Publicado
Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 10:00
- RA spoke to Andy Yankovskyi, co-owner of HVLV, one of the venues targeted in last Saturday's "crusade."
Dozens of people affiliated with far-right groups marched on Kyiv's clubbing district Podil on Saturday, November 6th, chanting nationalist slogans and throwing eggs, white powder and firecrackers.
Initially postponed from Friday, the march was organised via the Telegram channel Catharsis, which billed it as a "crusade" against three Podil clubs—HVLV, Closer and ∄ (AKA K41)—allegedly selling drugs. (The clubs strongly reject this claim.) It was the latest in a series of tense and sometimes violent encounters between the police, the far right and the nightlife community.
According to Andy Yankovskyi, co-owner of HVLV, the march began outside the local police department at around 6 PM. The below account, which has been rewritten for length and clarity, is his version of events, as told to Resident Advisor.
At around 7 PM, the roughly 100-strong crowd, many of them young teens, gathered outside HVLV's front gates, which had been secured with extra chains and logs. Members of the crowd shook the gates and shouted nationalistic slogans, including the white-supremacist mantra "14/88." Some threw firecrackers and bags of white powder, possibly flour, which exploded and stained the clothes of Yankovskyi and his colleagues.
At around 7:30 PM, the crowd moved to Closer and ∄, which were both closed. After 30 or 40 minutes, around 50-60 people returned to HVLV. This time overseen by 15-20 police officers, the crowd smashed the gates more aggressively, which led several officers to step in and guard the venue. Some of the crowd then tried to break in via the back door, while others set off flares, chucked eggs and painted Nazi and white-power logos on the walls of the building.
"We tried not to pay them too much attention because it was kind of a theatre," Yankovskyi told RA. "When they saw us, they were screaming and shouting and throwing more stuff, but when there was nobody they were more calm and just trying to provoke some movement. But of course nothing happened."
Meanwhile, a group of 25-30 attendees were trapped inside HVLV. Yankovskyi and the team called the police "maybe 50 times," but received no response beyond the officers at the scene. (Yankovskyi had also informed the police ahead of the march as part of a series of preventative safety measures, which included hiring extra security inside.)
"Generally the mood inside was quite calm," said Yankovskyi. "But of course people were stressed because no one wants to experience any violence or abuse at their address, and no one wants to feel that their freedom of movement is disrupted by people who the police definitely supported more than anyone inside."
The crowd dispersed from HVLV at around 10 PM. No one got hurt and nothing was badly broken. The venue did, however, cancel a hip-hop event scheduled that night due to safety concerns. (∄, on the other hand, opened as planned.)
"Since we were expecting them to come and we made a lot of extra safety measurements, we knew that they wouldn't be able to smash the gate and get inside," said Yankovskyi. "But maybe the biggest disappointment of the evening was the incompetent work of police. In this situation, we didn't really know how long this blockade would last, maybe until the morning or whatever. We understood that we are alone in this fight and there's no one we can call."
He added: "I assume that some actions like this may happen in the future. But I also understand that this isn't an ideological fight like they want to portray in the media. This is a specific group of people who have their own materalistic goals that they try to follow, and there are other people who just want to have a normal stable community and support human rights, support human values, support the freedom of speech and the freedom of movement in the area. Some people don't like it and they will use anything they can to stop this process. But you know, there's a lot of us and we will probably fight back."
Photo: Alex Novak