On July 16, 2021, an activist’s car was torched for the second time in six months in Rubizhne, a town in Luhansk region. On July 15, in Dnipro, two unknown persons assaulted a local human rights defender. On June 18, a car belonging to the daughter of an Odessa-based activist was burned to the frame. On June 22, something similar happened to an eco-activist in Kyiv. This is just a small sample of attacks on community activists in the past two months. Since 2019, Ukraine has seen a sharp rise in incidents of harassment of those fighting against corruption, illegal construction, and human rights violators. These numbers continue to rise in 2021, according to a recent report by Zmina Human Rights Center. Zaborona spoke to several of the affected activists to explain why these crimes and attacks will only increase. At around 3 a.m. on June 22, a car burst into flames near an apartment building in the Kyiv neighborhood of Nova Darnytsia. Two unknown figures had poured some sort of liquid over the car and fled. The fire spread to neighboring cars and then to the cars parked outside in the courtyard. The initial car burned belonged to a Kyiv eco-activist named Oleksandr Silchenko, aka Oleksiy Kot (“cat” in Ukrainian). Since 2016, Kot has been fighting against illegal construction in parks in Darnytsia. “Our neighbors called us in the middle of the night and said ‘Sasha, your car is in flames!’ I’m on the balcony – it’s definitely burning,” Silchenko recalls the events of that night. “We called firefighters, the police. Though by that time, everything had already burned to the ground.” No suspects have been identified, he says. Silchenko believes the arson attack is connected to his activism. In his work with the “Parks of Darnytsia” community organization, they’ve had the time to “annoy many,” he says. Not long after the arson, he received a call from an unknown number. The conversation began with the words, “You must understand – if you keep shoving your nose into other people’s business, then you should be ready for problems,” Silchenko recalls. He doesn’t know who called him, as the police have yet to identify the caller. “They thought to scare me with these methods. But this has all only provoked me. If it’s come to that, then we’re just considered cattle who don’t even have the right to their own voice. That option doesn’t suit me,” Silchenko says. He’s a Kyiv resident who grew up in the Darnytsia district, and over the years has tracked how his district has changed: the spread of apartment buildings, the loss of green spots, the formation of a “concrete ghetto.” In 2016, Silchenko was far from activism: he bought, repaired and resold damaged cars. But five years ago, his patience snapped. That same year, in the Poznyaki neighborhood not far from Darnytsia, a company called Zhitloinvestbud-UKB began erecting a 27-story building that would contain 1,300 apartments on the site of a small lake, Kachyne. Local residents were incensed and a group of volunteers gathered through social media to protest. “We were called through Facebook. I came there and ended up [in activism] for the long haul,” Silchenko says. During protests in 2016, he and other opponents of construction sometimes had trouble with titushki (street thugs, typically employed to break up protests or provide intimidation). But they kept the lake from being destroyed, for now. Later, Silchenko turned his attention to the Park of Partisan Glory, also in Darnytsia and a protected natural area. He and others first wrote letters to the local authorities and convinced them to remove the paid swings that were surrounded by fences from the center of the park. Then, more than 30 coffee kiosks which blocked pedestrian paths were removed. Now they’re trying to get rid of a “self-authorized” restaurant built on park premises. Silchenko approached in turn the ecological inspection service, the Kyiv city administration, and the police. Finally, he says, it was decided on 14 April that the restaurant should be demolished, but it continues to operate for some unknown reason. This year, Silchenko and others registered Parks of Darnytsia as a community organization in order to make it easier to fight illegal construction. He says that previously, when they were working purely as private citizens, they were “seen as local village idiots, who themselves don’t know what they want.” Now it’s “easier to get to city councils, to regional ones,” and actually exert influence on decisions. “We don’t engage in protests where [people] run around with signs and yell inarticulately. Our tools are a computer, printer, and visits to official commissions and meetings,” the eco-activist explains.