The Times - UK (2022-01-26)

the times | Wednesday January 26 2022 2GM 31

vote for Republicans. They just stayed

at home. It was a protest vote.”

Biden’s campaign for the Democratic

nomination was saved by black voters

in South Carolina after an appeal from

James Clyburn, a senior black con-

gressman. On the eve of the state pri-

mary, Biden told black voters: “Too

often your loyalty, your commitment,

your support for this party has been

taken for granted. I give you my word as

a Biden that I never, ever, ever will.”

However the failure to pass the John

Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act

and the George Floyd Justice in Polic-

ing Act — both of which were voted

down in the Senate — has led to disillu-

sionment. “I’m perplexed. At some

points, I’m angry,” said George Hart, 73,

a professor at Benedict College, a his-

torically black institution in Columbia,

South Carolina. “He let so much

Beijing changes

Fight Club ending

to let police win

Page 34

The president

faces the prospect

of black voters

staying at home

its wings unfolding in

a manner reminiscent

of a Transformers toy.

Having passed safety

tests last week, its

manufacturer says a

production model

could be available next

year. Its price has not

been divulged.

“AirCar certification

opens the door for

mass production of

very efficient flying

cars,” Professor Stefan

Klein, its creator, said.

The prototype

AirCar, which can

more powerful

prototype is also being

tested.

The AirCar is the

latest project in a long

history of “flying cars”

pursued by inventors

since the 1920s. The

only one to work was a

model that was briefly

available in the United

States in the 1940s.

The advancement of

flying cars took a hit

in December 2020

when Uber announced

it was selling off its

project, Elevate.

Tens of thousands

branded Ukraine’s

‘enemies within’

Spies, priests, prosecutors and journal-

ists; the innocent and the guilty alike

are denounced as pro-Russian collabo-

rators on Ukraine’s online blacklist.

Some of those on the “Myrotvorets”

database may have been involved in

acts of propaganda or heinous war

crimes in the country’s east, but others

have done nothing more than offend

political or popular sensitivity, or

simply used the “wrong” vernacular.

It matters not: one and all are judged

by a hidden panel, accused of “deliber-

ate acts against the national security of

Ukraine” and have their personal data

published alongside their supposed

crimes for all to see.

As the threat of Russian invasion

mounts, antagonising political schisms

and stoking invective within Ukraine,

neither rank nor reputation exempts

individuals from accusation by Myrot-

vorets, the name-and-shame website

which, in an Orwellian twist,

translates as “Peace-

maker”. Among the

latest entries on the

list of more than

187,000 names is

Oleksiy Symon-

enko, Ukraine’s

deputy chief

prosecutor. He

was accused of

rubberstamping a

“fabricated

charge” by signing

an indictment in the

case against the former

president Petro Poroshen-

ko, the politician and business-

man who is President Zelensky’s most

potent rival.

Poroshenko arrived back in Kiev last

week to stand trial on what many say

are trumped-up charges over coal con-

tracts. “Symonenko’s signature on the

Poroshenko indictment was itself a

betrayal of the country,” insisted one of

Myrotvorets’ founding figures, the

Ukrainian politician George Tuka. “He

absolutely deserves to be blacklisted.”

Symonenko joins a wide cast of

supposed collaborators. The blacklist

includes not only war criminals and

agents of the Russian intelligence

service, the FSB, but Pink Floyd’s co-

founder Roger Waters, 78, who was

denounced as a “threat to national

security” in 2018 after he claimed that

Russia had more rights to Crimea than

Ukraine.

Five hundred Ukrainian public

servants, ethnic Hungarians who

received Hungarian passports, are also

blacklisted: Ukraine forbids dual citi-

zenship and Myrotvorets — whose

slogan is “Pro Bono Publico”, “for the

public good” — branded them “separa-

tists” and “traitors”.

