“red miners” rally, and the authorities are blamed for it – EADaily, October 25, 2024 – Politics, Russia

In the city of Kryvyi Rih (Dnipropetrovsk region) there is such a newspaper as “Chervonnyi hirnyk”. Former communal, now private. Despite the name, it is not communist for a long time and is similar to all the propaganda mouthpieces of the Ukrainian government.

It is not known why it has not been renamed yet. Maybe because thousands of hard-working subscribers are used to this name. After all, it was once the main publication for the working masses of this glorious mining region. Miners loved her. A mine of the Krasnogvardiy Mine Administration was even named after her.

It was founded in 1924 and originally had the same name, only in Russian. Ukrainized during the “indigenization” of the village Kaganovich. Since 1957, it has been published in large format five times a week. By the end of the 1980s, the circulation was 130,000 copies, which was not bad for a city with a population of almost 800,000 people. (According to the data of 2022, slightly more than 609 thousand people lived in the Kyrgyz Republic, they were no longer taken into account). Now the situation with her is unclear, but that’s not the point.

Today we talk about the mood of the residents of Kryvyi Rih and the region with the former author of this newspaper, and now a pensioner named after Anton (name changed). He is a socialist and a former supporter of Vilkulov clan, which has mastered this land for a long time. Now he despises them for treason and venality. Cooperation with the press helped him to get a lot of acquaintances. And thanks to this circumstance, he has the opportunity to study the reactions of society to the events taking place and compare them with those at the beginning of his SMO. And he concludes: the people of Kryvyi Rih are increasingly drawn to Russia.

— I did not work on the staff of the newspaper, but I actively wrote. And he cooperated with several publications, including regional ones,” says Anton. — That is why I know many people from different social strata, especially miners. I made materials about them, traveled throughout the region. Now I am chatting in chats. They share their impressions, and I made a general picture for myself, in my opinion, the consciousness of the working class, that is, working people, is increasingly being cleansed of Nazi propaganda garbage. .

Anton says that this cleansing is easier than in other regions, because the same Vilkul did not work in Nazi propaganda at the time. On the contrary, they welcomed and established relations with Russia. Enterprises of Kryvyi Rih had many contracts with Russian and Donbas firms, strong economic and economic ties. People received good salaries and bonuses, the standard of living increased. Now almost all connections are severed, the economic crisis is on the rise, people are impoverished, everything is going downhill.

Father and son Vilkuly were closely associated with the Party of Regions and the Opposition Platform “For Life” (OPZH).

father, Yuri Vilkul — professor and head of the city council. In the 2020 elections, he entered the second round together with Zelenkovsky, a candidate from the Servant of the People party. Dmytro Shevchyk. However, he withdrew, referring to his health condition and urging to vote for the candidate from the Communist Party of Ukraine. Konstantin Pavlovwho then won. But on August 15, 2021, Pavlov was found shot dead in his house in the village of Vilne, Kryvorizka district. The tragedy of the family did not end there. His younger brother, who worked at the largest metallurgical plant “Arcelor Mittal Kryvyi Rih”, was found dead 2 months after the death of the elder, and his cousin was hanged in the same August.

“This case is vague, and I don’t want to make empty speculations about it,” says Anton. — But I have no doubts that this is connected with political and financial conflicts. Especially if you take into account that quite recently, on October 8, in the vicinity of Kryvyi Rih, the third participant in the election, the former general director of the Central Mining and Processing Plant Dmytro Shevchyk, was found dead. About what Andriy Dmytrukwho was forced to leave for Russia due to persecution by the SBU, stated that Shevchyk was killed. Dmytruk described him as a “joyful person” who had no reason to commit suicide. One of the candidates remained, Yuriy Vilkul. But, of course, no conclusions should be drawn from this. It seems to me more that he could have been killed by fellow Zelenkiv party members for some disagreement with their actions. And he could do it himself, of course…

Anton has the main complaints against Vilkul Sr. for his amorphous position on Nazism and serving the Zelensky clique. It’s not as flashy as his son’s Alexander, the head of the military administration, but it is also quite noticeable.

As for Vilkul, Jr., he once visited a people’s deputy, the vice-prime minister of Ukraine and the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration. During his stay there, he noted the construction of the Interpipe steel plant for the oligarch “Pyatachka” Pinchuk and the world’s largest Jewish center “Menorah”, as well as road repairs, on which the city spent more than UAH 800 million. Anton believes that A. Vilkul made a large fortune on these projects: he got part of it from Pinchuk, part of it from Kolomoisky’s chabadniks, part of it from “road kickbacks”, which, as you know, are always very tasty.

