Washington Post: Opposition Intensifies In Ukraine
02/12/2001 | Broker
Opposition Intensifies In Ukraine
By Peter Baker and Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, February 12, 2001; Page A14
MOSCOW, Feb. 11 – The political crisis surrounding Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma mounted today as thousands of protesters returned to the streets of Kiev to demand his resignation even as Russian President Vladimir Putin flew in to stand by his side.
Chanting their signature slogan, "Ukraine Without Kuchma," the demonstrators marched through the capital, formed a human chain and carried lighted candles in honor of a journalist whose disappearance has been linked to the Ukrainian president. Some wore black masks to hide their faces, telling reporters they feared being shown on television.
The protests, which started in December and regained strength over the last week, have been the largest of the post-Communist era in the nation of nearly 50 million people. While the size of the crowd, estimated at between 5,000 and 10,000, was modest compared with popular outpourings in other countries, the larger significance of the protests has been their endurance. Not only have they not dissipated, they seem to be taking on momentum.
"Milosevic's resignation was not a matter of one day," protest organizer Vladimir Chemeris said by telephone from Kiev, referring to ousted Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. "We're set for a long haul in terms of the struggle against Kuchma. I think it will be crowned with the same result as in Yugoslavia."
The rallies grew out of the disappearance last fall of online newspaper editor Heorhiy Gongadze, who had been critical of the government, and the subsequent discovery of a decapitated body outside Kiev that police say is probably that of Gongadze. Audiotapes made public by a former presidential bodyguard contain a voice sounding like Kuchma's ordering that Gongadze be abducted and turned over to Chechen guerrillas.
Kuchma has denied wrongdoing and declared last week that the protests "pose a threat to the national security." Branding the crowds "a herd under various flags," he warned that the political turmoil could hurt the country's economy. "We should have a national idea – a strong Ukraine, a strong state capable of functioning, because the world does not like those who are weak and does not heed them," he told a public forum last week.
Despite the tough talk, Kuchma moved to defuse the scandal in recent days by firing the country's security chief and the head of his bodyguard service, both targets of the opposition, which had demanded their ouster. Prosecutor General Mikhailo Potybenko abruptly took an extended leave.
The West has tried to keep Ukraine in the democratic camp by offering loans and cooperation with NATO. But with Western leaders now distancing themselves from Kuchma, some diplomats fear Ukraine could drift further into Russia's orbit, a concern deepened by the timing of Putin's visit.
Ostensibly, the two-day meeting will focus on energy and space issues, but Putin's decision to come in the midst of the crisis will provide the visual cues Kuchma may want. "What is happening is a political struggle," Putin told Ukrainian interviewers before his departure from Moscow. "There is nothing extraordinary about it. I think this is a feature of a normal democratic society."
Kuchma's position deteriorated in recent days when two members of parliament confirmed that their voices were on the tapes. Prosecutor Potybenko, who previously had denounced the tapes as fakes, acknowledged that the voices of the two were genuine but maintained that the tapes had been edited. The recordings were turned over for analysis last week to the independent International Press Institute.
Although it has launched an effort to impeach Kuchma, the opposition remains splintered. The ad hoc coalition includes reformers, ultranationalists and old-school socialists who, beyond their position on Kuchma, do not agree on much.
"Right now the opposition task is to destroy the existing regime, to bring Kuchma down," Dmitri Korchinsky, of the pro-military Fraternity party, said in an interview. "We have to unite for that, and, after that, each of us will take a different road."
By Peter Baker and Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, February 12, 2001; Page A14
MOSCOW, Feb. 11 – The political crisis surrounding Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma mounted today as thousands of protesters returned to the streets of Kiev to demand his resignation even as Russian President Vladimir Putin flew in to stand by his side.
Chanting their signature slogan, "Ukraine Without Kuchma," the demonstrators marched through the capital, formed a human chain and carried lighted candles in honor of a journalist whose disappearance has been linked to the Ukrainian president. Some wore black masks to hide their faces, telling reporters they feared being shown on television.
