Not too long ago, Kozyn was just another Dnipro River village near Kyiv. Today it's the "Ukrainian Beverly Hills," a bedroom community in which the capital's elite build luxury weekend cottages.
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| A cottage in the so-called Berehynya, or protectress, residential area of Kozyn. A fence on the opposite bank of the lake prevents locals from entering this exclusive neighborhood. (Post photo by Yevhen Kolesnyk) |
But not everyone has embraced the changes. Many of the village’s 3,500 permanent residents say they are being pushed out of their community as Kozyn feels the effects of the Kyiv real estate boom.
“We ask the press, the president, and whoever will hear us: Please leave us alone, we have no more land available!” said Kozyn village council deputy Kateryna Bondarenko. With all the building and land acquisition, she said, villagers have lost access to the Dnipro and Kozynka rivers, and to local forests.
PGO building
Tensions boiled over in July, when the Prosecutor’s General Office requested ten hectares of waterfront land on which to build staff residences. But the village council, reacting to the building glut in Kozyn, had declared a moratorium on land sales and leases back in December 2003. The PGO’s offer was refused.
Later that month the PGO brought charges against village council head Valentyna Horobets, for abuse of office in matters pertaining to land use. Horobets was removed from office by the PGO on July 22. Community members suspect the PGO had ulterior motives.
“The case against Horobets was opened because she refused to give the land to the PGO,” said Iryna Sarych, a member of the village’s executive committee, adding that the village had planned to use that space as a public recreational zone.
PGO spokesperson Serhy Rudenko would neither confirm nor deny that his agency requested land from the council.
Also in July, Kozyn’s village council refused to grant around 250 hectares of land through sale and lease agreements to the Ukrainian company Proletarian Truth, allegedly backed by powerful Ukrainian tycoons. Proletarian Truth offered to buy about 30 plots at a price of Hr 20,000 per hectare, about 100 times lower than market price. Horobets said the council ignored a subsequent Kyiv district court decision that ordered it to sell the land.
Parliament deputy Yury Karmazin, a member of Our Ukraine opposition faction, said the village council also protested a government directive to transfer ownership of over 150 hectares of forest to Svit Shlyakhiv, a company Karmazin says is backed by powerful business mogul Viktor Pinchuk, a deputy and President Leonid Kuchma’s son-in-law.
The market price of land on the Dnipro River in Kozyn, which is about 35 km from Kyiv and near President Kuchma’s residence at Koncha Zaspa, starts at around $800,000 per hectare, but real estate agents say the price can climb as high as $1.5 million.
House raided
On July 27, the police showed up at the Horobets family’s house and spent three hours searching it. Only Horobets was allowed to stay in the house, she said; her family was told to leave. Eventually, Horobets said, she fainted from stress.
During the search, all village phones and lights were dead and roads into and out of town were blocked, Sarych said. When Halyna Volvach, a village activist, asked police who sanctioned the raid, she said she was told that it was personally sanctioned by the First Deputy Prosecutor General Viktor Kudriavtsev.
Later that day, Horobets called a taxi to take her to Kyiv for a television interview. She alleges that local police warned her she should not go, as instead of a real cab coming for her, a disguised police car would come. The day ended with Horobets suffering a heart attack. She spent two weeks in the hospital.
Rudenko denied that any anything illegal took place during the raid.
Since Horobets has returned from the hospital, dozens of supportive villagers have been standing guard at her office, where the power is still off, intending to defend the premises in case the police or prosecutors show up.
As of Aug. 18, no other incidents had been reported.
Alleged bribes
Bondarenko says new owners in some cases offered bribes to local officials in order to receive land at discounted prices, or even for free. Some of these new land owners have chosen to build on the land while others have put the plots up for sale.
Bondarenko says that even locals are unsure of who owns which plots of the land in the village as many of the sales have been dubious, and some plots of land have changed ownership many times.
According to Sarych, about 2,000 hectares of Kozyn land were leased out, privatized, or simply given away between 1998 and 2003. Horobets says any attempts to return some of the contested land to the village in court have so far been unsuccessful.
Karmazin, who visited Kozyn late in July, says Kozyn forests and river banks are being destroyed in defiance of environmental regulations.
The village council has approximately 6,000 hectares under its jurisdiction. A land revision study the village council requested last year from the State Agency for Land Resources will precisely determine Kozyn’s territory. That study has yet to be performed.
The office of the Kyiv oblast vice governor in charge of land issues did not comment on the situation.
