A restaurant of KFC fast-food chain opened on Nov. 21 in Kyiv’s Trade Unions House, a former stronghold of the EuroMaidan Revolution and the site of a deadly fire, revolting many supporters of the revolution.
The restaurant had to temporarily shut down on Nov. 22 after a handful of far-right activists protested its opening.
The combination of time and place served KFC badly. The restaurant opened in the building that served as one of the headquarters of the protest that ousted Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. Riot police set it on fire when storming the protesters’ camp, killing at least one person and destroying the building.
It also opened exactly on the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the protests, when the public was focused on the memory of the revolution.
The American-born fast-food chain that specializes in fried chicken currently has 16 restaurants in Ukraine, including 13 venues in Kyiv, and three in Dnipro, a city of 1 million peole some 470 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.
The Ukrainian restaurants operate on a franchise from the U.S. fast food company Yum! Brands International with a regional headquarters in Moscow. The Ukrainian franchisee of KFC didn’t answer to the request for comment.
As of Nov. 22, it wasn’t yet clear if the restaurant will continue to work in the Trade Unions House. Activists painted its outside walls with writings reading “People died here,” “Where is your conscience?” and “Dignity?”.
A restaurant of KFC fast-food chain opened on Nov. 21 in Kyiv’s Trade Unions House, a former stronghold of the EuroMaidan Revolution (C14 News )
The House has been under reconstruction since the fire it suffered during the revolution. The reconstructed building is about to open and offers office spaces for rent.
Hryhorii Osovyi, the head of the Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine that owns the building, said the federation sees no problem with KFC opening at their building. He said that KFC got the space because the Trade Unions management sought to provide building with a café for the people working there.
“We don’t see a problem with KFC,” Osovyi said. “When the House suffered from the fire and needed reconstruction nobody was interested in it.”
In fact, he thought that the scandal was an artificial provocation against the Trade Unions.
“It feels like someone is interested in boosting this scandal,” he said.
The protest against the opening of KFC at the Trade Unions House on Nov. 21 resulted in Kyiv police detaining six far-right activists and assaulting with pepper spray, Masi Nayyem, who served as a lawyer to one of the protesters. Nayyem did not reveal the name of the client to the Kyiv Post.
Nayyem, whose brother lawmaker Mustafa Nayyem was one of the initiators of the EuroMaidan Revolution, is himself against the establishment of KFC at the former revolution headquarters.
“Firstly, there should be no restaurants at the Trade Unions House,” he said. “Secondly, it was established exactly on Nov. 21, the day of the Euromaidan Revolution’s fifth anniversary.”
He also pointed out that KFC was “connected to Russia” through the Moscow head office.
“There are no such coincidences,” Nayyem said.
Detained far-right activists were soon released after police verified their identities, according to the Kyiv police official website.
Kyiv Police Chief Andrii Kryshchenko says the issue of locating a café at the Trade Unions House should be resolved in the legal field, not with protests.
