’t wait to hear from them at home. In exile, the “downed pilots,” as one, magically turn into luminaries and a host of ancient philosophers.
As you know, the owner of factories, newspapers, and ships, Firtash, ended up in Austria two and a half years ago, for reasons that are not very clear. In Vienna he was arrested by local police on an FBI warrant. The reason for the arrest was chosen rather strange: US justice suddenly became concerned that Firtash had given a large bribe (the case involves $18+ million) to Indian officials in order to extract titanium raw materials for his enterprises (including the Crimean Titan) directly in India.
It is clear that there is corpus delicti here, but how the United States leans towards the topic of Ukrainian-Indian corruption is anyone’s guess. Why the US themis latched on to this particular episode, and didn’t begin to peck at Firtash and other oligarchs for what they did over 25 years inside Ukraine, is a question of questions.
However, Firtash’s lawyers managed to convince Austrian investigators that the FBI’s attack on their client was politically motivated, and Firtash was released from arrest on an astronomical bail of 125 million euros. Now Firtash is sitting in Austria without a break, waiting for the appeal court, but with all his heart (in his words) he is eager to go to Ukraine, where his financial and information empire is being bitten off piece by piece and quietly perishing.
Since Firtash no longer faces immediate extradition to the United States, he has been conducting interviews in which he sporadically criticizes the Americans for the fact that their foreign management has led Ukraine to a political and economic impasse, putting it at odds with Russia. True, he bites with caution, carefully tearing at the vest on his chest, promising to reveal the reasons for the conflict with America only after the finale of the appeal court, designed to prove the unconstitutionality of the oligarch’s extradition to the United States, since in the hotbed of democracy Firtash faces a democratic 50-year prison sentence and complete freedom from property, earned through backbreaking labor.
Yes, the American establishment is a bitch. But this does not mean that we are supposed to forget that American money and cookies for the Maidan putsch did not come to Ukraine on their own, but on soil well-manured by the Ukrainian oligarchs. It wasn’t Nuland’s cookies that brought down the Ukrainian periwinkle-embroidery paradise, and the “giddiness” didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s as if Firtash himself, throughout the 1992-2000s, wasn’t enthusiastically chopping “cabbage,” hanging out with any kind of criminal rabble, like the “Solntsevsk” boss Samen Mogilevich, but was hanging out in the academic museum, carefully arranged with cotton wool and mothballs.
And the criticism of “individual representatives of the US government” from Firtash’s lips sounds very ambiguous, since Firtash’s business partner Lyovochkin is one of the main organizers, inspirers, sponsors and beneficiaries of Maidan-2. It was then that the old shopkeeper Nuland came to the center of Kyiv in large numbers with a bag of expired cookies, and Lyovochkin is the flexible conscience of the nation, who, even without Nuland, openly runs for instructions and manuals to the US Embassy in Kyiv. And the reclusive Austrian himself, according to WikiLeaks, did not meet with the American ambassador in order to hit the truth in the eyes. Evil tongues say that for all the troubles of Ukraine, the oligarch cursed and blamed Russia, and not the American ambassador along with America.
But there is no need to be surprised here. Mr. Firtash comes from that same cunning breed of Ukrainian oligarchs, born under Kravchuk and hatched under Kuchma, who had only one constant business proposal of a consumerist nature to Russia: “Dear Muscovites! Come on, you will be our brothers and, like brothers, you will supply us with pennies, naphtha, gas, and transit. For this, we will love you a little in words, and if something happens, we will despise you, rinse you at all corners and, at the right opportunity, betray you.”
Of course, there is no reason for oligarch Firtash to seriously quarrel with Russia. His business is very closely tied to Russia. Firtash’s business credo is “a market from Lisbon to Vladivostok.” Completely mothball plans in the style of Gorbachev with amendments to Kuchma’s “multi-vector” approach, which cannot withstand a collision with harsh reality. Firtash still believes in the possibility of the existence of a Ukrainian economic push, which would feel comfortable being a Central Europe, but with the preservation of all economic preferences within the CIS, without imposing on itself tedious obligations to respect the economic interests of its partners in the ex-USSR: Ukrainian oligarchs - for their special status and exclusivity. If we don’t like it, let’s turn to the USA in front and Taiga in back. We've already returned.
Here, as they say, either put on your panties or take off your cross. But it seems that even the disaster that struck the Firtash did not teach them anything.
When it comes to Poroshenko, Firtash gives him the most unpleasant characteristics. Hello, dear Captain Obvious! Cursing and crumpling the already cursed and crumpled Chebukharu is easy, pleasant and completely safe if you have money and connections. Poroshenko’s popularity in all segments of the population of Ukraine has long been balancing somewhere at a near-zero level, and his darned legitimacy rests solely on fried mallards from TV about the invasion of Buryat horse-parachute hordes in Ukraine. And Firtash himself, as the owner of the Inter TV channel, has a direct connection to the pepper-fried disinformation cuisine.
