Kyiv police are investigating who is to blame for a fire that took place on early Feb. 9 in Hostynny Dvir, a revered Kyiv landmark at the center of a development dispute.
The fire
near Kontraktova Square in Kyiv burned for more than five hours – from 2 a.m.
to 7:30 a.m. It started on the attic floor over the western arch of the
building. This is the part of the building that since May 2012 has been occupied
by public activists who want to protect the monument from illegal, as they say,
reconstruction.
Activists
say, however, they did not have access to the roof and called the fire
suspicious. They say firefighters were not enthusiastically fighting the fire.
Ukrrestavraсia,
a company that rents the building from the State Property Fund and that plans
to turn the historical building into a shopping and office center, denies having
anything to do with the fire whose origin – whether arson or accidental – has
not yet been determined.
While
police investigate, the two-story arched building is under threat. According to
activists, 15 percent of its attic floor and roof were destroyed by fire; now
it’s also waterlogged.
So
this continues to be a dangerous moment for a monument that was built in 1809
and fully reconstructed in the early 1990s.
