Yet another rich kid’s reckless driving has taken lives in Ukraine.
Olena Zaitseva, a 20-year-old student from Kharkiv, drove through a red light at high speed in a luxury Lexus RX350 in the Kharkiv city center on Oct.18. She hit a Volkswagen Touareg on a road junction and her car then plowed into a crowd of pedestrians on a sidewalk, killing five and injuring six people, including a pregnant woman.
Anton Herashchenko, the Interior Ministry adviser of Ukraine, wrote on Facebook, that Zaitseva was driving at 100 kilometers per hour when she went through the red light.
If found guilty, Zaitseva could face up to 10 years in prison.
“We won’t let them ‘solve’ (the problem) or make a deal. Rich kids’ careless driving problem has only one solution — video recording of driving offenses,” Gerashchenko wrote, referring to proposed amendments to road safety legislation that would see at least 4,000 surveillance cameras being installed on roadways all over Ukraine.
Olesia Kholopik, a lawyer with the Center of Democracy and Rule of Law in Kyiv who is leading a road safety campaign, told the Kyiv Post on Oct. 19 that video recording and better traffic enforcement can make roads safer.
Twenty-year-old Olena Zaitseva, seen here on her driving license.
“High-speed driving is the main killer on Ukraine’s roads. We have extremely small fines for road safety rules violation and in the same time our police are extremely tolerant to the drivers. For example, drivers can go 20 kilometers over the speed limit with no punishment,” Kholopik said.
But while Zaitseva was immediately arrested on suspicion of reckless driving, she, like many other rich and reckless drivers in Ukraine, has a good chance of escaping justice.
Zaitseva’s Lexus was registered to her stepfather — a prominent Kharkiv businessman, Vasyl Zaitsev, the CEO of energy producer Ukrenergochormet.
And rich and powerful people, and their relatives, often avoid punishment for road traffic offenses in Ukraine — even when they kill people.
Horrible trend
Over the first nine months of 2017, more than 2,317 people were killed and 25,082 injured in car accidents in Ukraine, Ukrainian Interior Minister
Arsen Avakov wrote on Facebook. In 2016 more than 3,000 people were killed on the roads, and more than 36,000 injured.
Rich and reckless drivers contribute disproportionately to the statistics Avakov quoted, with most of them evading punishment for their crimes.
In one recent example, Nestor Shufrich, the son of the Opposition Bloc lawmaker of the same name, while driving his Bentley in Kyiv in August, hit a man on a crosswalk. The man was hospitalized with severe injuries, and Shufrich was taken into custody.
However, three days later, Shufrich, 23, was released by Shevchenkivsky District Court of Kyiv under the supervision of his father, who, as a lawmaker, had the right to obtain the release of the suspect under his recognizance.
And in January 2016 another rich kid, 22-year-old Stanislav Tolstosheyev, killed an elderly woman and injured a man when he crashed his Mercedes SUV onto a sidewalk in Kyiv.
Tolstosheyev is the son of Andriy Tolstosheyev, a businessman from Donetsk Oblast who owns a construction business and was reportedly an ally of local members of the Party of Regions, the former ruling party of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych.
Doctors prevented the younger Tolstosheyev from being taken to court due to his having a heart condition that made him “non-transportable.”
After the crash, Tolstosheyev told journalists that he had fainted and didn’t remember how he had crashed onto the sidewalk.
Tolstosheyev’s father Andriy told Ukrainian television’s TSN news on Jan. 26, 2016 that doctors said his son had had an epileptic fit just before the crash.
However, many were skeptical.
Investigative journalist Dmytro Gnap revealed that the younger Tolstosheyev led a luxurious life of heavy drinking. The man was an active social media user frequently posted boastfully about his parties and expensive possessions.
“I’m not a monk, I’m a young man. I was living a normal life. And despite having a congenital heart disorder, I could let myself have a drink, or something else,” Tolstosheyev told reporters on Jan. 15, 2016.
Three days later he was released on bail of $5,666.
And it’s not just rich kids who escape justice after killing people on Ukraine’s roads.
In August, 62-year-old businessman Petro Dyminskiy, the co-owner of the ZIK TV channel and FK Karpaty soccer club, crashed his Lexus into the car of a 31-year-old woman on a road in Lviv Oblast. The woman was killed immediately.
Although his security guard immediately claimed that he, not Dyminskiy, was behind the wheel at the time of the crash, eyewitnesses said he was lying.
On Aug. 22, a DNA test recovered from the driver’s seat airbag confirmed that Dyminskiy had been driving the car.
The same day prosecutors called Dyminskiy in for questioning, but it emerged that the businessman had fled the country that morning.
Dyminskiy flew to Geneva, Switzerland on his private jet. In September, Dyminskiy’s guard was found guilty of perjury, and placed under house arrest.
Fines and video
Neither Zaitseva nor the Volkswagen Touareg driver was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the car crash in Kharkiv, local police reported on their website on Oct. 19. The crash happened because Zaitseva ignored a traffic signal and hit the Volkswagen on a crossroad, they said.
Zaitseva’s Lexus hit 11 people between 24–36 years of age, killing five and injuring six. Police have opened a criminal case only against Zaitseva. The second driver is a witness in the case.
According to news website Censor.net, this is the third time Zaitseva has violated road safety rules in the two years since she obtained her driving license.
Investigators asked drivers who witnessed the crash to provide them with any dashcam footage they might have, as every video could be important evidence.
Avakov also said the solution Ukraine’s deadly reckless driving problem was more video cameras covering roadways and stiffer fines for offenders.
According to the Administrative Code of Ukraine, drivers are obliged to pay a Hr 425 — less than $20 — penalty for general road traffic offenses. Drivers who strike and kill pedestrians face from 5–10 years in prison, according to the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
“I ask parliament to quickly adopt amendments to the road safety legislation. We have already submitted them to the Rada,” Avakov wrote.
Kholopik said that the activists have been trying to convince the Ukrainian government that Ukraine desperately needs stricter control on the roads for two years already.
“It is a shame that only the death and tragedy can persuade our politicians to finally start changing the legislation,” Kholopik said.
The lawyer was confident that Zaitseva wouldn’t manage to evade justice as many other rich kids before her, due to the high resonance of her case.
