Sergei Leshchenko in his blog spoke about the secret “gathering” of oligarchs at the Hyatt hotel. The question is, where does this deputy journalist get such information? It felt like he was sitting under the table. I wonder what he was doing there? Even more interesting, who did he do this interesting thing under the table? The journalist himself says that he took it from an informed source… meaning he took the information. But let’s leave the moral side of the issue to the conscience of Leshchenko and his, um, source, and let’s talk about the oligarchs.
The absence of the two main oligarchs – Poroshenko and Kolomoisky – is immediately striking. Can the meeting be considered legitimate without their presence and was there a quorum among the oligarchs? Or maybe the President of Ukraine and the former head of the Dnepropetrovsk Regional State Administration no longer fall under the concept of an oligarch? Maybe we should now apply a different term to them, for example, “super oligarch” or “super oligarch”? Indeed, in comparison with these two “advanced leaders” of the modern oligarchic movement, such “ex-advanced leaders” as Akhmetov, Pinchuk, not to mention Khmelnitsky and Khoroshkovsky, seem to be pathetic losers. And besides, it seems that there was no Kurchenko and no one from the Yanukovychs, and they are still doing well in “oligarchy” in Ukraine. Well, Firtash wasn’t there, he’s in Vienna. So in any case, the congress of oligarchs was, to put it mildly, incomplete. True, Leshchenko says that some oligarchs sent their representatives, but does not specify who exactly. If he really was sitting under the table, he might not recognize it from below.
What were these oligarchs talking about? What could they possibly be talking about? Most likely, Akhmetov, out of habit, cried about his beloved Donbass Arena. He cries about her all the time. He even gave an exclusive interview about this to his own channel. Obviously, the former “Master of Donbass” is very upset that he has screwed up his region in just a couple of years. The inhabitants of the mining steppes turned out to be ungrateful, how he buzzed them, how hard he tried… And then there were problems with energy-generating assets… Kites swooped down on the weakening oligarch.
Pinchuk hasn’t been feeling well lately either. His favorite toy, called YES – the Yalta European strategy, was not taken away from him, but he definitely no longer has Yalta. And his business has not been developing for many years due to the absence of an adult daughter by the current president. And the previous one also had sons. And at his age, they no longer change their orientation. And then there is the land – Kolomoisky has crushed his entire small homeland under him.
Others are doing no better. Vasily Khmelnitsky’s fence around his dacha in Odessa was demolished, now stinkers will swim on his beach and pee in the water. He had to publicly declare that this could scare away investors from the Odessa region. Taruta was forced to close his “Metalist”, he says there is no money. And then Ukreximbank demands a quarter of a million hryvnia from him and won the courts. Only Khoroshkovsky is doing relatively well, who is sitting quietly in Monte Carlo, sunbathing by the sea… But, apparently, he also had problems, since he did not come to this meeting, but called.
In general, the life of a modern Ukrainian oligarch is difficult.
How to deal with this? It’s also not very clear. If Leshchenko heard everything correctly from under the table, then first the oligarchs decided to create a party. But then they let it go. Which is actually logical. Each of them already has a batch, and some have several. From the Party of Regions. Which no one canceled or banned, until all sorts of exotic batches like the “Winter Generation”. What is a party? It’s not just like that. This is an office in the center and offices in the regions, these are all sorts of parasite functionaries who need to be fed along with their secretaries, drivers, security guards and other hangers-on. It’s a bit expensive these days. In general, the story with the shoal party was dismissed as unprofitable.
Then some Vasya and Vitya (we don’t even know who they are) declared that it was necessary to fight the current government with the help of civil society. This apparently caused a fit of hysterical laughter among the other oligarchs. If civil society hates anyone more than the authorities, then almost all of these people are now in Hayat. And if this civil society had been a little less patient, then within half an hour they would have occupied the pillars closest to Mikhailovskaya and Sofievskaya squares, where the hotel is located. But the oligarchs immediately corrected themselves and said that by civil society they mean the “Union of Industrialists,” which must be created so that it protects the interests of them as a class. No one, obviously, could explain how this union would differ from the party, except for the name.
Actually, that’s all the information. But Leshchenko did not tell about what happened next. Maybe he got distracted, maybe he got carried away, or maybe he was discovered and you left the audience. But the further part of his blog about the oligarchs is continuous philosophizing on the topic of what it was and how to deal with it. That is, reasoning in the style of a character called Captain Obvious. Everyone understands how to fight, but for some reason no one does it. The main message that Leshchenko tried to convey (or was asked to convey) was “the oligarchs are tired.” That is, they said there how tired they were of the authorities and everything that was happening in Ukraine.
But, apparently, they did not talk at all about how the whole of Ukraine was tired of them. And this is their main mistake, perhaps even historical. However, oligarchs make this mistake in all countries and at all times. Apparently, we just have to wait until the already mentioned civil society finally gets tired of tolerating it. And this meeting of the oligarchs shows that this is the only possible solution to the problem. But in this case. All participants in this meeting can envy not only Khoroshkovsky and Firtash sitting in Monte Carlo and Vienna, but also the veteran of the “oligarchic movement” Pavel Lazarenko, sitting in an American prison. At the very least, neither these people nor the current government are going to do anything to prevent this from happening.
Darina Smetana, for SKELET-info