In the last Sunday of August some former USSR countries celebrate Coal miner’s Day. People usually praise coalminers on this day for their hard and dangerous job. Officials congratulate them and many coal miners get medals. I also congratulate true coalminer on this day, they work hard and risk their lives every day, and through blood and sweat they give thousands and thousands of tons of “black gold” providing electricity and heating for our houses. Every resident of Donbas respects coalminer’s work. But as one of well-known proverb says every family has its black sheep. And unfortunately coalminer’s family is not an exception. I want to tell you about some coalminers who are like that.
At the beginning of 2015 on state coalmine “Perevalskaya” located on occupied territory of Perevalsk District of Lugansk Region there was an accident and as a result of that almost all coalmine was flooded, as coal miners say, it sunk. “What happened to the coalmine” officials from the Ministry of Energy and Coalmine Industry of Ukraine were asking them. “It sunk…” that was probably the answer of Chief Engineer of the coalmine Mikhail Biniashvily. Well… accidents happen, and the coalmine was in ATO zone. But you also need to take into consideration that officials from Kiev won’t be able to check what happened as they can’t go to the territory of so-called LPR and locals can say that expensive equipment got sunk or just somebody needed it more. Nobody will be able to check anyway. Maybe nobody would even notice that event, if there was not a chain of other events that followed the accident.
On March 11 2015 Vadym Slyva who recently became the general director of Ukrainian state company “Luganskugol” addressed to the minister of energy of self-proclaimed LPR asking him to allow his people to take coalmining equipment from “Perevalskaya” coalmine that costs huge amount of money. “Theminister” Lyaminsurprisinglygavehispermission. Every person with logical mind would ask a question why director of Ukrainian company addresses the “Ministry of Energy of LPR” and not Ukrainian ministry. The logic of the head of “Luganskugol” becomes clear after Slyva gets a position of Deputy Minister of Energy in LPR (On April 22 2015 Informator.lg.ua reported that Ukrainian coal general Slyva went to service insurgents of LPR). On January 24 2015 people of Slyva from “Luganskugol” accompanied by armed insurgents of LPR came to “Perevalska” coalmine and started to take equipment and materials from the territory of the coalmine according the list they had. We should probably ask Biniashvily where did they get the list of equipment of a coalmine that is not part of “Luganskugol” company. Insurgents couldn’t take everything out in one day, so they started to go there quite regularly until the storehouses of the coalmine got completely empty.
By the beginning of April the coalmine was completely flooded, there was no equipment to pump the water out, a coalmine stopped working. That means there was no sense to continue to pay salary to coalminers and staff of this Ukrainian company was fired. But after they were fired Mikhail Biniashvily and his men showed up on the territory of the coalmine with LPR insurgents and got into their cabinets. Following the order of Biniashvily and his associate Vitaliy Fomenko (fired chief mechanical engineer of the coalmine) coal miners started to go down into the coalmine and they were dismantling metal arch supports in parts of the mine that wasn’t flooded, the metal after that was taken away by truck in the unknown direction. Although it’s not hard to guess where the trucks with stolen state property were going, because smuggling metal to Russia is one of the main sources of profit for LPR insurgents.
After Biniashvily and his team finished with “Perevalskaya” coalmine, the authorities of his new Motherland decided to reward him for his service for LPR and they made him the director of “Romanovskaya” coalmine that was located close to “Pervomayskaya”. Mikhail Rubenovich together with his team continues to steal and sell state property filling his pockets with money. Mikhail Rubenovich is not afraid of Ukrainian “punishers” otherwise he wouldn’t be leaving his new Motherland LPR and wouldn’t be coming to Ukraine. I won’t be surprised if registered his big coalminers pension in Ukraine and received additional 884 UAH support from the government as a temporary displaced person. So I have a question to Security Service of Ukraine, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Prosecutor’s Office how soon this “hero” will be rewarded?
Eugeniy Rodnyanskiy for Informator.lg.ua