live from kvartal 95
(Photo credit: Michael Colborne. Thanks Mike!)
Greetings from Kryvih Rih, Ukraine, an industrial city known for its large iron ore deposits and, more recently, as the hometown of presidential candiate Volodymyr Zelenskiy. His production company, Kvartal 95, is named after the city center, a traffic circle at the confluence of Peace, Gagarin, Metallurgists’, and Volgograd Prospects.
I spoke with an 84-year-old pensioner selling tulips in the rain in Kvartal 95. She wouldn’t give up her name or say who she was voting for, but gave us a piece of her mind anyway. When I asked her about Zelenskiy, she said she was tired of the rumors being spread about him. “He’s not a drug user,” she said. “A drug user couldn’t perform on stage like that.”
Her words for Poroshenko were a bit more harsh. “He’s an ass,” she told me, launching into a critique of the pension system and what she views as Poroshenko’s inability to provide for the country’s old and infirm. “My pension barely covers my apartment. I can’t even afford a good piece of meat. I have to come out here and sell flowers.”
She priced her tulips at 3 hryvnia (11 cents) each.
Would an 84-year-old woman be braving the wind and rain to sell flowers for pennies if she didn’t absolutely need to be? Probably not, but that’s the reality for many of Ukraine’s pensioners, and it’s one that seems many miles away from the debates about debates going on in the capital these past few weeks.
More to come before Election Day this Thursday. Stay tuned.