CHERKASY, Ukraine – Walking through Cherkasy, a small regional capital in central Ukraine, it’s easy to forget about the COVID-19 pandemic which has killed more than 250,000 people worldwide.
Parks and recreation zones are packed with parents with children, and retirees playing cards. A medical mask is a rare possession, with some carrying a mask only in case they are to be caught by a camera.
Today, the city is packed with nationwide media outlets looking for a story.
Cherkasy became the most talked-about city in Ukraine on May 1, after the city council ruled to loosen quarantine measures, becoming the first city to do so in a nation on lockdown.
The city council opened up parks, hairdressers, outdoor restaurants and cafes, shopping malls, and domestic services such as dry cleaners and shoe repair shops.
The rebellion sparked an outcry among the president and many government officials, each of whom promised retribution.
In a May 1 video address to the nation, President Volodymyr Zelensky verbally attacked Anatoly Bondarenko, the city’s mayor, asking the National Police and the Security Service of Ukraine to look into the matter. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov promised Bondarenko significant consequences.
Back in Cherkasy, those who are witnessing such consequences are small business owners. For them, the choices are stark: Open and face harassment from the police or wait until the national quarantine is over and go bankrupt in the process.
With the situation escalating each day, Bondarenko told the Kyiv Post that his communication with the central government is close to none.
“I have a direct line phone connected to the presidential administration,” he says. “Nobody called.”
The self-employed residents of Cherkasy, with 280,000 people located nearly 200 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, are caught in the crossfire. They were the ones asking the local government to reopen the city, but are now the ones who are scared to open their shops, fearing retribution from the police for disobeying Kyiv’s authority.
Halyna Kapitan is prominent in Cherkasy. Since early May, she has been the sole protester in front of the Cherkasy Oblast Administration. The governor is Zelensky’s appointee and the sole representative of the president in the region.
Kapitan used to own a small store selling clothing for children in a local shopping center. Now she is broke.
After the city administration allowed small businesses to resume work, the shopping center didn’t open. According to Kapitan, the owner simply didn’t want problems with the police.
“They said they will fine anyone who will resume work,” says Kapitan.
“Every day,” she adds.
According to the law, the fine for breaching quarantine is Hr 17,000 ($630).
“We can’t afford to work in such conditions,” says Kapitan. “If I would have opened my business from May 1 (as the city council allowed), I would have saved my business.”
She says her debts are over Hr 120,000 ($4,500) and she doesn’t know how she will be able to pay them off. “I tried to sell clothes (for kids) online, but I couldn’t master it,” says Kapitan.
Serhiy Vlasenko owns two home improvement stores, one in Cherkasy, one in Kyiv. His stores, which occupy around a dozen square meters each, were closed in mid-March.
Vlasenko doesn’t understand why his stores were forcefully closed by the government, while Epicenter K, a nationwide home goods chain, remained open. Epicenter K has been the go-to word all over Cherkasy, used by residents dissatisfied with being forced to close down their businesses.
Epicenter K has 59 stores occupying over 1 million square meters in total. The chain is owned by lawmaker Oleksandr Herega and his wife. The store remained open during the nationwide lockdown because of its status as a store selling essential goods such as medical masks.
Meanwhile, for Vlasenko, whose business was closed, the situation is dire. His wife is pregnant as his financial standing has worsened.
“Out break-even point passed two weeks ago,” he says. Vlasenko admitted that he drinks alcohol more frequently out of despair.
Vlasenko says that the local government took into account the requests from local businesses, something that other regions haven’t done.
“I think my kids will be amused when I tell them that I had two identical stores in two cities and one was forcefully closed, while the other one was (eventually) permitted to work,” he adds.
Going all in
The local business community is trying to understand who is in charge.
Bondarenko told the Kyiv Post that he only said what everyone already thinks. Now he’s under attack.
“I see the situation as a sanctioned attack on me, on the city council and on those people, who went against the president,” says Bondarenko.
To him, the whole situation seems absurd.
Since Jan. 1, nearly 3,500 people in Cherkasy have died but only nine of them from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The mayor says Cherkasy’s central hospital changed its focus on patients with COVID-19, leaving people will chronic illnesses without proper medication.
