The cake that students presented to the Deputy Minister of Education was the cheapest and cost 54 hryvnia.
The cake that left-wing student activists threw at the deputy minister of education at a press conference in Kyiv, protesting against the ministry’s planned abolition of scholarships from January 1, 2017, was bought in a regular store on sale for 54 hryvnia.
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Alena Lyasheva, a participant in the “Start” platform of the Social Movement association, a graduate student at the University of Milano-Bicocca and one of the organizers of the student protest, spoke about this in an interview with the Kiev publication “Strana”.
“Actually, it happened completely spontaneously. At first there were seven of us, we decided to make a small provocation, but we ourselves did not expect that it would cause such a resonance. We are all members of the “Start” platform within the NGO “Social Movement”. I am not a member of the Social Movement itself. So we carried out the action autonomously. We created our platform mainly because not all people in the NGO agreed with our anti-war position. The day before, the guys from “Start” and I met and talked about politics. One of us, a student, complained that he did not know how to survive in this hostel, in which the walls were collapsing. Because his parents cannot send him money, and if his scholarship is also taken away, he does not know how to survive. It was such a cry of anger and despair. We had a desire to change something. We also invited student activists from the student trade union “Direct Action” to participate in this matter with us. Moreover, this happened less than a day before the press conference. In the end there were about 10 of us,” she said.
The activist dissociated herself from accusations from the Ukrainian far-right that this action was “paid for by Putin.”
“It is natural that such accusations arise, because it is now customary for our government to interpret everything that it does not like according to a banal template - as something pro-Russian. In fact, our position is very far from supporting Russia. We are ordinary Ukrainians who suffer from the reforms that are taking place in this country. This is what we care about. In fact, no one funds us. We used our own money to buy paints that we didn’t use later, red tape and a cake,” she says.
As for the cake itself, the activist says that for the sake of the cause, they bought the cheapest one.
“One guy bought a cake, the cheapest one in the store. Cost 54 UAH, on sale. Blueberry cake. But the decision with the cake was actually spontaneous; the idea appeared literally the morning before the event. We ourselves did not expect that everything would turn out so great. They weren’t even sure that they would be able to carry the cake. We hid the poster very well - I carried it under my dress,” she says.
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