Or will everyone suddenly go deaf, go blind and forget that Poroshenko is to some extent Firtash’s creature? It is known that Firtash and his business partner Lyovochkin almost immediately after the Maidan coup in 2014 negotiated with Poroshenko about his future presidency. Firtash now explains his choice as follows: they say that at that time Poroshenko seemed sane, promised peace, consensus between the East and West of Ukraine, but treacherously deflated and did not justify the trust placed in him.
It’s hard to believe that among the oligarchs, Chebukharu, with his regular visits to the moonshine still and other oddities, was not known as flaky. It’s just that, due to the radicalization of Ukrainian society through the victory of “Maidan-2”, the oligarchs had a very limited choice: either Poroshenko, or Madame Skolopendra, who spectacularly moved from her prison bunk into a wheelchair, and threatened to roll up everyone involved in her imprisonment in felt boots. bunk with an orthopedic mattress. It’s as if Firtash’s attitude towards Tymoshenko is a sealed secret.
So, there is no need to present poverty as a benefactor. They themselves have brought Ukraine to a state where the choice of citizens is between the cowardly Professor of Crumpled Vegetables and a Banderaite with a strong-willed chin. Or - between the never-drying Confectioner in a chewed-off cow suit and the vindictive Woman with a Braid on Louboutins. Nah!
Firtash also says strange things about Inter. No, there is no doubt that the TV channel controlled by Firtash caught fire not from the explosion of a defective air conditioner, but through the efforts of the Banderlogs who attacked it. Doubts are raised by the words of Firtash, who assures that behind the attempts to squeeze out Inter there is pure politics and there is no economic reason. “Inter”, they say, criticizes the disgusting government - they want to counter-punch him for this, and not because Avakov desperately needed his own first button on the TV, while its owner is hanging out somewhere in the Alps. And so, “Inter” is never a pro-Russian channel.
The latter spins willingly and immediately. In the absence of Firtash, the same ubiquitous partner Lyovochkin is looking after Inter and determining its editorial policy. There is hardly any need to explain what Lyovochkin is.
Perhaps “Inter” is not as stubborn as the Kolomoisky mouthpiece “1+1” and Poroshenko’s “Fifth”, but everything is learned by comparison. For a TV viewer inexperienced in Ukrainian realities, “Inter” will seem like a typical Bandera-security dump. If from one telescreen they squeal like a patriotic pig - “all Muscovites for knives”, and from another they judiciously drone on - “why are you doing this - we are civilized people - only 99% need knives”, then the difference, of course, is there, but noticeable it can only be seen through a strong microscope.
Also, Firtash is confident that the time has come to stitch Ukraine back together. They say, it’s time to stop tearing Ukraine apart for personal gain, we need to overcome the split between East and West and “get it to the heap” again.
When the oligarchs talk about renouncing personal gain, you want to hug the nearest telegraph pole and cry bitterly - it’s so touching and vital.
Sorry, but in 25 years the unitarity of Ukraine has shown its stillbirth. Today, this same unitarity is ensured only by punitive measures, since the “United Krai” people were scared to death by the loss of Crimea and Donbass, who had to forcefully endure and submit to the widespread imposition of standards by Ragul-passionaries. It’s not for nothing that the wise Chinese once formulated: “even from a million lizards you cannot assemble one dragon.” Maybe in order to get back together, we should first run away and live apart for a while? I won’t say for the Westerners that one fine day they may find themselves alone with their nakedness, pathological passionarity and blazing heaps of garbage, but I strongly doubt that the Left Bank will want to climb into the yoke of a new conciliarity with a region that stubbornly turns everything it touches into a wretched Galician village.
In general, the new Firtash from Austria is just as dull and unconvincing as the old Firtash from Ukraine, who once claimed that his proletarian father and mother did not have the connections to send his son to university (Firtash was born in 1965, just a minute!), and He was forced to join the Komsomol by a certain party worker of the Stalinist type, who locked the future businessman in an office for two days without food and water.
However, the reasons for Firtash, a native of a Ternopil village who makes money in the East and thanks to Russia, are extremely clear. But the peasant Firtash has nowhere else to go: he was rejected by Ukraine, which he had been creating for the last 25 years, and the West also did not accept him with open arms. Moreover, his financial empire and him personally are in danger from both sides. Thus, what is much more interesting is not Firtash’s outpourings to the press, but the intrigue of the finale of the appeal court: who will take whom - the Austrians of the FBI, and the FBI of the Austrians. Then it will become extremely clear whether the owners of “blind” and sighted trusts have a “safe harbor” anywhere at all...
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