Informator.lg.ua raised the subject of numerous facts of harassment and discrimination of temporarily displaced people. As we wrote before this is not only governments fault, but it is also initiated by many “patriots” who can’t accept that latent separatists live next to them, walk same streets, go shopping to the same places.
Volunteers of “sofa hundred”
There is a common tendency of radicalization of the society, social problems in Ukraine, work of some media and bloggers, made many displaced people to feel ashamed of their status and they try to hide from it from their neighbors or when looking for a job.
In addition to cautious attitude towards displaced people, maybe there is some part of their fault in that too, many our fellow countrymen started to take active part in new quest that can be called “Catch separatist”. A motive for harassment can be wrong parked car with Lugansk or Donetsk plate, or delay in a reply to “Glory to Ukraine!” phrase. In order locate and hunt alleged separatists “vigilant citizens” use social networks.
Maybe this also happened because Security Service of Ukraine is not quite effective in a fight against collaborators, so they decided to do that on their own.
What is your name?
There are TDP (temporary displaced people) who were born with same last name as the leaders of DPR and LPR. Such people are treated like relatives of separatists by default.
Unfortunately, Informator.lg.ua doesn’t have statistics about how many people with the names like Zakharchenko, Plotlitskiy, Gubarev, Kofman and etc have left occupied territories and moved to Ukraine. It’s quite possible that relatives of some leaders of terrorists are also on this side of the contact line…
Several days ago odious blogger Dmitriy Snegiryov posted a link to a personal page on a social site of a man who he believes to be the son of one of the major “ideologists” of LPR, Chief Editor of “21th centrury” newspaper Yuriy Yurov.
YuriyYurov
According to Snegiryov that young man Bogdan Yurov lives in Kiev when his father continues to build “new republic”.
As a result of that publication the owner of the page stated to get offensive messages and threats and several media spread the information that the son of LPR ideologist lives in the “heart of junta”.
We found out that in reality Bogdan Yurov is not the son and not a relative of Yuriy Yurov at all. We talked to the mother of that young man Elena.
“The thing is that my son not only has the same name Yurov. Yuriy Yurov also has a son with the same name Bogdan of the same age. Both our kids are from Lugansk. 1st time faced this problem more than 10 years ago, when my son was starting going to school. All children were feeling the forms writing their first name and last name, and my son had to write patronymic name also as the son of Yurov was going to the same school
Later they continued to study in different schools, but my husband suggested that our son may have problems in future because the name and last name match… And now when Bogdan is a student of a university in Kiev this really happened” the mother of Bogdan Yurov told us.
Elena said that she’s worried for her son, there are many problems in the family of displaced people from Lugansk already and now this harassment of Bogdan added, Right now he studies at one of Kiev’s universities.
“I am nervous because of this situation, it’s hard for my son as he’s displaced person. And this doesn’t add peace to my soul. After Snegiryov made that post Bogdan started to receive a lot of insults and threats. After I personally talked to Snegiryov he removed the post about my son from his blog on “Obozrevatel”. But the information already started to spread in the Internet. Last night several Internet news agencies posted that fake information” said Elena.
Few words about Yuriy Yurov. “Trampoline” for his journalist and political carrier at the end of 80-ies was his activity in Komsomol (union of young communists). Later at the beginning of 90-ies he played a role of patriot when Yurov was trying to flirt with national-patriotic forces. Later he was working together with famous criminal boss of Lugansk Dobroslavskiy and started to publish his newspaper “21st century”. He was a deputy of Lugansk City Council from communist party, he also was the head of press office of Lugansk Regional organization “Party of Regions”. After Lugansk was taken under control by separatists he supported the occupation and became of the ideologists of LPR. Yuriy Yurov has 5 children, some of them really live on the territory controlled by Ukrainian authorities now. We will not publish their locations or links to their profiles for ethical reasons.
Checking facts? – No, we haven’t heard about it…
Dmitriy Snegiryov who was the 1st to post a link to Bogdan Yurov and other reporters who started to spread the information didn’t get confused that there is no single Russian flag or any other separatists content on his page. Quite opposite there is a lot of Ukrainian patriotic symbolic and links.
Reporters who posted links to Bogdan’s page after Snegiryov, explain that in such way Bogdan follows the steps of his father who converted into Ukrainian activist after being in communist party when it was beneficial to him.
It’s a mystery for us why reporters didn’t try to contact the owner of the page in order to check all information before posting unverified data. The fact is that they didn’t do that.
The son is not responsible for his father?
We would also like to ask Dmitriy Snegiryov and others, even if Bogdan Yurov really was the son of Yuriy Yurov, but was living in Kiev and was pro-Ukrainian, would it be right to insult and hunt him just because he is a relative of LPR ideologist?
The author of these lines believes that it wouldn’t even matter what kind of views that man had. Luckily, in Ukraine you don’t get judged for your thoughts and if you are a relative of a criminal, even if your relative is a terrorist of LPR.
It’s too bad that there are still so many people with medieval way of thinking living in our country. Maybe Dmitriy Snegiryov and others like him are nostalgic for Stalin times when being a relative to “the enemy of the state” was enough reason to get arrested and sent somewhere to Solovki?
In this case, it would be good to remind that according to the researches of modern genealogy, every two people of Earth have at least one common ancestor in some generation and in some way all of us are relatives.
So every one of us can be considered to be a relative of separatists and be hunted based on that. So in such case nobody will be offended…
Aleksey Chernov for Informator.lg.ua