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The revolutionaries broke into Yanukovych's Mezhyhirya estate and found a temple constructed to the god of kleptomania. While millions of Ukrainians … - John Sweeney
" "The revolutionaries broke into Yanukovych's Mezhyhirya estate and found a temple constructed to the god of kleptomania. While millions of Ukrainians struggled on the poverty line, Yanukovych boasted a log cabin on steroids, a garage full of vintage motors, an exotic zoo and a ton of receipts proving his thievery. Expenses that stood out were $800 for medicines for his pet fish, $14,500 for tablecloths and $41 million on light fixures. Other boxes of files showed how much he spent on spying on critical journalists, $5.7 million for the month of December 2010 alone. [...] In June 2015, my former BBC Newsnight colleague and pal, Gabriel Gatehouse, got a scoop when he interviewed Yanukovych in his Russian exile. The disgraced president defended himself, saying the hoo-hah about the Mezhyhirya follies were 'political technology and spin: and that the estate did not belong to him personally'. When Gabriel challenged him about the exotic zoo, he replied: 'I supported the ostriches; what's wrong with that?'
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About John Sweeney
John Sweeney (born 7 June 1958) is a British investigative journalist and author who has worked for The Observer newspaper and for the BBC's Panorama television series.
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Alternative Names:
John Paul Sweeney
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Intriguingly, reporters from Novaya Gazeta were able to track down an unidentified prisoner in the Polar Wolf colony who told them that a 'strange commotion' had erupted in the prison on the evening of 15 February, before the official time of death. The secret prisoner said that the guards had accelerated their evening checks of the prisoners and strengthened security. In the morning of the 16th there was a 'total shakedown' of the prison, with guards confiscating mobile phones and other items from prisoners. Soon after, a committee from the central office of the Federal Penitentiary Service arrived, the prisoner said. Word spread throughout the prison that Navalny was dead at 10am Yamal time, 8am Moscow time, 0500 GMT, more than four hours before the official time of death.
Some idiot is moving heavy furniture around in the flat above and I wake up with a start. I'm about to give Lambeth Council a ring to get them to sort him out when I remember I am in Kyiv and it's four o'clock in the morning, and it's not tables and chairs that are going bang but Russian artillery.
The idiot is Vladimir Putin and his idiot war is two days old.
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Virtually any description of life under the monarchy makes anyone who knows Ceausescu's Bucharest wince with regret for the good old days. Architecture, cuisine, culture, press freedom, prison conditions, freedom to travel, to go to church: all seem to have been better before the communists. Only the quantity of whores in Bucharest appears to have remained constant.
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