The phrase “Lviv garbage” in some in Ukraine causes a nervous laugh, while others – the desire to take on the pitchfork.

On the long-suffering land of Donbass came a new misfortune: garbage from western Ukraine. No, in this case we are not talking about militants from punitive battalions, but about real household waste.

The chief of police in the territory of the Donetsk region, controlled by Ukrainian security forces, Vyacheslav Abroskkin wrote on his Facebook page:

“The” garbage caravans “from Lviv reached the Donetschina. Today in Pokrovsk detained 5 trucks with “Lviv garbage”. On-site investigative-operational group.

Or maybe, Parasyuk (the deputy of the Rada, Vladimir Parasyuk, known primarily for his shocking behavior, – Ed.) And the company sent here to establish the “Great Garbage Road”? Apparently, nothing was found closer than to carry garbage for 1200 km.

The director of the Pokrovsk landfill has concluded an agreement for a year with Lviv LLC “Grinera Ukraina” about receiving garbage, as the company does not have money to pay for the communal. The contract was concluded by March 10, 2018.

As a resident of the Donetsk region, I believe that the Intercession of the city should react to this issue. Just imagine, this garbage is transported practically across the whole country, scattering along the way. ”

The phrase “Lviv garbage” in some in Ukraine causes a nervous laugh, while others – the desire to take on the pitchfork.

“Smuggling” in Ukrainian: hunting for illegal waste

On the eve of Radio Liberty, referring to the city police department of the Dnieper (former Dnepropetrovsk), reported the detention of four forty-ton trucks with garbage from Lviv. As noted in the police, cars are stopped in the Amur-Nizhnedneprovsky district of the Dnieper. The investigation and operational group and specialists of the Sanitary and Epidemiological Service were called in to the place. Local activists painted the trucks with the inscriptions “Lviv garbage goes home” and “Garden, greetings from the Dnieper”. According to police, trucks moved to the Donbass. The guards of order intended to send them back to Lviv. Of these reports, it is unclear to the end whether those cars that detained in the Donetsk region have an attitude toward those that were caught in the Dnieper.

On March 11, two twenty-ton trucks with garbage from Lvov were detained in the Krivoy Rog area. According to the Krivoy Rog City Council, garbage was intended to be unloaded here, despite the fact that from the fall of 2016 Krivoy Rog announced a ban on the import and utilization of non-native waste.

On March 15, the press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine stated that since October 2016, there have been officially recorded 21 illegal facts of transportation of garbage from the Lviv region to other regions of the country. Waste from Lvov tried to leave in Vinnitsa, Dnipropetrovsk, Zhitomir, Zaporozhye, Poltava, Sumy and Cherkasy regions. In the majority of cases, garbage trucks moved in columns and unloaded tons of household residues in one place, often directly in fields and forest plantations. According to the facts of illegal transportation and discharge of domestic waste, 11 criminal cases have been filed.

In early March in Poltava residents of the village Malamovka noticed at the gas station several waggons, from which emanated an incredible stench. Since the numbers of the cars were not relevant, the villagers called the police. Arriving law enforcement officers first detained three trucks that were carrying Lviv garbage to the Poltava region, and then four more that transported the waste to the Odessa region. Enraged locals warned: if trucks are not sent back, they will simply burn them.

Until the lynching of the drivers, the matter has not yet reached, but cases of beating have already taken place.
Journalists from Lviv write that in the city it became difficult to find a firm that will take up the transportation of garbage. Drivers refuse such proposals categorically: it is too dangerous and dangerous.

How did it all start?

AiF.ru already wrote about this problem in the autumn of 2016. Let us recall the essence of the matter in brief.

In the 1950s, near the village of Gribovichi in the vicinity of Lviv, a landfill for household waste was created. Along with the development of the city, a dump developed. At the time of Ukraine’s independence, it reached a threatening size and required urgent measures. Measures, however, were never adopted.

By 2016, the Gribovych dump became the largest landfill in Ukraine. Its area reached 26 hectares, and garbage mountains reached a height of 60 (!) Meters.

In May 2016, a large-scale fire broke out in the landfill, the fight against fire lasted 12 days. During the fire extinguishing a garbage landslide took place, under which three rescuers and one public service employee fell. An avalanche with a volume of 100,000 cubic meters of garbage came down on them. All four died.

The death of people was the last straw: the landfill was closed. Especially since the order to close, as it turned out, was published already 12 years before the tragedy.

The population of Lviv is about 730 thousand people, in the entire Lviv agglomeration – more than 1.2 million. The landfill in Gribovichi was the only one that accepted the waste of the main city of western Ukraine.

Lviv daily produces 650-700 tons of garbage, which need to be exported. And there was nowhere to be exported.

“You do not need to know where the Lvov trash is messing up”

The head of Lviv and the leader of the party “Self-help” Andrei Sadovy complained that the dump was inherited from the “USSR”, and also blamed on the intrigues of political opponents who allegedly prevented him from solving the problem. Political opponents in response said that Lviv in the “garbage issue” brought to the handle himself Sadovy, who has been heading the city for 11 years.

