"I’ll teach you how to speak, you scum": in Kyiv, Bolt driver forced activist out of car after she commented on his use of Russian
In Kyiv, a Bolt driver forced an activist out of the car and then grabbed her by the face after she insisted he speak Ukrainian, as required by Ukrainian law. The woman has filed a report with the police.
According to Censor.NET, this was reported to Hromadske by Ivanna Hryshchenko, the coordinator of the action in support of prisoners in Chernihiv and Rivne, who was a Bolt customer.
According to her, on the morning of March 26, she was in a hurry to attend a minute of silence reminder from the NGO Vshanui near the Arsenalna metro station.
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The taxi she ordered arrived later than the company's app showed, so she asked the driver to drive faster because she had to be there by 9:00 a.m.
Ivanna Hryshchenko assumes that the man took this as a call to violate traffic rules and responded in Russian: "Girl, according to the law of Ukraine...". At the same time, Ivanna noted that by law he was supposed to speak Ukrainian at work.
The driver then stopped the car and told her to get out, she recalls. The man also emphasized that he was "speaking his native language," meaning Russian.
"No questions, take your suitcase and go to Russia. Speak your native language. And no laws will prohibit you," Ivanna answered him.
The Bolt driver started swearing
Then, according to the activist, he turned to her and said: "Shut the f#ck up, b#tch […] Get out of the car, you scum."
"As I was getting out of the car, I brought up the issue of the Ukrainian language again, and the driver, still swearing, decided to follow me."
"He must have realized that swearing alone wasn’t working. He grabbed my face and started shaking me, shouting across the whole street: ‘I'll teach you how to speak. You bastard. Scum,’" Ivanna told the publication.
The man tried to do it again, but after I told him not to touch me, he returned to the car.
Bolt and police response
She then contacted Bolt. The company provided her with instructions on how to make sure that the police received the driver's data from them. They also promised that she would not ride with him again.
The Hromadske media outlet asked Bolt for a comment, but at the time of publication of the news, the editorial board had not received a response.
Ivanna also wrote a statement to the police.
Dmytro Hryshchenko, a spokesperson for the Kyiv police, told hromadske that the statement was registered and is being considered, but has not yet been registered in the URPI. The circumstances are currently being checked, in particular, law enforcement officers will talk to witnesses.
