The Ukrainian News information agency presents the 10 funniest news stories of the on its wire services during the year.
1. Overtake, cut across…
Traffic police fined the driver of an asphalt roller in Sumy in April for not giving way to pedestrians. The fine totaled Hr 85.
2. Vacationers, take note
Rescuers caught a two-meter crocodile in a pond in Odesa on June 25. The nine-year-old crocodile, which was named Kesha, had escaped from the compound of its owner two days earlier.According to its owner, Kesha does not bite.
3. Interrupted hike
Officials at the Azov-Black Sea regional division of the State Border Service transferred to Russian border guards on February 19 a citizen of Uzbekistan who was attempting to travel around the world on foot. Despite the refusal to allow him to cross the Ukrainian border, the 20-year-old traveler did not want to return to Russia after traveling by ferry from Kerch, jumping into the water, and swimming to the Ukrainian coast.Border guards pulled him out of the water, have him dry clothes, and sent him back to the Russian coast, where he was handed over to Russian border guards.
4. With good intentions
An anti-tank mine was found near a fountain on the Market Square near the Lviv municipal administration building on July 31.The person that brought the mine to downtown Lviv said that he bought it from homeless people and merely wanted to hand it over to the police.He telephoned the police to say that he was waiting for them on Bohdana Khmelnytskoho Street.He said that he did not wait for the police to arrive and the police said that they found nobody when they arrived there.He decided to deliver the anti-tank mine to the municipal council. He decided not to take the mine into the municipal council building and left it near the fountain and informed the official on duty at the entrance to the building about the mine.
5. Ideological scrap metal
Police detained two people on January 14 on suspicion of stealing a 300-kilogram copy of the Lenin Order at the entrance to Dnipropetrovsk. The two residents of Dnipropetrovsk were suspected of detaching the order with a welding machine and attempting to transport it on a tractor. However, a telephone call by an alert citizen enabled the police to detain the suspects on the scene.The detainees were suspected of planning to deliver the order as scrap metal.
6. Dressed for the occasion
Police detained a drunken 20-year-old man on January 13 after he fell asleep during an attempt to rob a second-hand clothes shop in Luhansk. The man slipped while passing by the second-hand clothes shop and absentmindedly pulled the handle of the shop’s entrance door.The door opened and the man found himself on the floor of the dark shop, with its window packed with used clothes. Taking advantage of the situation, the man picked a winter jacket and a Jeans trouser for himself and wore them. He then sat on the floor to wear his shoes, but he fell asleep in the process.the shop’s employees found the man asleep when they arrive at the shop in the morning and called the police. It turned out that the shop’s employees simply forgot to lock the entrance door after work.
7. The avenger
Police detained a resident of Kharkiv on March 26 on suspicion of making a false report alleging that terrorists had seized a tram. The detainee was a 50-year-old Kharkiv resident who had been expelled from the tram for traveling without a ticket.
8. Robbery, Halytskyi style
Police detained a resident of the Lviv region on January 25 while attempting to rob a bank in Brody (Lviv region) through a tunnel. Two local residents dug a tunnel under the bank, but an alarm went off when they were attempting to break through the concrete floor of the bank.Police detained one of the men on the scene, but the other managed to escape.
9. A thief is not a friend
Officers from the Zaporizhia Regional Police Department detained two men in early March on suspicion of theft after they asked a police acquaintance for assistance in traveling from Simferopol (Crimea) to Zaporizhia. The two men were suspected of robbing a village shop and traveling to the Crimea for vacation. After spending all their money, the suspects telephoned their police acquaintance for assistance in returning home, where police were already searching for them.The Crimean colleagues of the suspect’s police acquaintance put the two men on a train to Zaporizhia, where they were officially detained upon arrival at the train station.
10. How to return your bank deposit
A 76-year-old resident of the village of Kolodenko (Rivne region) succeeded in returning part of his deposit with a Rivne branch of Ukrprombank on March 9 after undressing completely and threatening to set himself on fire. The depositor demanded money from his deposit account because his deposit agreement had expired, but bank officials refused and asked him to extend the deposit agreement.The man initially threatened to go on strike, but he later undressed and began threatening to set himself on fire. Only after this did the manager of the bank promise to return the man’s deposit in installments. He received one-third of his deposit on the next day.