The protests, which started in December and regained strength over the last week, have been the largest of the post-Communist era in the nation of nearly 50 million people. While the size of the crowd, estimated at between 5,000 and 10,000, was modest compared with popular outpourings in other countries, the larger significance of the protests has been their endurance. Not only have they not dissipated, they seem to be taking on momentum.
"Milosevic's resignation was not a matter of one day," protest organizer Vladimir Chemeris said by telephone from Kiev, referring to ousted Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. "We're set for a long haul in terms of the struggle against Kuchma. I think it will be crowned with the same result as in Yugoslavia."
The rallies grew out of the disappearance last fall of online newspaper editor Heorhiy Gongadze, who had been critical of the government, and the subsequent discovery of a decapitated body outside Kiev that police say is probably that of Gongadze. Audiotapes made public by a former presidential bodyguard contain a voice sounding like Kuchma's ordering that Gongadze be abducted and turned over to Chechen guerrillas.
Kuchma has denied wrongdoing and declared last week that the protests "pose a threat to the national security." Branding the crowds "a herd under various flags," he warned that the political turmoil could hurt the country's economy. "We should have a national idea – a strong Ukraine, a strong state capable of functioning, because the world does not like those who are weak and does not heed them," he told a public forum last week.
Despite the tough talk, Kuchma moved to defuse the scandal in recent days by firing the country's security chief and the head of his bodyguard service, both targets of the opposition, which had demanded their ouster. Prosecutor General Mikhailo Potybenko abruptly took an extended leave.
The West has tried to keep Ukraine in the democratic camp by offering loans and cooperation with NATO. But with Western leaders now distancing themselves from Kuchma, some diplomats fear Ukraine could drift further into Russia's orbit, a concern deepened by the timing of Putin's visit.
Ostensibly, the two-day meeting will focus on energy and space issues, but Putin's decision to come in the midst of the crisis will provide the visual cues Kuchma may want. "What is happening is a political struggle," Putin told Ukrainian interviewers before his departure from Moscow. "There is nothing extraordinary about it. I think this is a feature of a normal democratic society."
Kuchma's position deteriorated in recent days when two members of parliament confirmed that their voices were on the tapes. Prosecutor Potybenko, who previously had denounced the tapes as fakes, acknowledged that the voices of the two were genuine but maintained that the tapes had been edited. The recordings were turned over for analysis last week to the independent International Press Institute.
Although it has launched an effort to impeach Kuchma, the opposition remains splintered. The ad hoc coalition includes reformers, ultranationalists and old-school socialists who, beyond their position on Kuchma, do not agree on much.
"Right now the opposition task is to destroy the existing regime, to bring Kuchma down," Dmitri Korchinsky, of the pro-military Fraternity party, said in an interview. "We have to unite for that, and, after that, each of us will take a different road."
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2001.02.12 | Broker
New York Times: Ukraine Rally Calls on Chief to Step Down
New York TimesFebruary 12, 2001
Ukraine Rally Calls on Chief to Step Down
By PATRICK E. TYLER
KIEV, Ukraine, Feb. 11 — Thousands of demonstrators marched through the capital of Ukraine today, the second such outpouring in a week, demanding the resignation of President Leonid D. Kuchma and calling for new presidential elections.
Up to 5,000 people watched as a wreath of black and white ribbons was laid at the entrance of Ukraine's state intelligence service to celebrate the news that Mr. Kuchma had on Saturday fired its top two officers, Leonid Derkach and Veleriy Strogov. The two had been criticized for orchestrating a crackdown on freedom of the press and suppressing Mr. Kuchma's political opponents.
In freezing weather, demonstrators carried candles in the late winter dusk at a vigil in Independence Square that went into the night around a tent encampment they called the "Kuchma-Free Zone."
"Kuchma has no moral right to be head of state and we are ashamed in front of the entire world that we have such a president," said Mayor Vladimir Olyinyk of Cherkassy, addressing a late afternoon rally.
