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Ukraine’s deputy prime minister fined for driving motorcycle bareheaded

Alexander Vilkul, the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the housing and utilities sector, was fined for driving a motor cycle without a headpiece
Photo ITAR-TASS
Photo ITAR-TASS

KIEV, July 18 (Itar-Tass) - Ukrainian deputy prime minister has been fined by traffic police, an unprecedented thing in the entire history of Ukraine’s post-Soviet history.

Alexander Vilkul, the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the housing and utilities sector, was fined for driving a motor cycle without a headpiece. He was driving in a column of bikers during The Best City.UA festival. “The fine has been paid. Let it be my biggest serious violation,” Vilkul wrote on his Facebook account and attached a copy of the paid receipt to a sum of 85 hryvnias (about 11 U.S. dollars).

The Best City.UA international festival that drew about 120 Ukrainian world rock stars and a record-breaking number of bikers was held in the Dnepropetrovsk region on July 12 through 14. Vilkul, who was the chairman of the festival’s organizing committee, drove his Harley Davidson bareheaded in the column of bikers about 20 kilometers from downtown Dnepropetrovsk to the festival’s venue. The fine was issued already after the festival after the city’s public activists demanded that the deputy prime minister be fined for violations of traffic safety rules.

It was the second case when a Ukrainian state official was brought to responsibility for violating traffic safety rules. In early July, the mayor of the city of Sumy, Gennady Minayev, was fined 600 hryvnias (75 U.S. dollars) for speeding. Minayev admitted his guilt but said it had been an unofficial “investigative experiment” at a street section featuring surface imperfections.