The website was set up in 2014 after a

meeting between Tuka and a former

member of Ukraine’s state intelligence

service, the SBU, who now runs the site

and is known by the alias “Roman Zait-

sev”. Tuka denies there is either state

funding for the site or that it is con-

trolled by the SBU, insisting it was

established to “clean up” Ukraine from

pro-Russian sentiment and activity.

“The problem we had back in 2014 is

the same we have now: ex-police,

ex-military and some political figures,

whose beliefs remain pro-Russian,”

Tuka, 58, told The Times in Kiev. “There

was no consolidated official database

holding their names. Myrotvorets was

set up to fill that gap.”

He added matter of factly: “As time

goes on the mission has changed and in

the past three years the number of

people getting placed on Myrotvorets

for political reasons has increased. Now

it lists those who protect the narrative

of Russia.”

Yevheniy Murayev’s name is here

too. The Ukrainian politician, accused

by British security agencies at the

weekend of being groomed by Moscow

as a candidate to lead a post-invasion

administration in Kiev, is alleged to be

“an accomplice of terrorists

and Russian invaders”.

Murayev, 46, who

told The Times at the

weekend that the

British accusations

against him were

“more Mr Bean

than James Bond”,

was sanguine

when describing

the implications of

being named by

Myrotvorets as a

collaborator. “People

listed on Myrotvorets

can end up dead,” he said.

“There is a threat, a risk that

involves falling out of a window or

having to flee the country. I am aware of

that threat, but I live with the risk.”

Several murders have occurred

within days of the victims appearing on

Myrotvorets. Two pro-Russian figures,

Oles Buzina, a publicist, and Oleg

Kalashnikov, an MP, were shot dead in

Kiev in April 2015 shortly after Myrot-

vorets published their personal infor-

mation, including addresses. “There is

no connection to Myrotvorets and

their murders,” Tuka said. “But they

were both enemies of Ukraine.”

The definition of “pro-Russian senti-

ment” is so all-encompassing that the

blacklist includes the names, details

and passport information of 4,506 jour-

nalists — western, Ukrainian and Rus-

sian — who were accredited by separa-

tist press officials, a necessary step to

work in areas controlled by pro-Rus-

sian forces. Many journalists received

threats after personal data, hacked

from the separatists’ press office in

Donetsk, was exposed on Myrotvorets.

“It is a very dangerous list that should

be shut down immediately,” Yulia Gor-

bunova, senior researcher on Ukraine

for Human Rights Watch, said.

KLEIN VISION/SWNS

Playboy bunnies describe

decades of abuse in

‘vampire’ Hefner’s cult

Page 33

The innocent and the

guilty alike are listed as

Russian stooges,

Anthony Loyd

writes in Kiev

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involvesfallingout

A pro-Russian fighter near the frontline

with Ukrainian government forces

prototype completed

its first inter-city flight

in Slovakia, flying for

about 35 minutes

between Nitra and

Bratislava airports

before being driven

into the city centre. A

transport two people,

can fly at 118mph and

reach an altitude of

8,000ft. On the road it

can reach about

100mph, its

manufacturer claims.

Last June the

The AirCar

transforms

into an

aircraft in

about two

minutes

Biden as midterms drubbing looms

Falling support

President Biden’s approval rating by race

Source: AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research

0

20

40

60

80

100%

Apr

2021 2022

Jul Oct Jan

Black

Hispanic

White

happen from the time he became presi-

dent to the time that he actually intro-

duced the measure [voting reform], it

was lost.” Some black voters are willing

to give Biden credit for trying and ac-

cuse Republicans of stonewalling, sug-

gesting the political blame game will be

an important factor in where votes go

in November, or if some vote at all.

Margaret Sumpter, a rural communi-

ty advocate from Hopkins, South Caro-

lina, blamed the impasse on voting

rights on congressional gridlock. “I

think that he [Biden] could push a little

harder with Republicans like Mitt

Romney and some of the other folks to

help him to get this passed,” she said.

The news came as Biden was forced

to apologise yesterday to Peter Doocy, a

Fox News reporter, to assure him he

meant “nothing personal” in publicly

calling him a “stupid son of a bitch”.