Ukraine in Arabic | Klitschko’s First Moment of Shame
Kiev\Ukraine in Arabic\Vitaliy Klitschko has not even spent a week as mayor, but he has already discredited himself. He appointed as his chief advisor, or head of his advisors group, a certain Ihor Nikonov.
Sergiy Lashchenko wrote on 10June 2014 " Klitschko’s First Moment of Shame" on Ukrayinska Pravda,Vitaliy Klitschko has not even spent a week as mayor, but he has already discredited himself. He appointed as his chief advisor, or head of his advisors group, a certain Ihor Nikonov.
This person is not familiar to ordinary readers. I’ll explain: he is one of the most aggressive developers in Kyiv, someone who directly says that he dreams of building a skyscraper in Kyiv that he saw in New York some time ago.
Moreover, Nikonov is a partner of Dmitriy Firtash and Vagif Akiev and the godfather and nearest neighbor to Serhiy Lyovochkin. The Klitschko brothers got acquainted with Nikonov since he worked together with Ihor Bakay and the brothers were under the roof of the gas oligarch.
As a Kyivan, I have a private bone to pick with Nikonov because I will never forgive him the distortion of my native city.
Namely, Nikonov is the developer of the absolutely disgust house, by its façade, at Slava Square. Kyiv’s developers are incapable of involving the architects of Jean Nouvel’s and Herzog & de Meuron’s level but they are guided by the fever of development and they deprive this city of esthetics by developing it with multi-storey houses in the pursuit of every square meter that can be easily transformed into cash.
This is Nikonov’s monster on the photo from the left near one more monstrous multi-storey house at Hrushevskiy 9-a (see photo in original – ed).
The house at Slava Square is called Diamond Hill. It was built on the site of a kindergarten. It was planned at first as a 9 storey building but 21 were built because every new storey is tens of millions dollars from the apartments sold.
Nobody was interested that this prosthesis would be seen from every point on the left bank will remain as a reminder of the pseudo-elite who took the reins in the city and its acres at the edge of the millennium.
“I would achieve nothing without ties in the US. I would be the owner of 3 gas stations as a maximum,” Nikonov confessed in his interview with Forbes. Now his “ties” are governing Kyiv and his dream of a New York skyscraper may come true.
It is hard to be envious of the great boxer’s situation. He has not got the slightest notion of how to govern the city. And he will not manage to change the city for the year and half that is left to the next local elections and he will not be able to make someone guilty for the failure.
The total majority of UDAR at the Kyiv Council would become his curse. He will be personally responsible for the “Kyiv dream” failure.
Klitschko thought that Kyiv could be the starting point to his rise. In fact, it may be an end of his political career. And he’s been moving in that direction.
The original text with photos is on Ukrayinska Pravda at