While the country is busy dealing with military and economic challenges, a truck in Kyiv is freely hauling sand up to the top of a historic hill while tractor spreads it around.
This all is happening on Yurkovytsya, one of the hills Kyiv was founded
on in the Middle Ages. Even though the territory is protected as a national
historic site, thus forbidding construction there, private homes continue to be
built on the crest.
“Here you see the cynical destruction of … one the most ancient
places in the world,” activist Olena Yeskina says. “These are our
legendary Kyiv hills, without which it is impossible to imagine our city.”
A member of Kyivske
Viche, a group that lobbies protection of Kyiv’s historic sites, Yeskina says
that the illegal construction on Yurkovytsya hill in the Lukyanivka
neighborhood started soon after City Hall under former Mayor Leonid
Chernovetskiy allocated several land plots on Otto Shmidt Street to private
individuals in 2010.
Instead of putting up a kiosk, as stated in the title documents, one individual
increased the officially allotted size of the plot from 10 to 30 acres and
built a beige two-storey house with a cellar and an attic. His neighbor,
meanwhile, erected a yellow colored two-storey mansion complete with a spire
and surrounded it with a brick three-meter high wall. He also allegedly planned
to seize more land, but activists prevented him. Both owners have denied any wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, archeologists have unearthed numerous artifacts there dating
back centuries, including the Stone Age. A wooden cross mounted on the peak of
the hill marks an old cemetery.
In 2012 activists managed to stop further construction on Yurkovytsya hill.
However, on Nov. 3, when Yeskina and her colleagues came to monitor the
situation, they saw a new fence and construction vehicles working inside. They
were bringing in and smoothing out a mixture of sand and clay to enlarge a
leveled area on the slope. Seeing the activists, a man came out from the house
nearby and threatened them.
“When I
asked him to introduce himself,” Yeskina said, “He
just turned around and hit me so hard that I flew several meters.”
A video on Podil TV YouTube channel shows episodes of the Nov. 3 accident on Yurkovytsya hill when an unknown man hit Yeskina, an activist, after she asked him to introduce himself.
On Nov. 5, Yeskina called a news conference at the construction site to
draw public attention to what is happening. Journalists ringed the houses built
on the hill to get comments, but nobody opened their doors.
“I believe this is illegal, simply a land seizure, which brings
criminal charges,” said Larysa Horonkova, deputy head of the department of
urban development and land use at Kyiv’s Shevchenkivskiy district
administration, a municipal office in charge of the territory where events take
place. A criminal case on land seizure on Yurkovytsya was opened two years ago,
but it did not stop further construction, Horonkova added.
Oleksandr Khmel, from the department of cultural heritage at Kyiv City Administration,
said that Yurkovytsya is protected by the state as a landscape monument of the
local level and archeological monument of the national level.
“The landscape cannot be changed here at all, works such as filling
of soil are not allowed,” Khmel explained to journalists. “As an
archeological site, it must be excavated and examined prior to any works.”
He promised that Kyiv City Administration will issue an order to stop
construction works here.
Activists will appeal to the Prosecutor General’s Office and demand
cancellation of all illegal decrees on land allocation on Yurkovytsia, return
of these plots to the public, conduct archeological excavations, and create a
nature reserve on the territory of the hill.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Lyachynska can be reached at oksana.lyachynska@gmail.com.
