Melnychenko Interview

From Gazeta Wyborcza, Warsaw:

Major Melnychenko: Yushchenko is being manipulated

Marcin Wojciechowski 08-03-2005, last update 07-03-2005 19:00

A Gazeta journalist met with Melnychenko yesterday at Warsaw's Okecie Airport. Melnychenko was waiting for a flight to London, after a series of secret meetings in the Polish capital with Ukrainian vice-premier, Mykola Tomenko. They probably talked about how Melnychenko could help the prosecutorship in its investigation of the Gongadze case.

[passage omitted, story of Melnychenko]

Kuchma's former bodyguard thinks that the new president of Ukraine is being manipulated by his predecessor’s entourage. In his view, Kravchenko could have been encouraged to commit suicide by Kuchma's people. “It should seriously be considered whether Yushchenko gave some guarantees to Kuchma, about which we don't know anything. I don't say that Yushchenko had anything to do with the death of Kravchenko, but the suicide of former minister was convenient for Kuchma's people,”
says Melnychenko.

Melnychenko handed over to Tomenko - a close associate of Yushchenko – some materials on Kuchma. “Tomenko took those materials, agreeing with me, but I don't know what will happen next,” says Melnychenko. “In my opinion the Prosecutor General’s office is bamboozling Yushchenko on the Gongadze case.”

Last week the investigators announced that the Gongadze case was solved and that those who ordered his death will soon be arrested. Everyone suspected that they were referring to former minister Kravchenko. Well, he suddenly committed suicide on Friday, although already on Wednesday, the security services proposed, just in case, to arrest Kravchenko. But the Prosecutor General rejected this advice.

”Yuschenko trusted the Prosecutor General’s office and, relying on its reports, he announced that the case has been solved,” says Melnychenko. “That was a big mistake, Yushchenko shouldn't be a spokesman for the Prosecutor on this case.

Kuchma’s former bodyguard asserts that even after Kravchenko's death, it's possible to get to the truth in Gongadze's murder, on condition, that the influence of people from Kuchma's past entourage, who still are in power, will be curbed. These people include, first and foremost, the speaker of the parliament, Wolodymyr Lytvyn. A few years ago he was the head of Kuchma's administration, and was actually the second highest person in the country. Lytvyn also participated in the meeting of Kuchma with his Minister of Interior, during which the president blamed Gongadze. This meeting was recorded by Melnychenko.

Lytwyn gave his statements on that case in the prosecutorship, but its contents are secret. In the view of Melnychenko, the speaker of parliament, like Kuchma, has been taken under some safety umbrella of the new authority. Especially because during the Orange Revolution he played a constructive role in the dialogue between the authorities and the opposition. However, Melnychenko thinks that this unofficial amnesty for Kuchma's people won't allow the mystery of the most known political murder in the history of to-day's Ukraine to be solved. “People like Lytvyn have to go, otherwise the new cabinet will be always under influence of the old one,” says Melnychenko.

The former bodyguard of Ukraine's president refused to tell us if London was the last leg of his trip. Melnychenko, who travels with his own bodyguard, got political asylum in the USA. He showed us a document issued by the FBI, in which the border guards of countries visted by Melnychenko put their stamps on this document, so the stages of his trip are not in his passport. Melnychenko asserts that in the last few years Kuchma's people tried to kill him four times.

Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky pays for Melnychenko's bodyguard. Berezovsky who lives in London also has the status of political refugee. ”I don't see anything wrong in this, that Berezovsky provides a bodyguard for me. Thanks to it, he can say that he supports democracy. I have the protection of the US government, but only in America,” says Melnychenko.