The burning heritage of Kyiv: A list of Klitschko’s loss in five years

During the German administration in Kyiv, intentional arson of a historic building was punishable by execution, and for refusing to put out a fire or poor work by a fire brigade, Wehrmacht soldiers could kill a firefighter to death. At that time, the Nazis explained their excessive cruelty by the impossibility of establishing order in the city in another legal way, and the punishment of the guilty was carried out publicly, in front of the locals.

Capital officials should also think about changing methods and means of combatting “self-ignition” in the historic centre, which has recently become too frequent. And while the Nazis were opposed by ideological guerillas fighting for the liberation of their homeland, then the capital’s officials are now confronted by a much more serious enemy – cosmopolitan financial capital.

“Active citizens” present to your attention the “hit parade” of houses of historical heritage of the capital of Ukraine, on the same inexplicable circumstances broke out and which today’s capital authorities are in no hurry to resume.

“When the Soviet troops left Kyiv, fire trucks were also taken with them. That is, there were no fire trucks plus the Dnieper water pressure station was blown up during the retreat and the water supply system stopped working. The Germans then had to attract hoses from the Dnieper with their own hands and pump water. Although the underground also tried to cut those hoses, then the Germans wore water and buckets. But those houses (burnt-out – note, Author) They never restored – they stood empty,” Alexander Mikhailik, historian, local historian, researcher of the history of our capital, told how it was during World War II.

We’re still seeing something like this now. At the cadence of the last mayor, Vitaly Klitschko, historical buildings in the centre began to burn en masse in Kyiv, but after the fires were eliminated, none of them were ever restored. Moreover, just think about it, no one has been responsible for damaging or destroying a historical and cultural monument in all five years, now Part 2 of Art. 298 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine “Destruction or damage of historical or cultural monuments.” And it provides for “Intentional  destruction or damage of historical or cultural monuments – punishable by a fine of up to one hundred tax-free minimum incomes of citizens or restriction of liberty for up to three years.”

A new arson attack of a 100-year-old building

On Wednesday morning, February 27, another attraction caught fire. Public activist and former deputy of the Kyiv City Council Olena Tereshchenko reported the fire at 91 Sichovykh Strytsov on her Facebook. “Kyivans, how come?! Will we continue to silently observe this lawlessness? “” Elena is outragracked in her note. According to her, the house belongs to the authorship of the outstanding architect of the capital, Hippolyte Nikolaev, and is on fire for the second time in the last few days.

However, the second consecutive arson attack, and this, in particular, is evidenced by the presence of several fires on different floors of the building, was far from the only attempt to destroy this historic building. So, at the end of February 2015, the flames, under mysterious circumstances, also covered the estate several times, located directly opposite the prosecutor’s office No. 10 in the Shevchenko district of Kyiv. However, neither this fact nor belonging to the house, at that time, in the register of historical and cultural monuments of local importance saved the creation of architect Nikolaev, dating back to 1902 construction, from destruction. It is also remarkable that before the fire the house was already empty for several years, and its walls served as a refuge for various informal companies and just the homeless.

The furniture left on the ground floor by previous owners served as a convenient shelter for bookmarks for a long time, and chairs and tables, judging by the artefacts left here, were used to use more serious drugs intravenously. However, neither prosecutors nor the State Fiscal Service, for which the house was taken into account at that time, did not bend such a neighbourhood. Moreover, this situation did not change even after one of the next “guests” of the building died in a fire in the same 2015. The only thing that changed after that fire was ownership – in October 2015, the owner of the real estate on the basis of a sales contract was Belize offshore Global Development Limited. However, the new owners obviously did not be particularly concerned with the condition of the building – the house was later burned and dilapidated directly opposite the prosecutor’s office building, which over the past four years, for unknown reasons, has not initiated any criminal proceedings against negligent landmark owners.

