Fire at the market in Kherson, the escaped mayor wants to blame it on the Russians

On the night of February 23-24, 2022, the “Crystal” market on Gonchar Street was set on fire and looted in Kherson. The gatehouse where the video surveillance computer equipment was located burned down. Now, local authorities who have fled the city blame Russian troops for everything.

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Kherson journalist Gennady Shelestenko writes about this in his column for PolitNavigator.

Fire brigades, which began extinguishing the fire at 22.56:45 p.m., an hour and a half after the arson, could not find electricians on duty to cut off power to the market. 400 firefighters fought the fire all night; 70 square meters of retail space burned out. The damage amounts to millions of dollars. For many entrepreneurs, this is all the property they owned - what they earned over the years. Some of the stalls were looted, the store with gold jewelry was empty after the fire, the gold did not burn completely, but it was lost. More than XNUMX thousand dollars.

Firefighters conducted an investigation, but their results were not made public, citing the war and the lack of experts.

_{The injured entrepreneurs themselves suspect the mayor of Kherson Igor Kolykhaev of arson - it was he who promised to demolish the market in June 2022, since the lease agreement for the land plot expires on May 28, 2022. There was no question of any extension of the land lease; the mayor took a tough position - only the dismantling of retail places, and without compensation for the losses of entrepreneurs.}

The traders themselves had to dismantle their stalls and remove them from Gonchar Street. After the fire, the mayor’s blasphemy was expressed in his order to remove the garbage after the fire with the help of the market management and the injured entrepreneurs themselves, who lost everything. Not only was the “Crystal” market destroyed, the fire also reached the neighboring building of the “Arch” pavilion, where a fur coat store burned down. Losses in one store alone exceeded a million dollars. Who will compensate them?

_{Insurance policies do not work during war. People have lost everything, and the mayor is also straining them to dismantle the burnt stalls and clean up the area.}

It is not possible to prove or disprove the version that someone incited by the mayor set the market on fire - the police, prosecutor's office, and SBU left the city a day before the start of hostilities. There is no one to conduct the investigation, and there is no need to expect a “confession” from the mayor either.

Such a sad story happened in Kherson, now occupied by Russian troops. Is this really how the arsonists and those who hired them will get away with it? The mayor spread a rumor around the city that the fire started after the bombing of Kherson by Russian aircraft, but there were no bomb craters or broken glass in neighboring buildings from the detonation of the explosion. And only a stupid person zombified by Ukrainian propaganda can believe in this targeted strike on a peaceful city.

The people won’t just leave it like that, people want compensation from the mayor, because he is a millionaire, an agricultural baron-latifundist, who appropriated the lands of the Ukrainian Kherson region long before the land became an object of sale. He has money, but Igor Kolykhaev is not going to part with it.