Serhiy Ratushnyak, known for his combative behavior, is facing a criminal investigation.
Uzhgorod Mayor Serhiy Ratushnyak, known for combative behavior, may have outdone himself this month.
First, on Aug. 6, Ratushnyak allegedly physically attacked a woman – an activist for presidential candidate Arseniy Yatseniuk. Ratushnyak reportedly knocked down a Yatseniuk tent after Natalya Butrymko, 21, failed to produce government permits for setting it up and handing out campaign flyers.
Ratushnyak denied the assault, but then disgusted people even more by calling the woman “a stripper” and referring to Yatseniuk repeatedly as “Jew” and a “criminal.” (Yatseniuk has never identified himself as Jewish and says his religion is Greek-Catholic.)
Despite a national scandal that followed, the local prosecutor in the western Ukrainian city took days to launch criminal investigations again him. On Aug. 12, prosecutors accused the 48-year-old mayor of hooliganism, exceeding his authority and violating the equal rights of citizens on the basis of their race or nationality – in relation to both the assault the slurs.
If the case gets to court and he is found guilty, Ratushnyak can end up in prison for up to 10 years.
He’s denied any wrongdoing. “What was so anti-Semitic that I said? I just want to save ordinary Jews from this Jewish Freemason den that [former President Leonid] Kuchma started and which doubled its capital under [President Victor] Yushchenko,” he said in an interview to Ukrainska Pravda, an internet newspaper, on Aug. 10.
There are still many questions about the nature of the alleged assault.
The victim, Butrymko, was seen on TV the same day of the assault. She gave interviews and commented on the incident, showing no more than bruises and scratches. Later, she was reported to be in a hospital first in Lviv and then later in Kyiv with a brain concussion and other, more serious injuries.
Volodymyr Butrymko, the Yatseniuk’s activist’s father, told journalists that witnesses had been intimidated and refused to testify against the mayor. He also said that evidence was confiscated by Ratushnyak’s guards after the incident. “The beating was also video-recorded by some taxi drivers with their mobile phones. Afterwards, Ratushnyak’s guards checked their phones to abolish possible evidence,” said Butrymko, a retired police officer.
Robert Brousy, manager of the Uzhgorod branch of Yatseniuk’s Front of Changes initiative (http://frontzmin.org) said that doctors in Uzhgorod were scared to confirm their early diagnosis of his daughter.
Vitaly Glagola, a reporter from Zakarpattya regional TV who interviewed Ratushnyak after the Aug. 6 incident, was fired on Aug. 13 on a false pretext, he said. His footage that included offensive comments from Ratushnyak was aired on national TV channels. “The reason they mentioned was termination of contract. But my contract was signed until July next year,” Glagola said, in an interview to Telekritika, a media web portal.
In the TV interview, Ratushnyak said: “You are a bastard and milksop who will smear me with mud anyway. You will show nothing except the vomit Yatseniuk, [former presidential chief of staff Victor] Baloga and Yushchenko make you show.”
In the same interview Ratushnyak said he has “never beaten a woman” in his life. “I politely asked that girl to show the documents setting up the tent. She answered rudely, attacked me and tore my shirt, scratching me with her nails like a panther… It hurts me for our state when they [Yatseniuk’s Front of Changes] steal and then hire young boys and girls who are ready to grab you by the throat for some Hr 50-100. What a shame for the blind slaves!”
Ratushnyak went on to talk about the “impudent Jew Yatseniuk, who successfully serves thieves in power in Ukraine, is using criminal money to plow ahead towards Ukraine’s presidency. Criminal Jew Yatseniuk has apparently decided that these are the elections to a village council somewhere in Israel. So, using criminal money he gathered drug traffickers and smugglers and without the permission of the city council, is showering our city with the garbage.”
These and other comments revolted the Jewish community and other political leaders in Ukraine. Yevhen Chervonenko, an influential businessman and politician who also serves as vice-president of the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress, told Inter TV channel that Ratushnyak’s statements “were not only aimed at kindling the interethnic hatred, but are of the same nature as Nazism.”
Yatseniuk, during a Lviv press conference, said Ratushnyak “started a war against the Jews.” And the Uzhgorod Jewish Community wants an apology, according to a televised interview with community leader Mendel Taihman.
Combative incidents instigated by Ratushnyak have been documented more than 20 times, according to Serhiy Slobodyanyuk, former director of tourism for Zakarpattya Oblast, according to an interview he gave to Inter TV channel. Slobodyanyuk started keeping track of the mayor’s confrontations after Ratushnyak, he said, beat him up in his own office on Nov. 12, 2003. Other incidents involve Stanislav Ponomariov, a deputy of the Uzhgorod City Council; Illya Kovalov, director of a private Uzhgorod dental clinic and his pregnant wife in 2003; Volodymyr Pypash, director of the Zakarpattya Oblast administration in 2005; and a young, drunk Uzhgorod citizen on April 14.
Through his press secretary, Ratushnyak denied comment. But in other interviews, he claims to have been a victim, jailed at times by what he describes as the corrupt Kuchma regime. Criminal cases that have been launched against him in the past have all been dropped.
Slobodyanyuk said that the Zakarpattya public prosecutor’s office found an “absence of components of crime” in each episode. There was also no wrongdoing found when a car driven by Ratushnyak’s daughter, Svitlana, 27, struck and killed a 6-year-old boy. “A boy was trying to cross the road on his bike at the wrong place. The driver just had no time to stop right away,” said Lidiya Chornenka, a spokeswoman for the state automobile inspectorate in Zakarpattya Oblast.