Tabachnik`s heights

The history of the house at street Hrushevsky 4b, which in the same circumstances that were not found out by law enforcement agencies broke out a month earlier – on January 16, 2019. Back in 2003, the Kyiv City Council handed over this and several other adjacent facilities under the investment project of Grail LLC, which is associated with former Minister of Education Dmitry Tabachnik. The purpose of the investment project at that time was to build a multi-storey office centre with underground galleries like the nearby Globe.

Part of the building was then destroyed immediately, in particular, the house of state institutions at 5 Khreshchatyk Street. But the outbuilding is at ul. Hrushevsky 4b, which was in the yard of the house, was preserved. For a while… The public stood several times in his Defence, and in 2013 a wall in memory of Victor Tsoi was opened here. However, almost six years later, the historic building had to repeat the fate of many other cultural heritage sites in the capital – to be burned and wait for their further participation in full ruins.

Fiery lace

Almost a day in and day out with a building on Sechevye Shooters, 91 in 2015 a landmark broke out on B Street. Khmelnitsky, 10. Among Kyivans, this building once received the pretty name “Lace House”. It’s all about the decorative design of the structure: if you look closely, you can see columns, steles and stone rainbows on the building. The monument was built at the beginning of the 20th century as a profitable house, so foreign merchants often stayed there.

 

A special highlight was the first floor, which housed expensive shops and offices of enterprises, the house belonged to the famous local entrepreneur and patron – Friedrich Michelson. In the Soviet period, outstanding cultural and artistic figures lived here, and in 2010 the house was completely inhabited. After the 2015 fire, it’s empty, now only the ground floor is occupied by shops and cafes, in the yard of the house you can still find broken and charred age bricks.

Misfortune Neighbour

No better than fate, so did the house near the “lace house” at B. Khmelnitsky 12-14. This is an ancient estate of merchant Wolfson, built back in 1884 according to the project of architect Vladimir Nikolaev. Back in 2004, Geoinvest, which is associated with Irina Boyko, wife of Minister of the Environment in the government of Azarov Viktor Boyko, has removed residents from here and, under the terms of the investment agreement, should reconstruct the building.

However, no work has ever been started. After the Revolution of Dignity, families of immigrants from the East of Ukraine were housed here for some time, but soon people were forcibly evicted, and all entrances to the building were blocked. In 2016, work began on dismantling the internal ceilings of the building, which then led to the death of two people, and in January 2018, the building still caught fire in the same strange way.

 

Now what is left of the monument is on the balance sheet of the association of co-owners of the polypartment building Bogdan Khmelnitsky, 12-14, which, in particular, includes Irina Boyko.

Expert opinion on “Houses with daisies”

In the same February 2015, the attic of another historic building started a fire. This time, an emergency occurred at 35 Zlatoustovskaya Street, where the so-called “House with Daisies” was located at the time. The unique flower decor of the house, built back in 1910, had no analogues in the works of one of the then capital’s architects, which gave it special value. However, there was a different opinion of the monumentary security agencies.

This architectural monument was demolished two years ago

After the fire, which damaged only the roof of the house, the current director of the Ukrainian State Institute of Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine Olga Plamegytska issued a scandalous conclusion that the house lost “architectural volumes”, which, in her opinion, automatically entails the loss of any “Cultural and aesthetic” value of the object. It was Plamenytska’s conclusion, the “conveyor” of which had already become the basis for an internal official investigation in the Ministry of Culture. He tied his hands to the developer, Ukrbud, which is popularly associated with Maksym Mykytas, a former adviser to Mayor Klitschko. On October 6, 2016, without any extra ceremonies, the monument was razed to the ground in just over an hour.

Burned Hrushevsky

On March 1, 2015, a house at 75 Sichovykh Striltsiv caught fire, the side of which is decorated with a mural with a portrait of the head of the first Ukrainian state.

It is interesting that the city authorities seemed to know something and a few weeks before the emergency completely relocated the house. Today the building is empty, the yard of the house is fenced with tape.

Moscow is on fire

On the morning of February 20, 2017, a building caught fire at 7 Bratskaya Street, which is on historic Podil. A two-storey apartment building was built at the beginning of the XIX century.

