Today's issue: a REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK:
Alessandra visits the mansion of former President Yanukovych, now a museum to the corrupt past.
With corruption reforms part of Ukraine’s EU future, we visited this symbol of corruption that the country's soldiers are still fighting.
It is hard to imagine how Mezhyhirya, a national park outside of Kyiv complete with a beach, a zoo and a retro cars museum, was once a private residence.
But, after decades of being a national park, through corruption's sleight of hand, in 2002 it became President Viktor Yanukovych’s personal home.
Until ten years ago.
In late 2013, Yanukovych refused to sign a deal that would bring Ukraine closer to the EU, a decision which was made after a meeting between Putin and members of Yanukovych’s party.
The decision brought protesters out onto Kyiv’s Independence Square.
And the demonstration forced Yanukovych, an infamously corrupt politician who ten years before had sparked The Orange Revolution after rigging an election, to resign and flee Ukraine.
A decade later, taming corruption has become a key part of the roadmap for Ukraine’s accession to the EU – so it seemed appropriate for Alessanda to pay a visit to Yanukovych’s home, which now exists as something of a Ukrainian museum that tracks its corrupt past.
The park became a monument to Russian-backed criminality soon after the Maidan Revolution.
As soon as Yanukovych’s escape was made known, protesters entered his home, exposing the decadent life that had been built by looting of public funds: the golden toilets, the restaurant in a pirate ship.
One of the first videos to be uploaded shows a man giving a speech to the mass of protesters through the gate to Mezhyhirya and standing behind a sign:
“People! Do not destroy signs of decadence.”
This public undressing of Ukrainian corruption was made even more humiliating by the fact that Yanukovych’s paranoia had led him to install CCTV all around the property, thereby recording his entire escape.
The videos also ended up on Youtube and show vans being loaded with paintings and guns and, Alessandra's favorite detail, the small dog Yanukovych took with him.
The sudden escape left his residence as a moment frozen in time: billiards balls left on a pool table from an interrupted game, papers and books were left scattered across tables.
