I hate writing about myself and using the first person singular, since it always sounds biased. Yet I was urged to break with my own tradition not due to personal offense or a desire to present to ZN readers a single point of view on the events described below. Many times I have had to deal with the cynical and uncontrolled behavior of certain people towards others. When listening to both sides-one of which was often driven to despair while the other was trying to convince me that his opponent was exaggerating-I always had some doubt. Maybe, indeed, this was not outrageous cynicism, and maybe people from a certain financial and political structure, which for some reason provoked most of the allegations, were deliberately demonized? Now I know that such cynicism is not exaggerated, as I had a first-hand experience of it.

Never before have I returned to Kyiv from a field trip thinking “thank goodness, I am alive,” even when I returned from the war in Bosnia in the mid 1990s. This time I didn’t go abroad. Yet three days in Mukachevo proved to be worth a week of warfare, where you always know exactly where the danger comes from. However, even wars have rules, unlike the mayoral election campaign waging in a small district center in the Trans-Carpathian Oblast of Ukraine. There, in theory, the election of the city mayor will take place on April 18, and this honorary seat is being contested, in fact, by the only two influential parties in the region - Our Ukraine and the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (United).

I will not go in depth on the details of previous events surrounding the seat of the Mukachevo city mayor, as my article has a different point. On March 22, I came with my television colleagues to this pleasant town to record my first investigative journalism program Zakrytaya Zona [The Closed Zone], which was to be broadcast on April 15 on the 5^{th Channel. As the main conflict was between two political camps of local significance, naturally we wanted to hear both sides’ version. One would think that we, Kyiv residents, a priori were not an interested party. However, only we thought that. We started having difficulties obtaining information from the acting city authorities, appointed by the President on New Year’s eve, from the very first day. At the deputy mayor’s office, which was also the headquarters of the municipal area election commission, I was met by two sturdy skinheads, who obviously wanted me to leave the place with my journalist’s ID as soon as possible. The nature of our meeting prompted me to think that I should visit city hall only with a TV camera, and from then on we shot our every move to avoid any threats. For these, however, we didn’t wait long.}

On March 23, I learned that the day before, the head of the city department of education had summoned two Mukachevo secondary-school principals to cite them convincing reasons why they would resign of their own free will if they wanted to avoid any serious trouble. Top officials had learned that both principals sympathized with the Our Ukraine bloc. The teaching staffs of both schools decided to stand up for their principals, while we, logically, went to the city hall to look for the head of the Education Department.

I should mention here that the city hall in any city is a public place, and no special permit is needed to shoot camera footage there. Our cameraman, Oleksandr Pronin, and I met the head of the Education Department, Yaroslav Kobal, in a corridor near the mayor’s reception room. Kobal asked as to wait for him while he took some documents from the office. Ten minutes later a tall man, aged 30 -35, came out of the office and asked for our IDs. I showed him my ID and asked for his identity. He said bluntly that he was a city council deputy and his name was none of our business and went back to the office. A few minutes later, however, he returned, accompanied by two more men, an executive secretary and one more person, whose identity we failed to establish. The deputy told me that I threatened and blackmailed his colleagues and that he would call the militia. When I asked him to specify whom exactly I threatened and how, he said that I threatened to publish “compromising materials”. First he called his unidentified companion the witness, then made him the victim and promised to kick us out of the building. He would not listen to my claim that we were in the city hall legally, and used a four letter word regarding me and the Criminal Code, to which I had referred saying that Article 171 prohibits deliberately putting obstacles in the way of journalists’ work. We left after his attempt to break our camera in order that the meeting did not put a complete end to our shooting in Mukachevo.

The footage was seen by journalists from the local channel “M-Studio”, and so we learned that our assailant was indeed City Council deputy Ivan Chubirko, also adviser to the head of Trans-Carpathian oblast state administration, and a relative of Viktor Medvedchuk, the head of the Presidential Administration. Chubirko is married to the sister of Oksana Marchenko, the SDPU (u) leader’s wife. I told the head of the Oblast State Administration, Ivan Risak, about his advisor’s behavior. He must be given credit, since after that we did not have any problems getting comments from officials, although we didn’t manage to talk personally to the head of the Education Department again.

Yet the next day we had news from him and from Mr.Chubirko. On the morning of March 24, our hotel manager said that the militia was looking for me. A few hours later, I learned that both representatives of the city administration together with Yuriy Perestoy, the chairman of the area election commission, whom I had also asked for an interview, filed a complaint about me with the militia, saying that I behaved like a hooligan in the city hall. The whole day long, while we were shooting in town, our car was followed by a gray Daewoo Lanos, which was later replaced by a gray Volkswagen Passat. In the evening my cameraman and I wrote a letter to the Prosecutor General, the head of the State Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and the prosecutor and head of the SBU of Trans-Carpathian oblast in which we described all these events and asked them to determine if they qualified as a criminal case according to Article 171 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

Now I understand people who yell about injustice. The only difference between them and me is that everything that was happening to us was taken down on video, including the way we behaved in the city hall; whereas not everyone can carry a camera with them at all times. I only don’t know if this will help us.

Incidentally, according to our information, Ivan Chubirko is responsible for implementing the “Mukachevo” decree of the President. Well, a worthy choice…