Earlier, a large column of protesters marched through the city center chanting "Kuchma Out" and carrying a Ukrainian flag 60 feet long and placards from a half-dozen political parties that have joined a Forum for National Salvation to work for Mr. Kuchma's impeachment. Other banners said "Ukraine is a police state" and "Kuchma is kaput."
Political parties from socialists on the left to pro-business parties on the right have united in opposition to Mr. Kuchma over the scandal involving the alleged murder of a journalist, Georgy Gongadze, and the release of secret tape recordings made under Mr. Kuchma's office couch.
The recordings, made by a major in Mr. Kuchma's security service, Mykola Melnichenko, who is now in hiding in Europe, suggest that the Ukrainian leader last summer ordered his minister of the interior, Yuri Kravchenko, to "get rid" of the journalist by making it appear that he had been kidnapped.
Mr. Gongadze's headless body was found in a wood 75 miles from Kiev on Nov. 2, but Mr. Kuchma's prosecutor general has refused to open a criminal investigation.
Additional recordings released last month have prompted a new set of allegations that Mr. Kuchma was aware of specific instances of large- scale corruption in the country's notoriously corrupt energy sector.
Today, as the demonstration blocked a mile-long section of the center of the capital, Mr. Kuchma flew 200 miles southeast to Dnipropetrovsk to meet with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, who was said by aides in Moscow to be gambling that a strong show of support for the embattled Mr. Kuchma will solidify economic and political ties.
Since declaring its independence a decade ago, Ukraine has moved closer to Europe and associated itself with NATO's "partnership for peace" program, while resisting Russian entreaties to form a union like the one that Moscow has forged with neighboring Belarus.
Demonstrators in Dnipropetrovsk tried to organize a rally in sight of Mr. Putin's motorcade route, but security forces dispersed them and arrested a number of others, witnesses said.
Mr. Kuchma was a Soviet-era manager of Ukraine's largest rocket factory in Dnipropetrovsk and the two leaders were expected to sign agreements strengthening industrial cooperation in missile construction for commercial space launches and the destruction of long-range missiles left over from the Soviet arsenal here.
Ahead of his visit, Mr. Putin struck a cautious tone about the demonstrations. Meeting with Ukrainian journalists in Austria, where he was ending a state visit, the Russian leader said, "What is happening there is Ukraine's internal political affair, and it would be improper for us to make any comments on the issue."
"On the whole," he continued, "there is nothing special in that an internal political struggle is under way. I think that is a sign of a normal democratic society," but he added that "it is only important that all these processes go on in accordance with the law."
Over the weekend, Mr. Kuchma gave no reason for removing Mr. Derkach and Mr. Strogov. But it was under their command that Mr. Melnichenko secretly made the digital recordings by placing a microphone under the president's couch. These recordings are now the center of the spreading scandal.
The crowd left a banner today over the wreath in front of Mr. Derkach's former offices with the words "Kaput No. 1," reflecting their hope that Mr. Kuchma and other top aides will also soon be gone.
Among the demonstrators, 21- year-old Aleksandr Danidenko said that he had joined the protest "because I am concerned about what happened to Gongadze.
"To support a government that would do such a thing to one of its own citizens is simply impossible," he said.
Mr. Kuchma initially asserted that the recordings were fakes. But last month, Prosecutor General Mikhailo Potebenko acknowledged publicly that the voice on the recordings was indeed that of Mr. Kuchma, though he asserted that they were edited.
Two prominent political figures, whose voices were captured on the recordings during private talks with Mr. Kuchma, have come forward to say that the tapes are authentic.
Mr. Kuchma defended himself further last week, telling The Financial Times in an interview: "I can swear on the Bible or on the Constitution that I never made such an order to destroy a human being. This is simply absurd. Maybe the name Gongadze came up in conversations, I don't remember. But I give you my honest word, I did not even know this journalist."