Ukraine’s future is unclear in Viktor Yanukovich’s grimy hometown
In Yenakyivo, eastern Ukraine, preparations for Easter were gaining pace. At the Orthodox Church of the Holy Virgin, ladies swept the yard outside and dusted off the icons, under the quiet gaze of Father Andrei, a local man who has been priest here for a decade.
Was he expecting Yenakyivo’s most famous son to come home for Easter Sunday?
Father Andrei’s eyes widened, his lips locked tight and his face flushed at the very question; words failed him but the grave shaking of his head was categorical.
Viktor Yanukovich was an infrequent visitor to his hometown during a four-year presidency that ended in February, when he fled to Russia after months of rallies culminated in scores of protesters being shot dead in Kyiv, allegedly upon his orders.
Perhaps he didn’t like to recall his ragged and violent early years in soot-streaked Yenakyivo, which last Saturday was covered by gritty, eye-stinging smoke from a massive metal plant that is only a short walk from the town centre.
Born here in 1950 to a metalworker and a nurse, Yanukovich was jailed for robbery when he was 17 and for assault three years later.
Ex-convict protégé
The convictions were wiped from the record in 1978 on the urging of Georgi Beregovoi, a former cosmonaut and deputy of the USSR’s Supreme Soviet who, for reasons still unclear, made the young ex-convict his protégé.
Yanukovich prospered under the wing of Beregovoi, an influential figure in Donetsk province, and moved swiftly through the ranks of local business and politics. In 1997, Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma appointed him governor of the region, and in 2002 named him prime minister.
Many credit Yanukovich’s rise to his relationship with Rinat Akhmetov, a Donetsk miner’s son who is now Ukraine’s richest oligarch and financier of the Regions Party that ruled under Yanukovich.
The party has crumbled since Ukraine’s revolution, but its diehard deputies still claim to defend the interests of Russophone eastern areas, and are the main political voices calling for sweeping powers to be devolved from Kyiv to the regions.
Some are accused of fomenting unrest in the east and inciting separatism, and pro-government figures allege that many of Yanukovich’s old allies would rather split the country than lose wealth and influence and face possible corruption charges.
Akhmetov seems to be hedging his bets, calling for a peaceful end to Ukraine’s crisis but giving no clear support to the pro-EU government nor condemning Moscow’s annexation of Crimea or role in destabilising the east.