Today, December 17, it became known that Gennady Kernes, the acting mayor of Kharkiv, died in Germany, who has been treated since September at the Berlin "Sharite" clinic for complications caused by the coronavirus.
Gennady Kernes was treated differently, but without a doubt he was one of the most colorful characters in Ukrainian politics. What did the mayor of Kharkiv remember, ElitExpert reminds.
From a locksmith to own business
Gennady Adolfovich Kernes was born in 1959 in Kharkiv. After graduating from school, according to the official biography, "he worked for more than ten years at the state enterprises of the city." Kernes worked as a locksmith, a milk bottler and even a temporary foreman.
At the end of the USSR, according to the media, he began to have problems with the law. It is not known exactly how the future mayor broke the law. In the press, there is conflicting information about this: different sources attribute to him speculation, "cooking jeans" in underground shops, someone - resale of stolen goods and fraud. There is information that in criminal circles he was known by the nickname "Hepa". Nevertheless, whatever the reason, in the early 1990s Kernes did indeed spend two years in a pre-trial detention center. In the future, the mayor himself emphasized that he was still acquitted, which means that there is no criminal record.
In the same nineties, Kernes got into business: he founded and headed several trading and manufacturing enterprises, which later became the basis of his business empire. Observers assessed his business style as harsh and unceremonious.
One of the factors contributing to Kernes's business success, the mass media called his marriage to Oksana Haysynskaya, the daughter of the former Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine. True, as the mayor noted, she was never his official wife. At the same time, he has three children from different marriages.
"No one will give you money like that"
Kernes made his first steps into politics in 1998, becoming a deputy of the Kharkiv City Council. In 2002, he even became the secretary of the city council, however, he stayed in this seat for only a month - he entered into a confrontation with the then mayor Vladimir Shumilkin, and he initiated his resignation.
In 2004, he supported the Orange Revolution in Kharkov, but soon left the ranks of the first Maidan. His photo with one of the leaders of Kharkiv "Orange" Arsen Avakov can still be found on the Internet. The latter is known as the Minister of Internal Affairs. In the future, he became one of the main opponents of Kernes.
In the local elections of 2006, Kernes worked with Mikhail Dobkin, a candidate for mayor of Kharkiv from the Party of Regions. At the same time, a famous video appeared on the Internet, in which you can hear how Kernes "directed" Dobkin's campaign video. Phrases from this video have become widely used as quotes and memes. Well, who, for example, does not know the imperishable: "Your face is boring, no one will give you money."
Attention, foul language
In 2010, when Dobkin was appointed governor of Kharkiv region, Kernes became acting governor. mayor of Kharkiv, and then won the next election. His main competitor was Arsen Avakov, who left Ukraine for a year and a half after that.
Attitude to the Maidan
During the 2014 Maidan, Kernes spoke out against the protesters, calling them "bacillus". The mayor was even accused of financing titushkas who preyed on Euromaidans. And Yanukovych went to Kharkiv after the shootings in Kyiv in order to enlist the support of local elites.
However, after the victory of the revolution, the mayor radically changed his opinion, but the chair under him continued to wobble. In the spring of 2014, mass rallies of supporters of rapprochement with Russia were held in Kharkov. On March 1, "anti-Maidan activists" stormed the regional state administration building and raised the Russian tricolor over it.
At the beginning of April, in the same way as in the regional centers of Donbass, the creation of a "people's republic" was proclaimed here. However, the "China People's Republic" did not last long: the building of the regional state administration, in which the initiators of the creation of the "republic" barricaded themselves, was stormed by special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
According to rumors, Kernes decided not to support the "anti-Maidan activists", which, in part, predetermined their fate.
Attempt
But Kernes's problems did not end there. On April 28, 2014, an attempt was made on him during his morning run. A bullet fired by a still unidentified sniper damaged four vertebrae, pierced the lung and stomach twice, broke a rib and damaged the adrenal gland of the mayor of Kharkiv.
He regained consciousness only six days later in an Israeli clinic, where he was hurriedly evacuated. Since then, Kernes has been confined to a wheelchair.
Kernes himself said that the investigation of the attempt on him was not progressing in any way, but he repeatedly called him the customer of one of the most influential people in Ukraine, his old friend from Kharkiv, Minister of Internal Affairs Avakov.
Mayor to the end
In 2015, Kernes won the election of mayor of Kharkiv for the second time, running for the "Vozrozhdenie" party. Since Kernes was considered one of the most odious representatives of the "old power" on the ground, the opening of a criminal case against him on suspicion of abduction and torture of "Euromaidans" did not seem unexpected. Kernes called this case far-fetched, but regularly went to court hearings in Poltava.
However, the aura of a pro-Russian politician did not prevent him from being on good terms with President Petro Poroshenko. But already under Volodymyr Zelensky, the relationship with the central government worsened.
It is obvious that on Bankova they wanted to see a second mayor in Kharkov, but Kernes won again in 2020, gaining more than 60% of the votes in the first round. At the same time, Kernes himself did not actually participate in the election campaign, since he fell ill with the coronavirus in mid-September and in a serious condition was taken out of Kharkov in a special "covid capsule" for treatment at the Berlin clinic "Sharite".
This indicates the great popularity of Kernes in Kharkiv better than any rating. During the years of his mayorship, Kharkiv has noticeably improved. Visitors from other cities, primarily from Kyiv, pay attention to the cleanliness and illumination of its central streets, fountains and parks have become symbols of Kharkov. Kernes emphasized that he personally took part in the meetings of the city planning council, where buildings in the historical center of the city were considered. The residents of Kharkiv were lenient towards the shortcomings of the city government, such as the poor state of municipal infrastructure and medicine, the excessive indebtedness of the city, or those accused of corruption.
Despite the statements of Kernes' associates that nothing threatens his life and work capacity, he still did not return. The newly elected city council even started working without Kernes. However, now Kharkiv will have to elect a new mayor.
Quotes
In many ways, Kernes is known to Ukrainians thanks to his statements. One video with Dobkin can be broken down into quotes, but sometimes extravaganzas also took place at city council meetings. Perhaps, the most famous phrase of the mayor, which spread across memes, is this "I will multiply you by zero" which he addressed to the official, called ego "bitch dog".
"You, Kandaurov, get up! Look, bitch, if you - listen carefully to what I'm telling you - once again treat your responsibilities... once again I learn that you personally, as a director, did not control the promises and obligations that you took on, I will multiply you to zero...", Kernes declared.
Another famous phrase: "You're a button, b*t", which Kernes pronounced during a session of the Kharkiv city council, in the conditions of the so-called "tariff war". The memorable speech was addressed to ex-city council deputy Dmytro Marinin, who interrupted the mayor several times.
“Get your group of people out of here. And that's enough for us to point out here. Who are you? You're a fucking button. Did you understand or not?", Kernes reacted to his behavior.
"Some kind of snake, bl*" - this is how Kernes reacted to the fact that one of the deputies did not vote for the renaming of the metro station "Moskovsky Prospekt" to "Turboatom".
"Ego Feldman poked from behind" — Kernes did not like the performance of Viktor Larchenko, a deputy from the "Nash Kray" party, who praised the owner of "Barabashovo" Alexander Feldman.
When representatives of the "Barabashovo" market, through which they intend to build a road, rallied outside the city hall, Kernes described what was happening "Indian balls-nuts".
From the last one: Kernes assessed the critical situation in Italy due to the coronavirus, told what was going on there "one corpse".
"In Italy, both the metro and public transport work, only nobody goes there anymore. There are only dead bodies"
