"...To be let everywhere"

...Naturally: summer, it is better to communicate outdoors, in an arbor.

Viktor Fedorovych wears a T-shirt and a sleeveless jacket with a golf-club label. A funny idea flashes across my mind: it is good that he has not competed with the president and prime minister in arraying oneself in embroideries! Naturalness is always more honest, especially for a politician. If you do not like then do not choose.

Yanukovych talks in Russian, although in certain moments changes to Ukrainian without any strain. He does not keep up the favorite among many VIPs theme of childhood memories: "Too much humiliation". He tells how many birds, from grey cranes and herons to exotic Australian magpies and pheasants from every corner of the world, he bred in the woodland.

Unexpectedly (however, unexpectedly for the party leader in suit-tie look) recalls his countryman-cosmonaut Georgiy Beregovoy with a joke: "I was considered to be his extramarital son!" And nods his agreement with Beregovoy's precepts, when the talk turns to women: "Remember, Viktor: the older you become, the more you value women's beauty!" He flings a seditious remark: "Well, I am a romantic person". But stops immediately and pronounces a phrase proper for his age and position about the respect as the highest feeling towards women, wives and mothers. He tells after short hesitation: he has composed verses and even songs which he sings himself.

I do not know what image-makers advise Viktor Fedorovych to answer about his ideals and aims. There is likely to be a list of statesmen, at least historical personalities, whose exploits are purely comparable with intentions of the former prime minister and opposition leader: to struggle for a post of the president of Ukraine. Vladimir Vysotskiy does not fit in with such a company and campaign at all. However, Yanukovych stubbornly chooses and repeats exactly his line from the old questionnaire: "The most cherished desire? To be let everywhere!"

It is the desire to get himself away from flags, bridle, somebody else's track, from closed Odessa owing to non-flying weather, not to mention inaccessible Paris, and to occupy his own track.

No, time is definitely on men's side...

"I was vivacious and experienced"

- People from your milieu tell about Yanukovych's tremendous memory. They say that you read a document once and as if photographed it. The same with numbers...

- I realized it about myself back in early childhood. I have even invented a scheme for earning money. We lived very poorly with my grandmother. Her pension was 12 roubles 50 copecks. I had to think how to hold out for whole month. Life made me use brains all the time.

- For example?

- (Momentary reflection.) No, I will show you the schemes another time... Now I would rather give you another example. I ran an enterprise with about 500 cars in it. I kept in my memory all numbers and models of the cars. Besides, if somebody said the number of a car, I identified a driver by his name. I knew what families they had. For example, I said hello to a man and asked: "Well, where is your daughter going to enter? She finishes school this year!" I enjoy being interested in people who are next to me. I remember telephone numbers from all my former works. It is true. You could check it if we bet now! (Laughs.)

- And do you remember events to the smallest detail?

- Events as well.

- This means that nothing escapes from your memory at all. It is okay to remember the good in detail. But what about the bad, which is usually abundant?

- I am more focused on good rather than on evil. I have created a lot, relatively speaking. I formed teams and set up enterprises. And I got things done. When you come to know people around yourself, you see what everybody is capable of, you see their position.

- And if you imagined that today you met yourself as a person whom you were twenty years ago and took a detached view, what kind of a person would he be? What would he want from life? Money? Fame? Love? Power?

- Well, not so old story – twenty years ago... 1988, right?

I worked in the Ministry of Coal Industry. It was situated in Donetsk. I was a manager of the motor company as well. (In May, 1989 Yanukovych was appointed managing director of association of enterprises "Donbasstransremont", and in July of the same year he won the alternative elections. In 1991, having won the next elections, Yanukovych took up a position of CEO of association of enterprises "Donbasstransremont". – Author). And then I had to run for the director of "Donbasstransremont".

At that moment Gorbachev's decree "On electiveness of chief executives" was barely issued, and I became a pioneer. The day before minister Schadov called me into his office... (Suddenly he stops talking and, having typically frowned, having changed a tembre of his voice to hoarse, low, with rolling "r" and bossy pauses, imitates the minister. Galkin (parodist) pales.)

- "Viktor... You must go... I understand that I send you as if to the rear of an enemy. But you, Viktor, must win!..." Another man performed his functions of "general".

And I entered the association, the collective being Varangian. They motioned their candidatures. There were five of them, together with Yanukovych under the minister's order. The period of first miner's strikes in the USSR was coming. Everything was maturing and became tense. By the way, I was elected on July 6, 1989. And the strike began on July 15.

What kind of person was I? I will tell you... Vivacious, experienced. In two months I convinced the collective so much that they gave me 98 per cent "for". By secret vote with ballot-papers! I turned out to be more convincing than home-bred strategists... My chief executive experience – I have already worked as a director of the motor company, the second largest in the Union, in the Ministry of Coal Industry as a high official, a chief of central division – allowed me to feel confident. I gained wisdom by experience.

"Is it me who does not help Enakievo?!"

- And did you come out to the miners on strike at famous Lenin Square in Donetsk? A kind of Maidan in black overalls, which beat hard hats on burning hot asphalt, badmouthed in megaphones and promised to destroy the party regional committee, city executive committee and in general all executive and directing bodies to hell?

- I will say even more – I became a member of the strike-committee. Director general!

- What?! Did you protest against yourself?