At one time, the Moskovsky Hotel was located here and lived the famous Ukrainian writer Marco Vovchok, certifying a memorial plaque on the wall of the house. Since then, the house has been in a semi-abandoned state.

This is not enough

The creation of architect Nikolai Gordenin, 20a Malaya Zhytomyrskaya Street, was on fire interruption. The first arson occurred on March 24, 2017, but was localised on time.

On April 4, the story repeated itself, and the firebed turned out to be the same, it was the roof of the house. It is said that the arson was intentional, and its purpose is to complete the upper floors in order to expand the useful area of the premises. Now the roof of the house is empty, and the perpetrators of arson have never been identified.

Central gastronomy

A little more noise was made by the fire of July 20, 2017 of the famous central gastronomy at the corner of B. Khmelnitsky and Khreshchatyk.

 

Eyewitnesses then claimed to have heard a loud explosion inside the building. Their opinion was subsequently confirmed by experts, determining the cause of the fire – careless handling of gas equipment. However, so far none of the authorised persons of the relevant authorities have been able to explain what the gas equipment was doing in the buildings long time, because the source of the fire, however, as always, was on the roof of the burnt building. After extinguishing the fire and analysing the rubble, the capital authorities obliged the owner of the building, LLC AB Investments and Development, to restore the monument on the basis of the current security contract. But the building is still in ruins.

And again, Podil

On December 10, 2017, Anna Vertiporokh’s long-abandoned apartment building broke out, built at the intersection of Shchekavitskaya and Mezhigorskaya streets at the end of the century before last.

 

 

The house was destroyed purposefully and in several stages. The first fire here occurred back in July 2007, when the roof burned out completely and the third one burned down the upper floor of the building. The misfortune was repeated for the second time in February 2014 when the side walls of the building fell. He finally finished the building with this fire at the end of 2017.

Such “intensive” inaction to preserve its own property then aroused interest among law enforcement agencies. Criminal proceedings were opened against the owner of the building represented by the management of Podil-Business LLC under Art. 367 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine is official negligence. However, none of the defendants in the case have yet suffered real punishment.

Moreover, a similar “schematic” was implemented on ul. Voloshskaya, 5/14, where Podil-Business LLC also owns a historic estate. The house itself was built in 1874-1875. By order of the local merchant Shishkin. The estate also stood in a neglected state for a long time, while its attic mysteriously broke out in December 2017.

Fire under the walls of the Lavra

On November 1, 2018, the capital’s information space stirred up the news of a fire on Lavrskaya Street. A number of resources even mistakenly pointed out that the Kiev Pechersk Lavra itself is burning. However, in fact, the building of the old air regiment barracks was on fire, located next to the development line of Citadelnaya Street.

The building itself dates back to the end of the XIX century and most of the time fulfilled its direct purpose, and since the 2010s – for reconstruction. According to the passport of the facility, the structure is an architectural monument of local importance, and the restoration and rehabilitation of the building is carried out “with adaptation to modern needs.” However, according to local residents, the house has been “framework” for several years – all the internal ceilings have already been dismantled, and the fire is called by locals a means of accelerating the development of the land plot, which has only four “naked” walls, which, however, have been destroyed for several years in a row.

At the same time, the Kyiv critic Alexander Mikhailik notes that this is not the first time the capital has encountered such a problem of intensifying development. “The history, they say, is cyclical and the situation we see now with the development of the central part of the city, it can be compared to the situation that was at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The magazines of the time wrote that the old patriarchal Kyiv is disappearing – five- or six-storey monsters appear on the site of one- or two-storey houses, and the development compacts. At that time, small houses were bought from the owners for nothing and new multi-storey houses were built in their place, at that time,” Alexander shares his impressions.

The researcher attributes this trend to the fact that there are almost no more land plots free of development in the centre of the capital today. In his opinion, fires are just one way for investors to clear the right plot for further construction.

Dmitry Perov , founder of the NGO “Green Minute”

Translated by Ruslan Mahomedov

Read also “Reality show “Burn Ukraine”: the impunity led to record forest and steppe fires”

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