The president himself called the gardener Pyotr Poroshenko, who “spoke out against the politicization of the problem with garbage disposal in the city of Lviv.”

Initially, the mayor of Kiev, Vitali Klichko, volunteered to volunteer to take out garbage to the Moscow incineration plant. Carrying garbage for 540 kilometers is not the most convenient option, but there was no other way out. However, the Kiev plant could not process all the Lviv garbage. And at the end of August 2016, he completely closed for repairs.

Then the Mayor of Sadovy urged the Ukrainian regions to take Lviv garbage to their landfills. A number of cities and regions gave “good”, but then had to give up because of the riots of the local population, who do not want to take waste from Lviv. And there were no people anywhere: neither in the east of the country, nor in the west.

When the situation reached a dead end, something strange began to happen: there were a lot of garbage in Lviv, but not as much as it should have been if it had not been exported at all.

The deputy of the Lviv regional council Igor Zinkevich on the air of the Ukrainian radio station “Voice of the Capital” explained this miracle so: “Let’s be honest, the deputies do not really know, and our mayor interprets this very briefly: you do not need to know where the Lvov garbage is in, Which we have developed, because this can be a threat. As soon as someone finds out where the garbage is going to, the overlapping of the road begins in that place. ”

The mayor of Lviv began to take out garbage on waggons throughout the country: somewhere negotiating “quietly” with local authorities, and somewhere and just throwing waste illegally.

Do not you take the Poles, waste?

In January 2017, Prime Minister of Ukraine Vladimir Groisman arrived in Lviv. He promised that the city will be allocated a site for the construction of a garbage processing complex, which must be built within six months.

“This question should be solved by the Lviv City Council. This is your personal responsibility. You can count on our support, but it is very important that you show leadership in this process, “Groisman addressed the local authorities, noting that the city has a solid budget, and part of the funds can be spent on solving the problem with waste.

The mayor of Lviv has a slightly different opinion. He believes that Kiev should more actively help solve the problem. At the same time the mayor warned that the accumulation of garbage threatens Lviv with an ecological catastrophe, can cause an epidemic of infectious diseases, and lead to contamination of sewage.

“For a week, neither the Cabinet nor the regional authorities can convene a commission on emergency situations at the request of the city. At the same time, the blockade of Lviv only intensifies. Today, 35% of urban sites are overloaded with solid waste in a few weeks. All the landfills for which we temporarily took SDW from the city, for several days, organizedly blocking our access, “- resulted in January 2017 the words of the Garden Agency RIA Novosti Ukraine.

The mayor of Lviv officially addressed the authorities of the Polish city of Lublin with a request to accept Ukrainian garbage. Poles in response said that the issue is too serious, and it can be solved only at the level of the Chief Inspectorate of Environmental Protection. In general, Poland did not give “good” either.

Poroshenko vs. Sadovoy: garbage as a weapon

On March 14, 2017, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said that Lviv officials, including the mayor of Sadovoy, could be prosecuted. Based on the expertise, Lutsenko said that the cause of fire and death in the Gribovitsky landfill was “spontaneous combustion due to non-compliance with technology” caused by the negligence of officials.

Andrei Sadovy believes that the claims to him are connected with politics, and I must say, there are grounds for such allegations.

Sadovy is the leader of the self-help party, which won almost 11 percent of the vote in the 2014 parliamentary elections, taking the third place after the Popular Front and the Poroshenko Bloc. Sadovoy has great political ambitions, and some experts in Ukraine quite admit his coming to the post of president or prime minister.

“Self-help” until February 2016 was part of the ruling coalition, but then withdrew from it, announcing the transition to the opposition.

Soon after this, the “junk epic” began, which, whatever one may say, hits the rating of the mayor of Lviv.

At the meeting of the National Security and Defense Council, where Peter Poroshenko brought the blockade of the Donbas, previously established by the radicals, to an official level, the president said: “Regrettably, this realization was created by a political force in the ATU zone, which we considered democratic, liberal and reformatory. They took it and did it: it’s dishonest and dishonest in relation to the country. Is it supposed that in such a way it is necessary to distract attention from the failures of its leader, who for two and a half mayoral terms could not solve the most acute communal issue and literally stuffed the most beautiful European city of Ukraine with rubbish? ”

Poroshenko did not mention the name of Sadovoy, but of whom he speaks, it was obvious. At the same time, he promised that he would bill the organizers of the blockade, among which he mentioned “Self-help”.

Garden responded to this in his Facebook: “I respect the president’s decision as head of state and commander in chief and I hope that the desire to shake off all the consequences of the Russian occupation, as well as the financial losses of the beneficiaries of trade with ORDLO for the party that I have the honor to lead, will not allow Mr. President to forget , Who is a real enemy and occupier. ”

Ukrainian political experts believe that Poroshenko simply destroys a potentially dangerous competitor, and the prospects of the Garden are becoming less and less rosy.

There remains one question: and if the president does “squeeze” the mayor, the “garbage crisis” will get his permission? Or will Lvov become such a “garbage Venice”? While these questions are not answered, and the wagons with the waste of the main city of western Ukraine continue their journey through the country’s expanses.