Truth May Be Elusive in Ukrainian Slaying

When Myroslava Gongadze asked prosecutors to display her slain husband’s hands so that she could identify his headless body, they tipped a pile of small bones onto the table.

For 25 days prosecutors had refused her demands to see the body of Georgi Gongadze, an Internet journalist and government critic whose death has caused the biggest political scandal here since Ukraine won independence a decade ago.

He disappeared Sept. 15, his body was found two months later, and when they showed it to her in December after weeks of invasive cutting and sampling there was nothing left of him “but a mass of bones and flesh,” his widow recalled.

With accusations swirling that Ukrainian President Leonid D. Kuchma might have played a role in Gongadze’s disappearance, the prosecutor’s slow and clumsy investigation is seen by analysts here as evidence of how authorities use law enforcement agencies as political tools.

“I said, ‘Show me something from the body that is in one piece.’ I asked to see an arm. They said, ‘Here’s the forearm bone.’ ” She finally managed to identify an intact foot as her husband’s and recognized the jewelry found on the body.

Yet even after DNA tests, which indicated a 99.6% probability that the body was Gongadze’s, and with old shrapnel wounds matching his past injuries, it took prosecutors until late last month to agree that the body was his.

“The prosecutor’s office did all it could to prevent the recognition of Gongadze’s body because if there was no body, there was no problem,” said Yulia Mostova, co-owner here of Zerkalo Nedeli newspaper.

No issue has so sharply divided Ukrainians since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Some are certain that Kuchma is guilty of murder; others believe that there is reasonable doubt. Conspiracy theories abound.

“You can build a case for him to resign on moral grounds. But that’s not going to happen because Ukrainian politics doesn’t work that way,” said analyst Markian Bilynskyj, field director of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, a think tank here.

Myroslava Gongadze wants to keep a low profile and try to get on with raising twin daughters alone. She is not convinced that the president ordered her husband’s execution, nor does she have any hope that the truth will emerge.

“I realized that if such high-ranking people were involved, I’d never see a result in the case. I realized I was very naive in thinking that what I was doing could help with the investigation,” she said, sitting beneath portraits of her children and the square-jawed, handsome, stubborn man she loved.

Threats on Tapes

In secret tapes, allegedly recorded last year in Kuchma’s office by security guard Mykola Melnichenko, a voice similar to the president’s ordered the Ukraine interior minister to “drive out” Gongadze, “give him to the Chechens, undress him, leave him without his pants.” The 31-year-old former television journalist directed the Web site Ukrainian Truth (https://www.pravda.com.ua).

In other tapes, Kuchma allegedly threatened to jail officials unless they garnered him enough votes in presidential elections held last year and plotted a grenade attack in October on an opposition politician. An Austrian examination of the tapes last month proved inconclusive.

On Friday, as many as 18,000 people gathered in Kiev, the capital, for a protest that turned violent, leading to dozens of arrests and more than half a dozen injuries. On Saturday, opposition parties denounced the arrests and pledged to stage new rallies today. But opposition rallies over many months have generally drawn fewer numbers--between 2,000 and 8,000 people--and, Bilynskyj argues, have put little pressure on Kuchma to quit.

“There’s a serious problem here, but we should not exaggerate the extent to which the president is in trouble. Kuchma’s fate will not be decided by people marching in the streets,” Bilynskyj said.

Kuchma’s credibility in the West has been severely damaged by his evasions, his suppression of a full investigation of his conduct and his heavy-handed response to the opposition rallies.

He initially suggested that the tapes were fake. Later, as details emerged, he was forced to acknowledge--albeit only indirectly--that it was his voice on the tapes but insisted that the recordings had been altered. He claimed that he had nothing to hide but at the same time quashed a parliamentary investigation into the issue.

Last month, a charismatic opposition figure behind the “Ukraine Without Kuchma” movement, former Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, was jailed on bribery charges as Kuchma sought to crush the opposition’s momentum.

But when authorities moved March 1 to break up a peaceful tent city of demonstrators in Kiev, the action provoked a sharp response from the Bush administration.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher warned that future aid to Ukraine, which has received more than $2 billion from the U.S. in the last decade, depends on whether the government abides by its constitution.

Kuchma seemed unmoved. On Monday, he ordered government officials to publicly disassociate themselves from the opposition protests or resign. Two days later, police dispersed a new gathering of tents and demonstrators.

The tape scandal has provided a window into the Ukrainian soul.

“The public interest [in Ukraine] is surprisingly low, given that this whole issue provided organized civil society with a point of leverage,” Bilynskyj said. “The Ukrainian people failed to respond, to coalesce around an issue that should have elicited a very negative response.” So why, in this nation of about 50 million, did a scandal that implicates the country’s leader in election-rigging and possibly a murder fail to turn ordinary Ukrainians out onto the streets?

One reason is political exhaustion. After 10 harsh years, many Ukrainians--particularly in poverty-stricken rural areas--fear another bout of political and economic instability.

Mykola Tomenko, a political consultant working for Kiev’s mayor, said the forces behind the opposition rallies are so diverse and controversial--ranging from socialists to the extreme nationalist organization UNA-UNSO--that many Ukrainians are loath to take part.

Moreover, the rallies have not boosted the opposition’s support. Polls in January and February showed that support for the right and center parties spearheading the rallies declined slightly.

Even opposition figures such as Olexander Turchinov, the deputy of Tymoshenko’s Hromada party, concede that the rallies won’t dislodge Kuchma. Of more importance is the swirling, invisible activity around Kuchma, the oligarchs who support him and parliamentary leaders.

Many analysts are predicting that Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko will be the next political casualty. Yushchenko’s government is facing a likely parliamentary vote of no confidence next month, and the president has hinted that he may withhold support for the former central bank chief.

Influence of West

With the failure of Ukrainians to rally around, Turchinov argued, it was up to the West to exert pressure on Kuchma.

“The influence of civilized Western nations, especially a superpower like the U.S., is very high,” he said. “But I think the West will continue to see Ukraine as a natural partner and will continue to finance this criminal regime.”

“The West’s apathy means the loss of Ukraine as a European power,” said Mostova, the newspaper co-owner.

But if the West reduces aid to increase the pressure on Kuchma, this nation--which has no oil or gas of its own--may fall back under the influence of its powerful neighbor, Russia. The U.S. and Europe still see Ukraine as a counterweight to Russian power.

Myroslava Gongadze’s gaze is so penetrating and clear that if she turned her pale blue eyes on those in control of the Gongadze investigation, they conceivably could not help but feel discomfort.

It would be easy for her to blame Kuchma, to hate him and to accept the many invitations to rail against him at political rallies. But she does not, even though she doubts that there will ever be a full investigation.

“I can’t tell you if Kuchma’s guilty or not. Blaming people on guesswork is not my style,” she said. “Fighting against Kuchma and shouting at every corner will achieve nothing. It’s not my duty to have someone punished. Harboring bitterness and anger inside would only turn against me.”