The new office of Vitali Klitschko in Kyiv City Hall is simple, even ascetic.The walls were repainted, but the faux beige leather chairs are cut in several places, reminders that until recently City Hall was occupied by raging protesters of EuroMaidan.
Klitschko had his first day in the new office on June 24, a month after he was elected to be Kyiv mayor. The delay happened because the 10-story building at Khreshchatyk Street needed to be redecorated after it served as a headquarters and a dormitory for protesters.
Before Klitschko, a mayor’s office of four rooms used to belong to Leonid Chernovetsky, who left the position in July of 2012. Since then, Kyiv had no mayor.
Now that Klitschko is in the office, he has a lot to do.
“I knew that Kyiv was in a bad state, but I had no idea how bad it was,” Klitschko said sitting at his first press conference at the new work place.
Klitschko’s first morning in City Hall started with listening to a police report regarding the fire that took place at one of the barricades at Maidan Nezalezhnosti the night before. Even four months after the EuroMaidan Revolution victory, hundreds of people continue living in the tents at Maidan and Khreshchatyk Street, some 100 meters from the City Hall’s main entrance.
Some are getting annoyed with the tents, but Klitschko promised to not touch them.
“We’ll never try to oust them out against their will. But we need people to understand this: Maidan is not tents, Maidan is an idea,” the mayor said.
During EuroMaidan Revolution, Klitschko was posing as one of the three protest’s leaders with Oleh Tyahnybok and Arseniy Yatsenyuk, but now he speaks of the protesters with condemnation as he mentions the damage they did to the City Hall.
“All the walls here were ruined. I don’t know why. Maybe they were looking for some hidden treasures,” Klitschko says, pointing at the beige walls in his new office, now freshly repainted.
Many of the office supplies were stolen too, he says. All the computers in the building were either broken or stolen.
The electronic voting systems in the City Council meeting hall was ruined too. Instead of just replacing the system, Klitschko plans to redesign the whole room, even though it looks fine. The only noticeable damage are the holes in the wooden tribune. Klitschko says those were left by bullets.
“The problem with repairing the City Hall is that there is zero money in the budget. So I approached companies and people who could make donations for the redecoration, and they did,” says Klitschko.
The redecoration has taken some Hr 9 million so far, but to finish the works and buy new supplies, including the electronic voting system, will cost some Hr 30 million.
“There’s been a lot of injustice going on in this building before. My main principle is to have clear rules for everyone,” the mayor said.
Klitschko confessed his “ambitious dream” – to see a street in Kyiv named after him once.
“And not for the sports achievements,” he added.
Photos by Pavlo Podufalov, story by Olga Rudenko.
