It's safe to say deposed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych isn't having the best of weeks.
But his frustrations with the events of the past five days — civil unrest in the streets of Kiev, his presidency declared DOA and a fancy house on the water raided by journalists — appeared to hit some sort of climax late Friday afternoon at a press conference in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. A video of the moment surfaced late Friday evening local time on YouTube.
"I'd like to address all the people of Ukraine," the president says in the video, speaking to a crowd of journalists and fiddling with a pen. But Yanukovych can only muster the words "first of all" before he pauses and winces as he tries (and fails) to snap a pen in half with a grimace. He recovers and goes on to apologize to the Ukrainian people for not being able to control the situation.
A Facebook page dedicated to the pro-European protests that have toppled the president’s rule in Ukraine shared the video on Friday, saying it was “the part of the conference that was not aired on most channels.”
Moscow’s Associated Press corespondent, Laura Mills, tweets that the moment came as the president began his closing remarks.
Rewatching this footage, Yanukovych definitely tried to break his pen in half as he began his closing remarks, but just pulled it apart.
— Laura Mills (@lauraphylmills) February 28, 2014
And Max Seddon, a former AP correspondent turned foreign affairs reporter for BuzzFeed, writes that “Yanukovych’s futile attempt to snap his pen in anger was a metaphor for the entire press conference.”
Mashable has not been able to confirm the status of the pen as of press time.