Massive traffic jams built up on Prospekt Pobedy, one of the capital’s main road arteries, as work began on March 18 to demolish Shulyavskiy Bridge, which has been slowly crumbling for over a decade.
Late on March 17 Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko went to the bridge to check on the beginning of the work.
“I went to the construction site near the Shulyavskiy junction overnight. Everything is ready,” Klitschko wrote on his Facebook page.
The demolition and reconstruction of the bridge and traffic junction is expected to take 17 months, according to Kyiv City Council.
“The traffic junction will be bigger and wider, with six lanes (now it’s four). Its transport capacity will be increased by 20 percent,” said Oleksandr Zdolnyk, chief engineer at Directorate for Construction of Road and Transport Facilities of Kyiv, at state-owned company.
Shulyavskiy Bridge is not the only bridge in a dangerous state in Kyiv, but definitely one of the most well-known ones.
In the early 2000’s one of the largest second-hand markets was located right under the bridge until a severe fire in 2007 forced sellers to move to Kyiv’s outskirts.
The fire caused the bridge to lose 30 percent of its bearing capacity, and it had to be braced with metal support structures. Years passed and the reconstruction of the bridge was postponed several times.
Then on Feb. 27, 2017 part of the bridge collapsed, luckily not hurting anyone. But the incident clearly showed that the structure was in a very dangerous condition.
Dodgy tender?
A tender for the reconstruction of Shulyavskiy junction was held by the city authorities in June 2018 on the Prozorro platform. However, soon after the tender ended and the winner was announced, experts said they suspected there had been some shady schemes behind the supposedly “transparent” procedure.
According to an investigation made by television investigative journalism show Nashi Groshi, of four interested construction companies only two were allowed to participate in the Hr 600 million, or $22 million, tender – Spetsbud-plus and the North-Ukrainian Construction Alliance.
The winner, which proposed only Hr 1,000 ($36) less than the loser, was the North-Ukrainian Construction Alliance. The company is owned by Andriy Yakusevych, who is in turn an assistant of Maxim Mikitas, the former president of the state-owned construction corporation Ukrbud and a current people’s deputy in parliament from the Volya Narody (People’s Will),” faction, according to Nashi Groshi.
The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine also found that the IP addresses from which the finalists entered for auction were almost identical and belonged to the same provider, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on Aug. 29, 2018.
On top of that, the committee found that Spetsbud-plus had provided the winner with financial assistance of Hr 5 million or $180,000 with zero interest until 2023.
The details of the tender for the work on Shulyavskiy junction are no longer available on the Prozorro website.
Klitschko has repeatedly denied having any connection with Mikitas.
