We have the third president since 2000, yet the case of the murder of Georgy Gongadze, the chief editor of the Internet newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, remains open and unsolved. Recently, however, the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) of Ukraine announced its completion of the Oleksii Pukach case. The ex-lieutenant general of the militia was apprehended in Zhytomyr oblast in the summer of 2009 (wanted by international warrants since 2003), and arrested on charges of the first degree murder of the journalist Georgy Gongadze and the kidnapping of the journalist Oleksii Podolsky. Most importantly, information has been made public to the effect that General Pukach was ordered to kill Gongadze by the then Interior Minister Yurii Kravchenko. In fact, this investigation scenario was previously predicted by many. No other persons who might have ordered the murder are not mentioned. The Day got in touch with the journalist, Oleksii Podolsky.
Mr. Podolsky, how do you feel about the information that what happened to you and Georgy Gongadze was ordered by the late Yurii Kravchenko?
“I’m not sure about my response, or whether I’ll attend the trial. Of course, I could go watch this show, but most likely I’ll follow Lesia’s (Gongadze’s mother. — Author) example. What’s the use? They (those in power. — Author) will want to resolve this case [their way]. They would’ve never investigated in the first place, but they need loans from the West. They don’t give a damn about our society, about who’ll say what over here, but they care a lot about what will they say over there, in the West. They have to solve this case in the eyes of the West.
“That was why they came up with Pukach. You see, they’d never lost sight of him. Mainly, they want to close the case using the murdered general (Yurii Kravchenko. — Author). I think he was murdered and the investigation in his case was falsified. If, after closing the case, the West will continue sending negative signals, the case will be reopened and they will continue going through the motions of investigating it. But if the international community shut its eyes to Ukraine, that will be the end of it.”
You’re saying those in power may continue falsifying your and Gongadze’s cases. How?
“They will find another scapegoat. For example, after the elections Lytvyn will find himself overboard. No one will need him, because passing bills for the coalition won’t be necessary. Then they may point an accusing finger at him. Actually, everything depends on the political will. If the order from upstairs is to keep investigating, but only up to a certain point, they will do just that. Without this command they will do nothing.
“The man they are putting on trial is just a murder weapon. Pukach is a puppet on a string, like the one with which he strangled his victims, except that this puppet is a living being. The system created by [our] politicians allows [them] to spit in the face of a civil society. This system, in which the law enforcement agencies are on the politicians’ beck and call, is only getting stronger. Too bad no one is going to put this system on trial. Meanwhile those in power are reducing the whole thing to the private matter of two wrongdoing generals, Kravchenko and Pukach.
“What can you expect after hearing about a student killed at a district precinct, with the official explanation that he hit his head against the wall or floor. At one time investigators told me, ‘Look, maybe you injured yourself or your friends beat you? Or maybe you faked your kidnapping and physical assault?’ On The Day of Gongadze’s murder, Prosecutor General Potebenko said the man had been seen in Lviv and that the whole thing was a provocation.
“The investigation in this case has always been slowed down by the absence of political will. Kuchma and Yushchenko didn’t have it, and nor does Yanukovych. It would seem Yushchenko, of all people, should have given it the green light, but Yushchenko’s promise that all bandits would be in jail was carried out in the opposite direction.”
Kuchma was probably right when he said that everything was back to where it started, that everything was in its right place.
“Absolutely. In fact, nothing had actually been started. A lot depends on you, the media. If you believe what you’re told, like when they tell you that this stool or that stiff is to blame, then that’s how you’re going to live. They will pick you off one by one. But if you don’t, then the international community will pay attention to you. Unless we force those upstairs to reckon with us, this complex situation will remain unchanged. When we are ready to man the barricades to set the wrongs done to us right, then they will think twice before doing something to us. The Gongadze and my case are a litmus test for them.”
