Oleh Seminsky, a lawmaker of the Servant of the People party, attacked a man and slashed his car’s tires over a conflict around the party’s campaign ads in Chernihiv, a city of 280,000 people some 140 kilometers north of Kyiv, on Sept. 28.
Seminsky felt like his party was cheated out of 10 billboards that they planned to use for campaign advertising ahead of the Oct. 25 local elections.
In an apparent effort to avenge the ruling party, he hit Oleksandr Tkachenko, head of the advertising company that rents out the billboards, and proceeded to slash tires of his car. A local TV channel Dytynets filmed the conflict and published the video.
According to Seminskyi, a local contractor working with Servant of the People concluded an agreement for the rental of 10 billboards with the advertising company Magr-Avto. Within the election campaign, these billboards were to display ads of the candidate for Chernihiv mayor Yurii Tarasovets, nominated by the Servant of the People.
But shortly after the ads were put up on the billboards, the advertising company attempted to take them down. According to the company’s head Tkachenko, the representatives of the party indeed reached an agreement but ended up not paying, so his company decided to remove their ads from the billboards it owns.
“On Saturday (Sept. 26) perhaps at night advertisements of the candidate Tarasovets were pasted on my boards illegally. Today we came to repaste for the advertisement. However, three cars with armed people arrived and parked under the billboard, which impeded employees from working”, Tkachenko told the local TV channel Dytynets.
He claimed that the men threatened him with weapons.
The video of the conflict shows a group of people led by Seminskyi ran up to Tkachenko, and the lawmaker hit him in the neck.
Then Seminsky started to slash tires of some cars at the site, including Tkachenko’s car.
Tkachenko says that the attack gave him a concussion. He went to the police. The police handed over the case’ materials to the local prosecutor’s office to decide on whether it should be investigated.
Seminsky acknowledged that he had punctured car tires but claimed that it was self-defense. According to him, the cars have been following him around Chernihiv.
He denied hitting Tkachenko.
“There was nothing illegal, no hits, no attacks. This is a slander on the part of Atroshenko’s young men,” the lawmaker told the Suspilne.
Vladyslav Atroshenko is the mayor of Chernihiv and a founder of the party Ridnyi Dim (Native Home)
Chernihiv Deputy Mayor Oleksandr Lomako said that only Ridnyi Dim has an agreement with Magr-Avto for political advertising.
The local TV channel Dytynets, which published the video of the incident, is allegedly connected with the Mayor of Chernihiv Vladyslav Atroshenko. Its owner is Ruslan Dubynka, the mayor’s business partner.
