The owner of the famous Kyivian fast food chain Puzata Khata, Viacheslav Kostiantynivskyi, is selling his Rolls-Royce to help the wounded in the war in eastern Ukraine. Viacheslav is a partner in business with his brother Oleksandr. In 2013, Focus magazine estimated the Kostiantynivskyi wealth at US $355m and placed them in the 44th place in the ranking of the richest people in Ukraine. He discussed his motives with the Belarusian edition of Radio Svoboda.
You have been to the Donbas. Have you seen for yourself what is taking place? Where did this conflict come from?
The entire situation has been created artificially. For example, I’m a Russian-speaking Kyivite. Nobody on Maidan ever blamed me for speaking Russian. A child understands that the Russian-speaking population was never threatened. All this hysteria has been created artificially. It’s obvious that all these (military) groupings are being financed by somebody and supplied with weapons. This is useful for someone.
We in Belarus find it painful to observe what is happening in Ukraine, but, of course, we apply it to our own situation. Our business people, especially from big business, do not dare support people who are eager for change. In your view, what must be done to change that?
I think that maybe people are doing this less openly in Belarus. Businesses cannot refuse to support this, since business development requires an entirely different relationship between business and the state. In Ukraine, especially during the recent Maidan, this was the breaking point. In other words, (the situation) became intolerable. The country was going nowhere, and business understood this most of all. It is degrading to be robbed openly. Corruption exists in all countries — somewhere more, somewhere less. But this kind of open robbery, the threats and the humiliation of people and businesses never existed in Ukraine before as it did under Yanukovych. This is why it resulted in more massive protests and strong support from business. There was nowhere else to go.
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Aug 1, about 101 people, including 21 observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), 51 Dutch and 21 Australian police and investigators arrived at the site of the MH17 crash. This comes after two weeks of negotiations with the pro-Russian groups who are in control of the areas where the crash occurred. More than a dozen vehicles and began trawling the fields around the crash site for human remains, debris and evidence.
A number of Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in eastern Ukraine, according to the country’s military as of 2 Aug 2014. Deadly attacks have occurred near Shakhtarsk, roughly 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the MH17 crash site.
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