Four men dressed in black, wearing gloves and balaclavas covering their faces, walked into an antique shop and poured a can of petrol on its floor on the evening of Dec. 13 in Kyiv’s central Volodymyrska Street.
The shop, called Dukat, belongs to Leonid Komskyi, a gallery owner who is involved in a squatting protest against an illegal privatization.
According to the security guard Volodymyr Brezghur, the four men appeared at about 6 p.m. while the shop was still open. One of the men pulled out a can of petrol from a plastic bag and poured it on the floor.
“The one who was pouring said ‘Tell your boss that this is a warning,’” Brezghur told the Kyiv Post about an hour later at the crime scene, as police inspected it.
Two other men prevented Brezghur and other employees from moving, while the fourth stood at the entrance. The men then walked out, leaving the plastic bag and the empty can behind.
Komskyi is an activist for Kyiv’s historic preservation. But the attack on his antique shop, he says, is another attempt to intimidate him by lawmaker Oles Dovgyi, because of Komskyi’s involvement in the Rechovyi Dokaz (Material Evidence) project.
Gallerist and social activist Leonid Komskyi speaks with the Kyiv Post outside his antique shop that was attacked on Dec. 13, 2018 in Kyiv. (Oleh Petrasiuk)
“I think it this was ordered by Oles Dovgyi,” Komskyi says. “There were threats from some known, and unknown people. Some people would come up and tell me that they heard that he (Dovgyi) is (working) with criminals against us.”
Rechovyi Dokaz is a squatting protest against the illegal privatization of the building on 8B Reitarska Street in Kyiv, which is now subject to a freezing order by the prosecutor’s office. The owners of the building are Oleksandr Hlimbovskyi, the father-in-law of Roman Nasirov, the reinstated head of the State Fiscal Service, and Oksana Guliaieva, Dovgyi’s sister. Both Nasirov and Dovgyi have been investigated on corruption charges, but their cases were closed.
Guliaieva and Dovgyi deny they had anything to do with the attack.
“It’s an attempt (by Komskyi) to use (Dovgyi’s) name to earn some attention for himself,” Guliaieva told the Kyiv Post in response to Komskyi’s accusations about Dovgyi being behind the attack.
“I think they thought this up themselves, because it looks like another of their fabrications. Or this is some sort of a criminal dispute (of Komskyi) – maybe he sold something counterfeit to someone,” Dovgyi told the Kyiv Post.
According to Dovgyi, the activists tried to settle the conflict by buying the building at 8B Reitarska Street for a small sum. He said that he and his sister refused, saying that they will only deal with them within the law.
“They demand money and drag my reputation through the mud hoping that we will (pay them),” Dovgyi says.
According to the prosecutor’s office, 8B Reitarska Street was unlawfully obtained by the Main Department of Communal Property, the executive body of Kyiv City Council, at an understated price — Hr 4.06 million ($146,397), which is lower than it was worth in 2007-2010. Oles Dovgiy was a secretary of the Kyiv City Council at the time, under the notoriously corrupt and currently exiled mayor Leonid Chernovetskyi.
Hlimbovskyi and Guliaieva are still allowed to use the building while the investigation into the alleged illegal privatization is ongoing, and Komskyi used to rent parts of it from the owners and sublet them to artists and creative businesses.
But after the owners increased the rent charge by several times, Komskyi and the artists occupied parts of 8B Reitarska St. in July and now use it as an art center and venue for cultural events.
One of the activists and commandant of the occupied building, Nazarii Kravchenko, says that he has also received threats from unknown individuals, who introduced themselves as “people of Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky,” another lawmaker.
“They said they will deal with this issue now (occupation of 8B Reitarska Street.) And that if we won’t stop squatting there, they will ‘punish us with force,’ me and Leonid (Komskyi). There’s been the first ‘salute’ to Leonid, and now I’m waiting for my turn.”
Kravchenko says the intimidation of Komskyi is in line with this year’s recent attacks on activists around Ukraine, such as the attacks on Serhiy Sternenko, the former head of the Odesa branch of the nationalist Right Sector political organization, and Kateryna Gandziuk, an anti-corruption activist and local council member from Kherson.
“We don’t have a moral right to bend before criminals and this construction mafia, which will try to intimidate us and break our active position,” Kravchenko says.
“My friend Kateryna Gandziuk died. I have no moral right to stop fighting for justice.”
