You're reading: Kolomoisky quotes become t-shirt prints

Quotes from billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky's abusive speech to Radio Liberty's journalist Serhiy Andrushko are now T-shirt prints. Svitlana Kriukova, economics editor of "Vesti. Reporter" magazine, recently started producing and selling them in her new online-shop called The Telki (The Wenches). The shop title is likewise taken from the one of the oligarch's quotes.

The incident with the oligarch and the
journalist took place late on March 19. As Kolomoisky, at the time the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast governor, went out of the
Ukrtransnafta office, where the conflict caused by the company’s management change was
happening, Andrushko asked the tycoon what he was doing at night at the state
company’s office. Using extremely offensive language, Kolomoisky suggested that
the journalist ask him about “the Russian saboteurs who seized the building”
rather than just “wait for a chance to see Kolomoisky.”

“Why don’t you ask about the corporate raid at Ukrtransnafta? Or how the Russian saboteurs got here, huh?” Kolomoisky said. “Or you are just sitting
here with your f**king Radio Liberty, waiting to see Kolomoisky? Why are you
sitting here like a wench waiting for her unfaithful husband? Have you shut up
already?”

There are seven versions of T-shirt design available now for Hr 222.
Kriukova says that she got 200 orders during the first day of sale. The most popular are XXL-sized T-shirts. “Curious thing
that deputies of Svoboda and People’s Front parties, journalists and
photographers bought it.” Kriukova writes on her Facebook page. “All customers
want to get it until Monday. We thought why they do this? And then understand
that the session starts in Verkhovna Rada on Tuesday.” She adds that 150
T-shirts will be delivered to Moscow.

The author of the idea considers humor a weapon against rudeness. She
is sure that Ukrainians shouldn’t forget such incidents, so that they don’t become a regularity. Kriukova promised to give a report about the money got from T-shirts
sold and spending it. “I have a useful purpose. It’s not shoes,” she wrote.

Kyiv Post staff writer Yulia Sosnovska
can be reached at [email protected].