New vs. Old Ukraine Collide At Yanukovych's Ally Funeral

The former Party of Regions parliamentary faction leader who was involved in numerous corruption schemes and actively suppressed peoples freedoms and the revolution? Can people really empathize with his suicide when so many innocent people are suffering as result of the war? And what’s happened to the allies of the former Ukrainian President who have remained in Ukraine?

At the Feofaniia clinic in Kyiv, hordes of journalists awaited attendees of Mykhailo Chechetov’s funeral. The former Party of Regions parliamentary faction leader committed suicide early on 28 February by jumping from the 17th floor of his apartment. The car park was full of expensive cars and several previously powerful figures from Ukraine’s political and business elite re-emerged for the occasion. The most prominent of which were: Vasyl Kyseliov, former leader of the Party of Regions parliamentary faction; Oleksandr Popov, former head of Kyiv City State Administration; General Kuzmuk – a Minister of Defence at Kucham Administration, Petro Melnyk, former Rector of the National University of State Tax Service of Ukraine; Yurii Boiko, leader of the Opposition Bloc in parliament, former Vice PM of Ukraine, former Minister of Fuel and Energy, and the Dobkin brothers – Mykhailo Dobkin is a former governor of Kharkiv region and the president candidate.

There was also one lesser known guest that had been passing through: a soldier recently injured from fighting in Debaltseve. He went unnoticed by most of the journalists. The soldier told Hromadske that for him Chechetov’s death was “not the death of the former Party of Regions leader, but the death of a human being”.

// Bohdan Kutiepov. Filmed 03.02.2015