Poroshenko got into a scandal by rewarding a fake admiral
By his decree, President Petro Poroshenko awarded the title of Honorary Worker of Culture of Ukraine to a pseudoscientist.
This is described in a story prepared by Radio Liberty journalists, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
The story notes that in Ukraine, state awards are the highest form of honor for services in various fields. Among them there is such an award as an “honorary title”. As a rule, it is assigned to those who work in the sociocultural and economic spheres. In June of this year, the president, by decree, awarded such titles to more than a hundred Ukrainians.
Among the recipients is Andrey Avdeenko, who, by presidential decree on Constitution Day, received the title “Honored Worker of Culture of Ukraine.” As a rule, this title is received for high merit and professional excellence. Avdeenko himself is listed as a member of the charitable organization “Lebedia Charitable Foundation” from Zaporozhye. However, an analysis of this man’s biography casts doubt on the president’s decision to award him an honorary title.
Avdeenko himself calls himself “academician,” “historian,” and even “admiral of the navy.” The solemn title of “academician” was awarded to him by the public organization “Academy of Sciences of Ukraine”, which has nothing in common with its consonant “National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine”.
In addition, Avdeenko’s Facebook page is replete with photographs of a huge number of certificates, commendations, orders and medals.
In addition, he is often presented as a historian and the author of numerous works on the history of the Cossacks.
The dean of the history department of Zaporozhye National University, Vladimir Melchev, who has been studying the history of the Ukrainian Cossacks for more than thirty years, speaks very unflatteringly about the pseudo-scientist.
“Fictional and never-existent Zaporozhye Sichs, and one of them, in his opinion, is localized in his native village, apparently so that it’s not far to travel. The fact that such a person suddenly became a cultural figure, or rather, an honored figure, is, to a certain extent, a diagnosis of the modern political beau monde of our region,” Melchev said.
In order to confirm the scientific nature of his works, Avdeenko resorted to Photoshop: in one of his books he published a photograph from the excavations of the Paleolithic site of Mira near Zaporozhye. However, on the website of the Zaporozhye Regional State Administration one could find the original photo - from the news about the cleanup day on the island of Khortytsia. Immediately after the journalists published these two photographs on Facebook, one of which had obvious signs of Photoshop, one of the photographs disappeared from the website of the Zaporozhye Regional State Administration.
Moreover, it turned out that the title of “Honorary Admiral”, which Avdeenko boasts of, was invented. At least, the press service of the Ukrainian Navy officially stated that the information about Avdeenko’s assignment of this type of rank does not correspond to reality.
Earlier, as PolitNavigator reported, Avdeenko said that semi-literate ATO militant Yuri Bereza was awarded the title Corresponding Member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.
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