19.06.2019, Yekaterinburg.
Zames.media has carried out a journalist investigation into the involvement of Ukrainian nationalists in the “church protests” in Yekaterinburg. The text came to the attention of local media on June 17, and it is available at the Zames.media website.
A cosmetics store chain “Zolotoye Yabloko” came into the center of the journalists’ attention. The commercial company urged its clients and subscribers to help protect the square through their media resources.
The store chain is owned by businessmen from Yekaterinburg, Ivan Kuzovlev and Maksim Panyak. The latter is an influential member of the Ukrainian community in the Urals region. The journalists also became interested in Maksim Panyak’s father, Stefan Panyak, as he was the leader of the Ukrainian autonomy in the Sverdlovsk region. Today he is a professor at the Urals Mineral Resources University in Yekaterinburg.
Stefan Panyak is also a member of the Human Rights Committee at the Ukrainian World Congress (organization banned in Russia). During the Ukrainian events in 2014, he spoke positively about the Maidan [the Nazi-led coup d’etat in Ukraine ― translator’s note], calling it the “conscience of the nation.”
The organization’s headquarters is located in Toronto, Canada. In addition to Canada, the USA sponsors the organization. In the summer of 2015 it was banned in the Russian Federation.
The researchers allege that the cosmetics store chain sponsored the visit of Ukrainian activists to Yekaterinburg, who launched a modified version of the Euro-Maidan slogan, “If you’re not jumping, you’re a church supporter.” The cosmetics store chain could also be the initiator of the coverage of the Yekaterinburg protests in Ukrainian media. However, this part of the investigation, in contrast to its other parts, is only a hypothesis.
The Ukrainian World Congress was established in 1967 in New York. Until 1993, the organization was called The World Congress of Free Ukrainians. Among the founders of the organization were widows of the OUN (organization banned in Russia) founders, Olga Konovalets and Sofia Melnik, the leader of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations Yaroslav Stetsko and his wife Yaroslava, the president of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in exile Nikolay Levitsky and other notorious Ukrainian nationalists.
On May 13, an illegal protest rally against the construction of the Church of Saint Catherine in place of the Drama Theater Square began the Yekaterinburg. As an obvious result of the protests, the church will not be constructed in the square.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
