DNEPROPETROVSK, Ukraine — As violence flared late last month in Kiev after Parliament approved a draconian law against dissent,
two of the richest men in this industrial city 300 miles to the east of
the Ukrainian capital met in an expensive Italian restaurant that they
own and made a fateful decision.
The
men, Hennadiy Korban and his partner Borys Filatov, decided to remove
advertising videos featuring glamorous models from a large outdoor
screen at an upscale shopping mall called Passage and replace them with a
live broadcast of raucous anti-government protests at Independence
Square in Kiev.
They
also ordered their local properties to hoist the flags of the European
Union and Ukraine, a gesture of open revolt in a Russian-speaking region
where economic and political power have traditionally been united in
looking more to Moscow than to Europe for guidance.
Retribution,
or at least some extraordinarily bad luck, swiftly followed. Hours
after the flags went up on Jan. 25, all three of their company’s
shopping malls in Dnepropetrovsk lost their electricity, and panicked
shoppers scrambled through the dark for the exits.
The
video screen outside went dark, silencing the antigovernment chants
from Kiev and, at least on the surface, restoring Dnepropetrovsk as a
bastion of calm support for Ukraine’s embattled president, Viktor F.
Yanukovych.
Caught
in a titanic tug of war for influence between Russia and the West,
Ukraine is also being tugged in opposite directions by the forces facing
off at the Passage mall in Dnepropetrovsk. In an economy dominated by a relative few wielding enormous wealth,
the outcome of the struggle could well hinge on how many other
businesspeople make the same switch as Mr. Korban and Mr. Filatov and
join the street in rejecting Mr. Yanukovych’s tilt toward Russia.
The
defection of two provincial businessmen — motivated as much by
resentment of the strong-arm tactics of rivals in league with the
government as by lofty ideals — will not tip the balance of power in
Kiev or even here in this city of more than a million people, its
economy dominated by huge Soviet-era factories like Yuzhmash, a rocket
maker still owned by the state.
But
it underscores how a protest movement that the government dismisses as
the work of nationalist extremists from the country’s west has reached
into Mr. Yanukovych’s political power base in the east and is even
eroding the loyalties of those who have thrived under him.
And
it shows how, for all their differences, the disaffected moguls and the
protesters are driven by a deep frustration with what they see as the
country’s lawless law-enforcement system and ubiquitous corruption. Both
camps call for not just democracy but for a more “normal,”
European-style government with transparent institutions, secure property
rights and an impartial justice system.
Fearing
arrest, Mr. Korban and Mr. Filatov fled Ukraine for Israel last week. A
Dnepropetrovsk judge ordered on Jan. 29 that Mr. Korban be detained and
interrogated as a witness in connection with a previously dormant
investigation of a 2012 murder.
According
to the pair’s lawyers, state security officers then raided the premises
of their accountant, saying they were looking for bombs or other
evidence of terrorism. They found none, said one of the lawyers,
Oleksandr Sanzhara.
The
businessmen do not regret their decision. “We decided that we had to do
something as citizens, to send a signal that not all businessmen are
afraid,” said Mr. Korban, an aggressive local tycoon whose interests
include a string of hotels, three big shopping centers and stakes in
many of Ukraine’s biggest companies.
“We want to live in Europe, not in an outpost of the Russian empire,” added Mr. Korban, 43, speaking by phone from Israel.
The president ignited the current turmoil in November when he abruptly spurned a sweeping trade and political accord with the European Union and instead went to Moscow to secure a $15 billion credit deal, which has since been suspended.
Ukraine’s
biggest business moguls, known as oligarchs, have so far mostly hedged
their bets, with the exception of Petro Poroshenko, a shipping,
confectionery and agriculture magnate whose television station, Channel
5, has been broadcasting around the clock from Independence Square.
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