You can call it the “people’s lustration,” the “Trash-Bucket Challenge,” or mob rule.
Activists have advertised their activities on social networks under the hashtag #TrashBucketChallenge, playing off the name of the Ice-Bucket Challenge, the viral Internet campaign that sought to raise awareness for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
It signals a growing frustration in Ukraine with what’s widely seen as enduring corruption, abuse of power, and foot-dragging on political reforms by the new authorities.
The list of officials who have been victims of the “Trash-Bucket Challenge” is long and includes:
— Oleh Rudenko, a regional public insurance official in Odesa who was recently accused of bribe-taking
— Vitaliy Fedak, a bureaucrat from Ternopil
— Oleksandr Panchenko, a former Cossack leader from the Zaporizhzhya region
— Mykola Koretsky, a regional lawmaker from Kirovohrad Oblast, formerly of the Party of Regions
— Viktor Pylypyshyn, a lawmaker in the Verhovna Rada from the Party of Regions
Shufrych suffered a concussion and later made a television appearance from his hospital bed, sporting a bandaged eye.
A criminal investigation for “hooliganism” has been opened, although Shufrych’s opposition bloc expressed doubts it would yield much.
In a Facebook post on October 1, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov appealed to the activists to end the practice, saying it could cost Ukraine support in the West.
“A couple more broken faces…and Europe will turn away from our victorious revolution. I fear America will as well.
Gentlemen radicals, don’t behave like marginal imbeciles — don’t fall for the stupid, instinctive, and provocational desire for mob justice,” he wrote.
Speaking to RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Right Sector activist Yuriy Mindyuk said the group “understands that activists went beyond the boundaries of the law…but we are more concerned that lustration in Ukraine may not even happen and that the old bandits who robbed this country will never have to answer.”
But by whatever name, Ukrainian activists are increasingly taking the matter of punishing officials from the old regime into their own hands.
Impatient with unsigned lustration legislation, activists from groups like the Right Sector have been tossing officials in trash containers — and sometimes beating them, too — to signal disgust at the officials’ ties to the government of former President Viktor Yanukovych, their alleged corruption, or their support for separatists in the country’s east.
The latest target? Nestor Shufrych, a lawmaker from ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, who condemned Ukraine’s military campaign against pro-Russian rebels in the war-torn east.
Shufrych arrived on September 30 in the Black Sea city of Odesa for a campaign press conference ahead of October 26 parliamentary elections.
Shufrych was beaten, his face bloodied, and his shirt torn off outside a regional administration building by a mob of more than a dozen activists wearing masks, including members of Right Sector.
He fled to his minivan before the crowd could toss him into a trash container, receiving little help from police in the process.
Four days age, another brawl broke out when opposition lawmaker Nestor Shufrych called Viktor Medvedchuk, a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician, an “agent” of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Then, as he walked away from the lectern, Shufrych ripped down a poster showing Medvedchuk’s face.
That, it turned out, was a bridge too far.
Within seconds, two men were upon Shufrych.
As they grappled, one of the men threw a punch at Shufrych.
The fight quickly escalated and clogged an aisle as others joined in.
This isn’t the first, second or even third time this has happened.
Ukraine has a long history of parliamentary brawling, some fights breaking out over personal matters and others over major domestic and international issues.
In 2014, a similar skirmish erupted between nationalist and pro-Russian lawmakers over fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The next year, a parliamentary session in March was cut short after one politician accused another of taking a bribe. His demands for his allegedly corrupt colleague to resign turned into another exchange of blows.
Later in 2015, fighting broke out within the ruling coalition after one lawmaker attempted to physically remove then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk from the podium.
In this case there was some decorum: Before hoisting Yatsenyuk off his feet, the legislator handed him a bouquet of red flowers.
Yet another disagreement took place in February 2015. This one happened on the sidelines, but it was no less heated than any of the fights that took place on the parliament floor. Lawmakers Yegor Sobolev and Vadim Ivchenko came to blows over a bill on land ownership, according to Radio Free Europe.
The scuffle lasted almost a minute, resulting in a bloodied nose and lip before security forces intervened.