You're reading: Mother Nature defeats Kyiv’s public officials

Public officials simply don't resign in Ukraine, no matter how much they screw up.

Not even if the official in question is
the acting mayor of the nation’s capital who failed to prepare for the worst
snowfall in recorded history, despite numerous advance warnings.

Not even if the official in question was
stranded in Poland during the worst of the disaster.

Not even if the press service of the
official in question used a Photoshopped picture from Moscow to illustrate how
Kyiv’s authorities cleared snow during the weekend.

On March 25, four days after Mother
Nature struck with what would be 50 inches of snow blown by wind gusts of up to
28.8 kilometers per hour, Kyiv City Administrator Olexander Popov came out with
an apology of sorts.

“Kyivans, don’t take offense. An
emergency is our common problem, that’s why there are inconveniences, and I, as
head of the executive power, apologize,” he told Ukrainain news agency.

The “inconveniences” Popov referred to
included massive traffic jams over the weekend, sometimes stretching as far as
80 kilometers out of the city and paralyzed city transport. Many city roads
weren’t plowed even once in three days. There were empty shelves in some shops
because supplies were interrupted. Angry and desperate citizens quickly came to
the realization that they would have to face the disaster on their own.

“Of course, it’s a failure and somebody
must bear the responsibility,” political scientist Olexiy Haran said. “But what
may follow will be just blowing off steam. Somebody may resign, perhaps even
Popov. I imagine that [President Viktor] Yanukovych can dismiss him loudly. But
it would be just showing off, playing the game of good czar and bad servants.
The problem is not in Popov. The whole system is rotten and corrupted.”

Speaking to Ukrainian 1+1 TV channel on
March 24, Popov blamed most of the problems on an unexpectedly strong snowfall
on March 22 that caused traffic jams so quickly that plows and other
snow-clearing equipment couldn’t be deployed in time. Kyiv had its worse
snowfall in recorded history on March 22 – going all the way back to 1889, the
first year records were kept. More than a half-meter of snow fell in a 24-hour
period, equivalent to a month’s worth of the white stuff in March.

TV host Alla Mazur seemed unimpressed by
Popov’s explanations.

“It’s
hard for me to believe you, because I was one of those people who spent Friday
night standing in the jam. It took seven hours to pass the distance that is
usually taking just seven minutes,” Mazur told Popov. Thousands of people
like her were stranded on the road. Dozens of cars were abandoned because they
ran out of fuel, and no emergency services were available in a city of more
than three million people.

“The problem is that the most snow fell
in the first hours,” Popov explained. However, State Weather Service disagrees,
stating that the most snow fell at night, many hours after the first snow
started falling.

Popov briefly thanked Kyivans for
helping clean the snow and promised that on March 25, three days after the
snowfall, the main roads in Kyiv will finally be returned to a “very normal
condition.”

Prime Minister Mykola Azarov blasted the
work of the city at a March 25 government session. “Thank God that nobody died
or froze, which is pure luck in these extreme conditions,” he said, according
to his press service.

But the Emergency Ministry and the
military, whose headquarters are located in Kyiv, also failed to react on time.
For example, the Defense Ministry’s five armored personnel vehicles only came
onto the streets by midday on March 23, local media reported, when the city was
already buried under the snow.

The opposition also failed to seize the
opportunity. There were no photos of any opposition leaders shoveling the snow
or pushing trucks.

Vitaliy Klitschko, a member of
parliament and potential mayoral candidate, posted a blog, blaming city
authorities and briefly mentioning he helped to push some stranded cars, but no
further details were given.

Batkivshchyna Party leader Arseniy Yatseniuk said on his Facebook
page that he delivered food to his daughter who was in hospital in Kyiv over
the weekend. “It’s good that I’m driving a jeep,” he wrote, and moved on to
complain about the authorities.

Ruslana Plis, a public relations
specialist, says that the authorities were not only ineffective during the
natural disaster, they also failed to use it for their own promotion.

“Critical situations like this give many
PR possibilities. In these conditions, one can do something simple and useful,
something that people will notice and be grateful for,” Plis wrote in her blog
at www.korrespondent.net.
“And who took advantage of opportunities? Nobody did. Neither the authorities,
nor the opposition.”

It seemed that only 1+1
channel managed to capitalize on the disaster by quickly replacing a James Bond
movie with the apocalyptic “The Day After Tomorrow” on Saturday night.

Kyiv
Post staff writer Olga Rudenko can be reached at
[email protected].