Critic’s Disappearance Dogs Ukraine’s Leader

On Sept. 16, Internet journalist Georgi Gongadze--young, dashing and opinionated--left the apartment of a co-worker in this capital on the Dnepr River and promptly disappeared.

On Nov. 2, a headless corpse was found in a shallow grave in woods near the small town of Tarashcha, about 60 miles to the south.

These two facts have mushroomed into a nightmare for Ukrainian President Leonid D. Kuchma.

The gruff-talking, generally pro-Western former space engineer has ruled Ukraine with an iron hand since 1994. Now he is seeing his power undermined by a murky scandal involving secret tapes and a former bodyguard with incendiary accusations that Kuchma was behind the apparent slaying of Gongadze and attacks on other opponents.

Either the Ukrainian president has been caught in a clumsy, primitive political slaying or--as he claims--he has been cleverly framed. Now Kuchma, who was easily elected last year to a second five-year term, is faced with an increasingly assertive parliament, opponents across the political spectrum demanding his removal and a rising public clamor for a full investigation into Gongadze’s fate.

On Thursday, during a visit to Moscow, the 62-year-old Kuchma said the controversy is taking a toll on his work and is probably why he has been experiencing chest pains.

“You know, I am not [Arnold] Schwarzenegger or Superman,” he said. “I am an ordinary person.”

Making reference to the tape recordings that purportedly caught him, in a series of foulmouthed tirades, calling for Gongadze to be kidnapped and given “to the Chechens,” Kuchma said: “You know, these recordings do not even make a hint that the president wants to destroy any journalist.”

Though his tone suggested a plea for pity, Kuchma isn’t finding much sympathy in Ukraine, a dreary, impoverished country of about 50 million people that stretches from Poland to the Black Sea. The onetime Soviet republic has failed to live up to its population’s hopes for prosperity after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Protesters camped out last week in the center of Kiev and called on Kuchma to step down. On Tuesday, 5,000 protesters marched on parliament, pushing to get in. Two days later, 2,000 more turned up on parliament’s door, demanding that members enact a law allowing for presidential impeachment.

In response, parliament agreed Thursday to summon the prosecutor general Jan. 10 and hear his report on the matter. Parliament also passed a bill authorizing itself to set up impeachment commissions if a two-thirds majority believes that a president has committed a crime.

What may be most surprising about the case is how it has snowballed so that the disappearance of an obscure gadfly threatens a president who once seemed unassailable.

The 31-year-old Gongadze directed an Internet site, Ukrainian Truth (https://www.pravda.com.ua), critical of Kuchma. In the months before his disappearance, Gongadze complained publicly of anonymous threats. Nevertheless, he remained little known in Ukraine outside his circle of journalist friends.

Handsome, with a square jaw, Gongadze was one of the few journalists in Ukraine’s normally cowed press corps who regularly blasted Kuchma and those closest to him.

When he disappeared after leaving the home of Olena Prytula, his colleagues suspected foul play and demanded an investigation. But Deputy Interior Minister Mykola Dzhyha put out word that Gongadze had been seen alive in late September and that a ticket to Smolensk, Russia, had been sold to someone of his name, all suggesting that he had left Ukraine of his own volition.

Later, when the headless body was found in the Tarashcha woods by farmers on their way to market, Dzhyha played down the possibility that it was Gongadze’s--despite jewelry found in the grave that matched a bracelet and talisman he wore.

Then one of the country’s leading opposition politicians, Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz, dropped a bombshell, playing for his colleagues in parliament a tape recording that he said had been made in Kuchma’s private office.

On the tape, a man who Moroz said was Kuchma is heard swearing and using ethnic epithets in speaking of Gongadze. The voice on the poor-quality tape sounds like Kuchma, with the profanity and blend of Ukrainian and Russian words that are typical of his private speech, said several journalists and politicians who know the president.

According to Moroz, Kuchma is talking on the tape to Volodymyr Lytvyn, the head of the presidential office, and Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko.

“I’m telling you to drive him out. Give him to the Chechens; undress him. Leave him without his pants,” the voice says.

Presidential aides denied that the tapes were authentic and said there was no way anyone would have had access to the president’s office to make such a recording.

But a few weeks later, Moroz produced via videotape Maj. Mykola Melnichenko, identified as a former member of Kuchma’s state security detachment, who said he made the recordings and went into hiding abroad because he feared for his safety. On the video, Melnichenko says he used a recorder placed under a cushion in the president’s office because he had become outraged by Kuchma’s behavior and “crimes.”

Lawmakers were up in arms.

Although maintaining his innocence, Kuchma appeared to be trying to mollify his foes. He met Wednesday with representatives of the demonstrators and expressed a willingness to get rid of Kravchenko and the head of his secret police if asked to by the prime minister.

But those steps would still be short of what his critics want.

“If the president was an honest man, he would have resigned voluntarily a long time ago,” said parliament member Serhy Holovaty, who is secretary of an ad hoc commission set up to investigate the case.

The case also has caused some Ukrainians to wonder anew about two events last year: the death in a traffic accident of independence movement leader Vyacheslav Chornovil and a grenade attack that wounded presidential candidate Natalia Vitrenko. Melnichenko said he heard Kuchma planning the Vitrenko attack.

Yet there is still no conclusive evidence that the corpse found in Tarashcha is Gongadze’s. Police promised to conduct DNA tests but have not revealed any results. Adding to the circumstantial case, however: An X-ray showed bits of metal in the wrist of the corpse, consistent with a shrapnel injury that Gongadze suffered in 1993.

Gongadze’s wife, Myroslava, who was not allowed access to the corpse until last week, has said she believes the body is probably his. Prytula, the co-worker, agrees.

Meanwhile, there are published reports that the Council of Europe will send a team to Ukraine next month to make inquiries, and on Dec. 15, the New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists called on Kuchma to appoint an independent prosecutor.

Holovaty, the parliament critic of Kuchma, said there is now almost no doubt among Ukrainians that Kuchma was involved in Gongadze’s disappearance.

“Even those [members of parliament] who say on camera that they have doubts sound absolutely confident about Kuchma’s role when you talk to them off the record,” he said.

Holovaty blamed the situation on a mentality that he said continues to infect many people long after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“Such a man can never change,” he said. “Therefore, the only way out for us is to fight for a Ukraine without Kuchma. We cannot live together with him any longer.”