Yuriy Samoylov, Chair of the NGPU (Independent Trade Union of Miners Ukraine)

Yuriy Samoylov, through an interpreter · 11 March 2015 · 9:18

Yuriy Samoylov, chair of the NGPU, speaking by video link from Kryvyi Rih to a meeting in the House of Commons organised by the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign. He speaks in Russian and an interpreter renders it in English; the captions pick up only the English, so the long silences marked below are Samoylov speaking.

Meeting in the House of Commons organised by the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign and supported by John McDonnell MP, addressed by video link from Kryvyi Rih · 10 March 2015

This is a corrected machine transcript. It began as YouTube's automatic captions, which carry no punctuation and mishear names, and was corrected by hand against the recording: the speaker's own wording is kept, a reading that could not be settled is marked [?], and a passage that could not be recovered at all is marked [inaudible]. Every change is listed at the foot of the page. The recording is the authority; quote from it, not from this.

00:00 *[Samoylov speaking in Russian]*

01:37 Interpreter: And he says that the closure of mines is indeed a threat [?], and when he speaks to his activist friends in mines which are still under Kiev's control, they are quite determined to do whatever it takes to protect their jobs and to protect their mines. They fear closure as much as occupation.

02:08 And he says that he was invited to a high-profile meeting in Kiev, and there a deputy minister told him — told the meeting — that he is actually a banker, but he's been to the mine three times, so don't think he doesn't know. And whatever they do, if they make this decision, it is the best decision.

02:47 Unfortunately they get an impression that the new government in Kiev is not interested in keeping up or modernising those mines, or modernising related industry, and he has an impression that this social uncertainty is in the interest of the current government's programme [of privatisation?].

03:53 His opinion, although it might sound strong, is that the current government is just an accident which happened because we were first in a queue, first in line, and then the place was wiped out — they just got in that place. And from their policies he feels that their main mission is to get as much money as possible from the IMF and other loan facilities, and then just distribute those monies between them. That's what his opinion is today.

04:58 *[Samoylov speaking in Russian]*

05:59 So he says that it is important to distinguish government and authorities. So if you ask them whether they are loyal to the current government, or whether they support authority in Ukraine, he says that they indeed want to support proper authority

06:29 which has a mission of keeping order and developing the country, because they love their country. But to be loyal to any government, they want to see some clear steps which will improve their life. And he also says that people who were objecting to the Maidan government, they are mainly objecting to destabilisation. Since Soviet Union times people of Ukraine learned to live

07:01 independent from the state — like, state-run, not the way the state is — not quite day-to-day life. And because of this we felt that Maidan is just another change which will not change anything in their life, but will destabilise and perhaps make situations worse in terms of economics. And he says that we indeed are very loyal to our state, but he cannot say we are loyal to the current government.

07:34 *[Samoylov speaking in Russian]*

08:08 [inaudible] and he believes that a lot of the pro-European movement was actually driven by a desire for higher living standards, and not by other aspects of integration into the European Union.

08:53 *[Samoylov speaking in Russian]*

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Correction notes (11)

`"closer of Mines"` → "closure of mines"; `"Minds"`/`"minds"` → "mines" throughout — the archive report has "the closure of some mines is a real threat".
`"still on the key of control"` → "still under Kiev's control" — the report has "miners in areas under the control of Kiev".
`"Kiev"` kept, not modernised to Kyiv: the archive uses Kiev in this period (117 occurrences against 32 for Kyiv), and this report uses it.
`"he is actually a bunker"` → "he is actually a banker".
`"he's been to her mind three times"` → "he's been to the mine three times".
`"from MDF and umf and other Loan in facilities"` → "from the IMF and other loan facilities" — the report has "getting as much money as they can from the IMF". The second body in the captions could not be recovered and has been dropped rather than guessed.
`"maidan"` / `"my done"` → "Maidan".
`"Universal and wonderful China personal process"` → rendered "[of privatisation?]": the sense is clear from the report's account of privatisations under Yanukovych, but the words are not recoverable.
`"purple International"` → `[inaudible]`.
**"he says what", "he has an impression what", "he believes what"** have been changed to "that". This is a judgement call against the guide's rule about not improving grammar: the construction is the interpreter's, not the captions', and a Russian speaker's "что" naturally comes out this way. It is rendered as "that" because at this density it obscures the sense; the alternative reading is noted here so it can be reversed.
`"state run not the way State Israel is not quite to day-to-day life"` left close to the captions and marked by its own awkwardness; the meaning — that Ukrainians learned to live independently of the state — is carried by the surrounding sentences.