- I joined the strike-committee, and that is all. I was proposed by the chairman of labor collective. People supported me. I stood with all at the square in Makeevka. I persuaded Schadov into the necessity of conducting the first meeting of miners, of changing their life for better.

- Viktor Fedorovych, I have recently returned from Enakievo, from your small motherland. Obviously, it is impossible to demand from the miner's city to look like Yalta. But one cannot accept the present situation as well. It is not a place for living in principle!

- Yes, it is difficult there.

- Enakievo is shrouded in puff of multicolored caustic smoke: a metallurgical factory breathes in the city center. Revetment slipped down from the Palace of Culture. Multistoried buildings are in cracks, got black. A temple dome does not shine with gilt and is covered with stains: it has oxidized. Even blue fir-trees near the city administration changed their color into red as in Chornobyl forest. Tell us, please, are You afraid of accusations in lobbyism, do You dread to help Your countrymen not to make other part of Ukraine feel offended? (I noticed that statement of the question hurt him deeply. Yanukovych undergoes a fight between the politician, who just has to love the entire country equally under a situation of permanent elections, and a person of purely Donbass origin, however Kyiv polished his character.)

- I built this temple. And I am building the second now – if look from the side of Donetsk, then on the right, where Beregovoy's park is, will be a church of Georgiy Pobedonosets.

- Churches are needed. But only they are not the things that help.

- To make correct conclusions, the city history should be known. You understand that I know it well, don't you? Since 1974 deputy of the USSR Supreme Soviet, pilot-cosmonaut Beregovoy and I had been engaged in Enakievo's social infrastructure. Blanks with his signatures lay on my desk... I built the city executive committee, where windows are sooty now, as well as the Palace of Culture!

- Then it should pain You, should it not?

(He does not react to the remark. But it is impossible to interrupt: a feeling that the green, smoothly combed grass of elite summer residence lawn would now be changed with other landscape.)

-...Covered market, Bulavinka river – we cleaned it, storage pool, it was even called Enakievo sea, Beregovoy avenue with dwelling-houses – I built. And airplanes? All airplanes in Enakievo, there are five of them, according to a number of the city entrances, I set. An airplane from the side of Donetsk is embodied through one wing in a slab. A monument to the dead countrymen-pilots. A flying club functioned in the town, where guys, including my father and Georgiy Beregovoy, studied. They were sent away to war from there.

"The flying club I have reestablished as well..."

- You say "sooty windows". Let me tell about Enakievo... My wife has always been a neat person. All days long she had been washing and wiping the apartment. And in the evening I touched a window-sill with my hand – black soot again. But it is not the worst yet! You could not even imagine what happened to the city over 1993-94. Post-war devastation... That is, what we have now is already the recovery, we are getting out of ruins.

We restored Enakievo metallurgical factory, it began to work. The doors and windows of the Palace of Culture were rammed with boards, now it is functioning. It is being prepared for refurbishment – the funds have already been assigned. And cemeteries!... Landslide processes were going on there, gaps. Sanitation was splitting, water with excrements was flowing along the streets...

The town has a very complicated infrastructure. The largest metallurgical factory comprises five blast furnaces, two converter workshops, agglofactory, cement factory. Everything puffs. You cannot forget about by-product coke plant, chemical factory, a dozen of mines. In addition to new waste banks, there remained old ones as well, they are not extinct. Not only to work but also to live there is an exploit. I arrive in Enakievo, and there are fewer and fewer people of my age...

- Do You often go there?

- I have been there recently during funeral days. Then once again. I ought to visit my school: to check what is there, to help, to readjust. That is how things are... We are making progress and wish it went faster.

But the bad point is that the town has no budget for this year due to the well-known reasons. And the last year they finished splendidly, as well as the whole Ukraine. Five, almost six billion of hryvnias were provided for regions, for their development.

- Viktor Fedorovych, the description "splendid" is exactly neither about Enakievo nor about Ukraine as a whole!

- Ask any city mayor, let him compare to the present situation! Last year we upgraded the housing and communal services infrastructure greatly, wrote off many debts. Now there are no conditions for the housing and communal services at all. And with other things in the economy is the same situation.

"I am fed up, but there are obligations"

- I am sure that You remember the 2004 presidential campaign in every detail. Tell me, please, do these memories discourage You from participating for the second time in exhausting, dirty and not very thankful arrangement? In fact, everything will recur in a new round of the race. Searching for "dark spots" in biography, accusations, disclosures, perhaps – betrayals by those, who today are close and significantly devoted...

- I am as free as I can allow myself. And I cannot let myself keep from the fight. Firstly, the largest in the country the Party of Regions has to enter the elections. Secondly, if it is not Yanukovych, then it will be someone else. All right, no problem! If only they were a politician with high rating...

Today the situation is such that it is even difficult to describe how fed up I am with it. But there are obligations. When I visit regions, the only question is asked: "You will not leave us, won't You?" Crowd gathers, I come nearer, she... (he shows with a gesture as if slowly takes off gloves from hands and winces as if of pain) pulls away the burnt skin, she had been injured at the factory, and cries: "Do not quit! Do not leave us!"

After meetings – it is all. I am a hostage! Tales are being spread: whether Yanukovych and the party will enter the elections or will quit. Where the party should quit? The congress will decide who will become a candidate. And it is not difficult to guess its decision. Whatever inner emotions or contradictions I had, I cannot behave otherwise.

Olga MUSAFIROVA, "Komsomolskaya pravda" in Ukraine", July 9, 2008