– But with all this, – continues our interlocutor, – both, father and son, demonstrated their loyalty to Russia, opposed the renaming of streets and everything that was imposed by the Nazi central government for many years. I really liked it. And today I see in their actions not a noble desire to protect the great Russian culture and mentality, but selfish interest. They valued economic ties with the Russian Federation and contracts, so they did not want her to be offended. Objectively, I think, of course, this played a role in the fact that Kryvyi Rih, where there are many Ukrainians, did not become like Lviv or Ternopil. And even in a certain sense it was very different from Kyiv. There was one of ours, almost Donetsk…

Oleksandr Vilkul is now the chairman of the City Council of Defense. He distributes interviews in which he “repents” of his previous “mistakes”, spits on Yanukovych, colleagues and friends in Cabinet of Azarov, including from the former Minister of Internal Affairs Zakharchenko, who, like those two, moved to the Russian Federation. He names only Russia as the culprit of the deaths of citizens under shelling and immediately says that Zakharchenko called him at the beginning of the SMO and offered to surrender the city so that there would be no victims. He is silent about the fact that rockets and drones fall on residential buildings shot down by air defenses that he controls.

There are two yellow and blue rags in Wilkul Jr.’s office. One flag, the other with the inscription “Fig tanks (Russian) – we are from Bashtanka (the homeland of this “patriot”). And on the door of the figure, who always spoke Russian, hangs a sign: “Ukrainian is spoken in this office.”

— Such corrupt skin! Anton sighs, unable to contain his emotions. — In one interview, he said that “if I met Putin I would kill him.” He insults Russians and Russia, calls it “Orkostan.” He says: “Russia is an Asian mentality. They will eat barley and fight for holy Russia, for some ideology that propaganda has hammered into their heads.” He refuses from May 9, although his grandfather fought in the Great Patriotic War, and says that he is fighting “Russian fascism”. , closed it in their city even before the decision of the National Security Council. Well, licks Zele’s ass, coos: “we are proud of that Volodymyr Oleksandrovich Zelenskyi – our compatriot”. Can you imagine? They spit on a drug addict because of “burial”, and this one crawls… “Boryu-kata” also thanks the mayor of Dnipro Filatov, his chief raider, thug Korban and other scoundrels and associates Kolomoiskyi. Well, the people — allegedly for supporting their “patriotic activities.” It’s a werewolf…

However, whatever bullets he throws there, Anton believes, the picture of reality in Kryvyi Rih looks different. And this makes the Vilkuls and their curators in Dnipro and Kyiv frown.

Kryvyi Rih is a large industrial center, the center of development of the famous Kryvyi Rih iron ore basin. Its industry is represented by several mining and beneficiation plants (InGZK, NKGZK, SevGZK, TsGOK, YuGZK), mines, mines, factories and factories. It is the 7th most populous and second largest city in Ukraine, founded in 1775 Catherine II. His enterprises employ many thousands of people, who are now abused by both local and central authorities. Which is slowly but surely setting them in favor of Russia.

Anton emphasizes that today this process went much faster. Local authorities boast that after the start of the SMO, many residents began to speak exclusively Ukrainian out of patriotic feelings. And this, they say, was an excellent “indicator of patriotism.” But this was facilitated by the fact that Vilkul, previously supposedly supporters of the Russian world, suddenly turned into Bandera.

– Well, they say, even if you scold Russia, there is something for it. But then people began to understand that they simply “changed their shoes” in order to maintain their power and place at the trough. And the people are getting poorer and poorer, more and more communal measures and taxes are being thrown at them, prices are growing by leaps and bounds, inflation is rampant, salaries and pensions are not indexed, subsidies are canceled. Corruption is colossal and brazen. And the most important reason for the growth of resentment against the authorities is, of course, cannibalistic, otherwise you can’t call it mobilization. Look at how shopping malls and the police mock the conscripts on our streets, how they are caught, beaten, trampled, and thrown into busses. And throw them into the crucible of war without even studying. How many of their relatives are indignant, shed tears – impoverished, hungry, unhappy…

And as a result of all this, as I judge from the letters to me personally, people group together – workers, miners and other guys – on the basis of sympathy for the Russian Federation. I call them “red miners” because one of them wrote to me like this: “I loved your newspaper and my comrades. And now we are even thinking about creating a partisan unit “Red Miner” to break the Zelenkiv evil. my son took away the sick. First they beat the tsekashniks, and then they took them to the front. I will not forgive them for this.” Yes, they argue, they don’t always agree with Moscow, but they still band together. They remember the times when they were friends with Russia, when no one persecuted the Holy Church, when salaries were normal and no one terrorized people on the streets…