My favorite member of parliament Mykola Tyshchenko was on display over the weekend standing next to Serhiy Leshchenko. Both were surveying damage by cruise missiles that hit a wagon repair factory in Kyiv’s Darnytsky district.
UK Ministry of Defence said the missile strike was “likely an attempt to disrupt the supply of Western military equipment to frontline Ukrainian units.”
Mykola, also known as The Pork Chop from Obolon1, hasn’t popped up on my radar since the war began. On Sunday, he left all the talking to Serhiy, whose English is difficult to understand. Last time I checked, Serhiy was working full-time for the head of the President’s Office, Andriy Yermak.
Mykola and Serhiy. Together. Again. What could go wrong?
Two years ago, I wrote that under Zelensky Ukraine was a sham democracy, a primitive post-soviet feudal autocracy not underpinned by elections or coordinated work of institutions, but by popular uprisings. Absent them, even the illusion of tolerance would not exist2.
I wonder how — or if — the war is changing that.
Known in the underworld as Kolya the Pump, Kolya-Obolonsky and Kolya the Pork Chop, Tyshchenko is a brute, for a man almost 50 years old! A Man in Full. The pork chop from Obolon (September 10, 2021)
Thug Life (Contd). Europe says no to Ukraine’s greasy clowns (October 20, 2020)