While international media attention was focused on the Ukrainian elections taking place on September 30th the Kyiv city council quietly met and gave away thousands of hectares of land in and around the capital. The conditions of the meeting were kept very secret; the members of the council that met went as far as to turn off the television cameras that, by law, are supposed to record all city council meetings.
It took but five hours for Kyiv City Council deputies from President Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine faction and the bloc of Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky to give away what Korrespondent calculated to be more than 300 plots of land totaling between 2,000 and 3,000 hectares – the equivalent of around 3 percent of the capital’s territory.
So far the reaction in the Ukrainian press has been limited due to the fact that national political coalitions are being formed and takes up most of the attention of the Ukrainian public. It is telling that only a week after the story broke in the Russian language on-line newspaper korrespondent.net, it is now buried and forgotten by most Ukrainian media outlets.
Published Date: October 24, 2007