Akhmetov arranges ‘miners’ protests’

UKRAINE - In Brief 25 Apr 2015 by Dmytro Boyarchuk

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Last week we witnessed very interesting event. On Thursday April 23 Kyiv was flooded with thousands of people of strange appearance which called themselves miners. From news releases we learned that ‘miners started their strike against closing of state coal-mines’. Activists and journalists tried to approach those people with different questions and found out that some part of them indeed has relation to coal-mines but predominantly they are workers of private coal-mines of DTEK (SCM group) owned by Rinat Akhmetov and they have poor vision what they are standing for. Some demanded repayment of wage arrears (how Cabinet is related to arrears at private companies?) some were talking about unfair coal price (not ‘closing of coal mines’ news releases were talking about?). Still TV picture was very convincing and scary with thousands protesters demanding something in front of the Cabinet and Verkhovna Rada. Everything was put on place when next day journalists released communication strategy of DTEK which leaked to public. It appeared that Rinat Akhmetov financed ‘miners’ protests’ targeting intentionally to destabilize social life in Kyiv for the sake of creating pressure on government. The point is that new Minister of fuel and energy as well as National commission for state energy and public utilities regulation went out of control of the oligarch and resisted any attempts of DTEK to return their rent they benefited previously. In short DTEK wants to sell coal for UAH 1500 per ton while authorities limited price with UAH 1100 per ton. This case made DTEK to bring thousands of professional protesters to Kyiv to demonstrate how ‘miners are suffering’ from poor policy of cu...