UKRAINIAN NATIONALIST HECKLED IN CRIMEA

Leader of the nationalistic Ukrainian People's Party Yuri Kostenko is visiting the Crimea. The main goal of this visit is to go underwater off the Crimean coast to hoist his party's banner on the sea floor. Mr. Kostenko held a press conference in Simferopol. He started it in the Ukrainian language though in the Crimea few people speak it. Member of the Communist Party Sergei Nikulin stood up and demanded that Mr. Kostenko speak Russian. The representatives of the Union of the Soviet Officers made the same request. Kostenko refused and said that “he was not going to react to a lack of culture among communists”. The leader of the Ukrainian People's Party made also a reference to the statement attributed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who presumably had said in 1999: “we will waste Chechens in the johns”. “However, I will react as a man and a master of sports in alpinism to this gross-out, but rather at the spot where Putin teaches you: in the johns, said Yuri Kostenko”. A ruckus that followed made it impossible to continue the press conference. The two men were engaged in a heated exchange and the meeting with journalist had to be closed. Yuri Kostenko came to the Crimea to try to mediate in the conflict between two groups in the Crimean branch of his party. Many Crimean activists are unhappy with their leader Oleg Fomushkin. They are accusing him of fraud. The Ukrainian People's Party has very few followers in the Crimea. The planned hoisting of the banner on the sea floor would hardly enhance its popularity.