According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Health, Cherkasy Oblast has 324 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of May 7, most of them outside the region’s capital.
Additionally, Bondarenko says that now because of the quarantine, the city has more than 1,000 families that can’t afford food.
Cherkasy Mayor Anatoly Bondarenko stands in his office while talking to the Kyiv Post in Cherkasy on May 6, 2020. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
“If 500 people die of starvation and only nine of coronavirus the numbers would have spoken for themselves,” he says.
According to him, the city lost Hr 70 million ($2.6 million) in April and is preparing to lose an additional Hr 100 million ($3.7 million) in May. For a city with a total budget of Hr 3 billion ($112 million) it’s a crucial sum, says Bondarenko.
“We should learn to live with this epidemic, and to work with it” he adds. Yet, his vision isn’t supported in Kyiv, where the central government is seemingly irritated with the rebel mayor.
On May 4, Bondarenko was summoned to the local prosecutor’s office for questioning, while on May 7, the Cherkasy Oblast court ruled that the city doesn’t have the authority to loosen quarantine measures without the central government’s approval.
Pro-government officials have also accused Bondarenko of looking for publicity, prior to local elections scheduled for October 2020.
According to Bondarenko, the police and the Security Service of Ukraine are deliberately harassing the city authorities.
“The unprofessionalism of some high ranked-officials causes the country to rapidly roll into the abyss,” says Bondarenko.
The National Police and Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, did not respond to a request to comment.
Preparing for a financial hit
While only a few mayors supported Bondarenko publicly, many share the same concerns.
Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi says that the central government has badly handled the situation. “I’m against such a neglectful tone taken against a city mayor,” he says.
According to Sadovyi, the government initially wanted all mayors to toe the line, yet is currently changing its tone. According to him, in the past month, there were a number of roundtables between mayors of regional capitals and the government.
Overall, Sadovyi is diplomatic in his wording when talking about the conflict between the national government and the regions. He shares his colleague’s concern about the economic downturn caused by COVID-19 yet says that the city will keep strict quarantine and will act in line with the government.
According to Sadovyi, Lviv home to over 750,000 people, has lost over Hr 2 billion ($74 million) since the start of the pandemic. That’s almost a quarter of the budget’s earnings. Lviv is Ukraine’s tourist hub and the city is preparing for even more economic shortcomings ahead.
“Lviv welcomes 2.5 million (tourists), with each tourist on average spending 2.5 days in the city and $75 a day,” said Sadovyi. “You can count how much that is,” he added.
According to Sadovyi, Ukraine is one of the few countries in the world where the state doesn’t support local businesses.
In early February, then Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk gave start to the so-called 5-7-9 program which was set to give out cheap loans to small businesses. In mid-April, his successor Denis Shmygal amended the program after acknowledging that the program doesn’t work.
Sadovyi says that the cities are the ones forced to take action in supporting local businesses to remain afloat. Lviv canceled rent for small business and provided a credit line for tourist-oriented businesses to help them to diversify their income.
“Unfortunately, the only support business is getting is at the expense of the local budgets,” says Sadovyi.
Looking ahead
Yet, while the situation remains uncertain, Cherkasy looks like the clear winner.
The mayor of Cherkasy was publicly supported by the mayors of Ivano-Frankivsk and Dnipro. Furthermore, on May 2, nearly 100 restaurant owners and other protesters gathered outside the presidential administration in Kyiv and set up chairs and tables.
They were demanding that the government allow them to open up outdoor terraces and provide dining service there.
Two days later, the government conceded, copying Cherkasy’s plan, and taking it nationwide starting on May 12.
Nonetheless, walking through Cherkasy nearly a week after the local government allowed the local business to reopen, many of them remain closed, while even those who decided to resume operations say that the damage has already been done.
Vladyslav Chernenko is the owner of the seemingly only restaurant which opened its doors to clients in Cherkasy. Sitting in his restaurant, Chernenko says that there won’t be a peak season, and he doesn’t expect any profit this year.
“Now we’re not talking about making a profit, we’re talking about not losing our business,” says Chernenko. “It was a hybrid quarantine, someone worked, someone didn’t, somewhere had to burst through.”
