The mysterious death of former Ukrainian pilot Vladislav Voloshin, who retired in 2017 to make a successful public career in Nikolayev, has presented more proofs that Ukraine is being robbed and has given one more reason to doubt that Voloshin was not involved in the crash of the Malaysian Boeing in 2014.
The breaking news of Mar 18 was the death of Vladislav Voloshin, former pilot and acting director of the Nikolayev International Airport. The first report said that Voloshin shot himself from a Makarov pistol with erased serial numbers. Later, mass media added that he did it in his house when his wife and kids were in the next room. He did not die at once and even spoke to the first aid doctors.
Some local journalists published screenshots of his message to some Max, where he complained that he was forced to carry out some illegal activities, suggested that he might be shot down if he did something wrong and added that he would not like to make kids fatherless. He also said that he was considering a “suicide.” But the tone of the message was more sarcastic than depressive. Voloshin complained that all people around him, including that Max, cared for their own selves only. In his reply, Max assured Voloshin that he was sincere towards him. The two were obviously friends: they joked and planned to drink some beer. Voloshin criticized governor of Nikolayev Oblast Oleksiy Savchenko but the man he was afraid of was not him but some more influential person.
Here it’s well worth reminding you who Voloshin was and how he became a media personality.
Vladislav Voloshin was born in Lugansk in 1988 and grew up in Donbass. When he was 16, he entered the Lugansk Military School and later the Kharkov National Air Force University. In 2010, he joined Ukraine’s air forces. In 2014, he took part in the so-called anti-terror operation in Donbass. Ukrainian mass media called him the bravest pilot of the Ukrainian air forces. In Aug 2014, Voloshin’s plane was shot down but he survived. During the operation, he flew 33 missions. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko awarded him an order for his valor.
Voloshin became widely known in Dec 2014, when one his comrades accused him of shooting down the Malaysian Boeing in Donbass. That man said that Voloshin’s plane had air-to-air missiles at that moment and quoted him as saying after a mission: “It was a wrong plane… It was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Kiev rushed to deny the accusations and to blame the Russians for the crush.
At 26, Voloshin was already a major but in summer 2017, he retired from the army and was appointed as Deputy Director of Nikolayev International Airport. Ukrainian internet community were indignant at him “fleeing the armed forces” but Voloshin explained that his commanders were narrow-minded and showy and that in the army he got just 13,000 UAH (30,000 RUR) a month, which was not enough for him to support his family (even though that was twice as much as the average salary in Ukraine). Voloshin added that he had done enough to protect his country unlike those criticizing him.
At the airport, Voloshin was quite successful at first. In Dec 2017, Director of the Airport Mikhaylo Halaiko was detained while trying to give Governor of Nikolayev Oblast Oleksiy Savchenko a bribe of 2.5 million UAH (5 million RUR). Halaiko was dismissed and Voloshin was appointed to act as director.
On Jan 24, 2018, he convened his employees and informed them that the airport had earned 133 million UAH (270 million RUR), was actively restoring its runway, navigation and lighting systems and was timely paying wages to its personnel. In late Feb 2018, Voloshin spoke with his friend, anti-Russian journalist Yuriy Butusov and told him that he had neither enemies nor problems.
However, on Mar 18, Voloshin decided to shoot himself. On the next day, Hromadske TV quoted Deputy Director of the Nikolayev International Airport Alina Korotich as saying that the administration of Nikolayev Oblast forced Voloshin to sign documents certifying completion of work in the framework of a cancelled tender, which was obviously illegal. The sum of the tender was as much as 100 million UAH.
In this light, we have a number of questions:
Why did Voloshin decide to kill himself while just a couple of weeks before, he had sent his friend a message saying that he did not want his children to lose their father?
Why did Voloshin decide to kill himself at home when his beloved family was next door?
If his suicide was provoked by somebody’s illegal actions, why didn’t he write any suicide note in an attempt to restore justice?
Why did Voloshin shoot himself in the chest? As a former military man, he was supposed to know that it was not the best way to kill oneself, wasn’t he? He was alive and conscious for 1.5 hours after the shot.
Where did he get the Makarov pistol? Was it a gift? Why were the serial numbers of that pistol erased?
How come that a man who underwent lots of psychological tests at the university and cold-bloodedly bombarded kindergartens, schools and hospitals in Donbass was so psychologically unstable?
Why did Voloshin, who was very harsh in criticizing the army under Poroshenko, agree to join an agency that was controlled by a governor nominated by the Poroshenko Bloc?
Why was Voloshin so optimistic just a couple weeks before his death even though he had so serious problems?
The theory that Voloshin killed himself because he was ashamed gives no answer to any of the abovementioned questions. There are only two logical possibilities: either the pilot was killed and his family was forced into silence or he was forced to kill himself.
The choice of the date of Voloshin’s suicide was not a coincidence. On Mar 18, Russia was electing president – an event that would certainly overshadow the death of the man suspected of attacking the Malaysian Boeing – news that would have otherwise been in the headlines.
Those wishing to get rid of Voloshin might have had two motives:
Voloshin could have published facts exposing the corrupt activities of the Nikolayev authorities. Some Ukrainian bloggers suggest that one of those who might be pressuring Voloshin when he was alive was the grey figure of the local politics, parliamentarian from the Poroshenko Bloc David Makarian.
Voloshin might also wish to disclose some facts about the shot-down Boeing and those facts might have shattered Poroshenko’s throne and the whole post-Maidan project. Had Voloshin died two years ago, that would have been fatal for the Poroshenko regime, but now they in Kiev will be able to link the case with some corruption-related problems in Nikolayev Oblast and to shift the blame onto the local governor or some parliamentarian.
In any case, Voloshin’s death has shown that corruption and anarchy are corroding the foundations of the Ukrainian statehood and can cause it to fall at any moment.
Now we can see what Maidan was struggling for – for the right of some people to rob the remains of Ukraine’s treasury.
Svyatoslav Knyazev, Sevastopol
