published in Eastern Economist #403, October 22, 2001
One bright morning this past week, it seemed like déja-vu all over again. Shades of the summer of agony while the train station was being reconstructed. The cab I was in turned the corner to the office at 09:05 only to find the block off limits again. Once again, I had to leave my taxi behind and walk the rest of the way to work.
When I got to the end of the street, pedestrians were being forced to cross to the other side. It turned out that the entire block bounded by Saksahanskoho, Kominternu, Zhylianska, and Starovokzalna was circled by policemen. Ambulances stood in the street as well, lights flashing, while every 30-40 feet, a cop was standing to make sure no pedestrian tried to pull a fast one and cross to his sidewalk.
Was there an accident, I wondered? Did somebody offer his fellow workers a poisoned birthday cake?
Then I remembered the news from America and thought, I bet an envelope with smallpox spores has been sent to some organization on this block.
I mean, Ukraine’s not on the terrorist hit-list as far as we know. But you never know where they might want to throw on a dress rehearsal.
In addition to several ambulance vehicles, a gas service team and a crew of firefighters were on hand. Apparently traffic had just been blocked just after 09:00, so those of us working in the area who like to cut our commutes a little close were now really late.
When I asked some people standing around what was going on, nobody seemed to know. The cops weren’t talking.
I could see that the police were all armed and not long after, two armored personnel carriers joined the scene. When I got to the office, people were saying that there was a bomb threat at the Australian Consulate, which is on Kominternu. Later, a rumor was circulated that the pharmaceutical plant may have been seized by terrorists.
So my guess about the smallpox wasn’t that far-fetched.
Before we knew it, it was noon and we still didn’t what was going on. Finally, I got word from a source at the Defense Ministry it was all a planned training for personnel in the SBU, Defense Ministry and Emergency Ministry. Apparently the exercise involved some anti-terrorist training as well. At around 13:00, the Emergency Ministry made it official.
Meanwhile, the entire neighborhood was ticked at not being forewarned. Worse, with the four streets closed to traffic, it was impossible to get to the train station other than by taxi or minibus. Since the majority of trains arriving in Kyiv do so between 09:00 and noon, this put out a fair number of people, both those arriving from elsewhere, and those wanting to meet their trains.
At 14:00, the “exercise” ended as abruptly as it had begun.
Still, a lot of questions were unanswered to my mind. And I wasn’t entirely ready to throw away the smallpox theory. Especially when I found out that right in the middle of that block was a huge pharmaceutical factory, KyivMedPreparat.
Had this company maybe discovered a Taliban-resistant strain of anthrax? Were they caught terrorizing oblast governors with powdered envelopes?
The next day, more details of the mysterious blockade leaked out. A journalist from Sevodnia had talked to the receptionist at KyivMedPreparat, whose plant is on Saksahanskoho.
This person, who remained unidentified, claimed that it was not an exercise at all but that there had been four home-made plastic bombs inside the pharmaceutical plant. They said the police had been called at 09:00 and by 09:05 the streets had been cordoned off and the guards standing every 30-40 feet around the periphery were supposed to keep people from going in.
I know we counted at least eight ambulances sent to the scene. Still, I decided to do some sleuthing on my own. I called the director of the KyivMedPreparat plant. He wasn’t available but his assistant told me that they hadn’t heard of any bombs and the plant was operating as usual. “We’re sitting here drinking coffee and we don’t see any danger.”
To double-check, someone wandered over to the plant and got to talking with one of the girls on her lunch break.
“Heck no, there wasn’t any bomb,” laughed Marina, a worker in KyivMedPreparat’s sales department. “There was a notice about the training up at the entrance to the factory three days ago. I think everybody here was pretty well aware of the training.”
Just to make sure, they asked the plant’s security guards what it was all about. These boys confirmed that there hadn’t been any explosives in KyivMedPreparat’s yard. “There’s a bunch of training going on in the city,” said one of the guards. “They just blocked off the roads to make it more realistic.”
“More realistic”? Thank god they didn’t decide to blow a wall out of the plant while they were at it. I talked to the boss about considering a move to a quieter neighborhood.
“How about down the block from Baikove Cemetery?” I said to her this morning. “There’s a nice one-story building that looks like it wouldn’t be too expensive…”
Meanwhile, there’s a curious PS to the TU-154 crash story. There’s a guy called Dmytro Korchynskiy who’s the head of UNA-UNSO, the paramilitary wing of a right-wing Ukrainian party. He’s not exactly known for his reasonable rhetoric. But one morning this last week on UTAR, a Kyiv television channel, Korchynskiy made a surprisingly sane statement – especially given all the craziness around the world just now: “I used to think that Ukraine should’ve remained a nuclear state. Now I’m kinda happy that it isn’t. Just think, there might be no Brovary any more. And who knows what else.” Amen! •
–from the notebooks of Pan O.
No comments:
Post a Comment