Runaway Ukraine president’s $100m folly
NOVI PETRIVTSI, UKRAINE // Even the most cynical Ukrainians rubbed their eyes in disbelief when they saw the scale of the opulence Viktor Yanukovich built around him and kept secret from the outside world. The $100 million mansion and its sprawling forested grounds of graceful waterways and summer houses, half the size of Monaco but just an hour’s drive from Kiev, are a symbol of the folly of Ukraine’s fugitive president.
There were exotic African ostriches, stretching their legs. There were hares darting around people’s feet — clearly unused to large numbers.
Deer and goats, their cages neatly labelled, were hunkered down, slightly alarmed at the numbers of sudden visitors.
All this in a country where the average salary is less than Dh1,900 a month. Mr Yanukovich, 63, whose whereabouts were unknown yesterday after he fled the capital on Saturday, relaxed at weekends in luxury behind high walls patrolled by scores of armed security guards.
When the dream ended and Mr Yanukovich’s staff fled the Gatsbylike mansion in the early hours of Saturday, the Kiev protest movement that had opposed him invited Ukrainians to go to see the opulence Mr Yanukovich lived in.
As they poured in by the thousand, by foot and by car, on to the 140- hectare grounds for a first glimpse at a luxury they could only suspect, Ukrainians gawped in wonderment at the fairy-tale surroundings.
What they saw did not reflect a rough-hewn man from the gritty eastern Ukraine who got to the top the hard way, but rather a weakness for nouveau- riche status symbols. Mr Yanukovich bought a small house on the plot at the start of his presidency in 2010. Subsequently, he acquired control of the full estate which exists today through a chain of companies with which he had close interests.
Beyond a five-floor Russian-style house, some said it was his guesthouse, a stone staircase opened up to a landscaped vista of water features and tree-lined walkways and stretching into the distance.
Few people, apart from Mr Yanukovich’s chosen few and family, have visited a secret place that has been charted by satellite images that show a helicopter pad and a golf course.
Up to 3,000 security and support staff would arrive when Mr Yanukovich planned a major social event.
With Mr Yanukovich obsessed by security and fear of attack, they had to leave their mobile phones at the entrance to the grounds and pick them up only on leaving.
Over the years journalists have often tried to penetrate the security cordon, often with unfortunate consequences.
The journalist Tetyana Chernovil broke into the heavily guarded grounds last year. Although she escaped she was badly beaten months later.
“This is a monument to a tyrant which we want to show the peo- ple,” said Eduard Leonov, a parliamentary deputy from the far-right nationalist Svoboda party.
Graeco-Roman statues, a goddess covering her modesty with her hair, lovers intertwined, decorated the lawns. Ornate ponds, half frozen on Saturday, nonetheless bubbled with water being pumped through them. Love-seats and colonnaded meeting places dot the estate.
There is a Russian bathhouse, closed to the public on Saturday with an opposition protester’s helmet on a chair across the door. On a hilltop, looking down on the Dnipro river through trees, was a plaza for a barbecue.
Families and lovers out for a different sort of weekend afternoon excursion, posed for family album snaps at a once- in- a lifetime occasion. Most shook their heads in wonderment at the ambitions of a president who had always proclaimed that he was on the side of the poor people of Ukraine.
“We did not expect anything like this. It is really extensive and all done with our money, the money of ordinary people. It really is too much for one person. It’s very emotional when you see something like this,” said Serhiy Remezovsky, who had brought his wife and ninemonth old son.
His friend Roman Gretsky suggested that the estate should be turned into an orphanage or something recreational for the children of Ukraine. Some sneered at decor that seemed over the top for a president known for his cultural shortcomings, having once described the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov as a “great Ukrainian poet”.
Standing in front of a colonnaded portico, with a Grecian urn lying on its side, Lyudmila Golbtsova, 26, a developer from Kiev, sniggered. “A normal person doesn’t build this sort of stuff. It’s such a waste of money.”
For more photos on Viktor Yanukovich’s opulence, visit thenational. ae/multimedia