As of September 15, Gongadze’s mother, widow, their lawyer, and Oleksii Podolsky have the right to familiarize themselves with the documents in the case. Pukach will be entitled to do so only after them. Valentyna Telychenko, their lawyer, has stated, however, that she mistrusts the GPO findings concerning the persons who allegedly ordered Gongadze’s murder: “At the moment I have more questions than answers.” Lesia Gongadze refused to attend the court hearings and stated that the whole thing is a farce and “a game being played by the General Prosecutor’s Office, an attempt to whitewash their previous inactivity. They are trying to cover the tracks of having done nothing in the past, when my son asked them for help. Blaming the dead is standard practice. May the Lord pass His judgment on them.”
Another interesting aspect is ex-Major Mykola Melnychenko’s audio cassettes recorded in President Kuchma’s office. Known as the Melnychenko tapes, they were made public on November 29, 2000. On some of the tapes you can hear voices resembling those of Leonid Kuchma, Volodymyr Lytvyn (then head of the Presidential Administration), Leonid Derkach (then chief of the secret police, SBU), and Yurii Kravchenko (then Minister of the Interior) discussing the elimination of Georgy Gongadze. These tapes have been studied by a number of experts in Ukraine and abroad. However, no mention is made of them in the Gongadze case. Melnychenko has declared that he will refuse to testify: “September 17 is the deadline past which no charges can be pressed against those who ordered this murder, and they will never be brought to justice. The investigation in this case could have been more effective, had it been supported by the [political] leadership of this country. However, no one assisted or expedited the process.”
Leonid Frosevych, a journalist, has many doubts about the future outcome of the Gongadze case (particularly about Kravchenko who allegedly put a contract out on the journalist): “As a journalist who has studied this case, I think it will have a sequel, among other reasons because there is nothing about the motives. What made Kravchenko order Pukach to kill Georgy? We all know that there are no crimes without motives. Somehow the GPO investigators are reluctant to emphasize this aspect. Of course, it’s very convenient to blame Kravchenko for everything because he can’t refute anything. I think that Pukach has left lots unsaid. Everything depends on the deal he made with the investigators. The whole thing gives rise to many other questions. Remember, now and then our public opinion was led to understand that no one had actually ordered the murder. We were fed stories that those behind the murder could have been the late generals Fere and Dagaiev. Today, not a word about either of them, everything about Kravchenko. We were constantly offered misleading eyewitness accounts about Gongadze having been seen in Lviv or elsewhere. I think all this was meant to lead the investigators off the track, a strategy worked out at the Interior Ministry. Today we are offered another story that points to Kravchenko as the man behind the murder. Let me repeat myself, we don’t know the motives that made Kravchenko order the murder of Gongadze, just as we don’t know how well the Lytvyn-Gongadze trace has been followed. We don’t know what Kravchenko and Lytvyn discussed, although the fact of their meeting was confirmed. Also, the Melnychenko tapes, the most important evidence in the Gongadze case, are left out. There is no information about the role played by then SBU head Derkach in the Provocateur operations file started on Gongadze. In other words, there are considerably more questions than answers in the Gongadze case.”
Talking of misleading investigation leads, the journalist, Volodymyr Boiko, commented on the Gongadze case and said he knew that Kravchenko would be the only man behind the journalist’s murder: “I knew this back in 2003 because I’d been offered a sum for covering the falsified GPO investigation. By the way, Serhii Sholokh, head of Radio Continent, received a similar offer. Since I’m telling you all this, I said no, of course.”
And so, ten years after Gongadze’s murder, his case leaves a great many questions unanswered. Even though the General Prosecutor’s Office has announced that Kravchenko ordered the journalist’s murder (there can be no case because the guilty party is dead), our society remains obviously dissatisfied. Who ordered Kravchenko to have Gongadze killed? Why aren’t the Melnychenko tapes present in the case? Why weren’t the investigators who falsified the cases of Gongadze and Podolsky under President Kuchma brought to justice? And so on.
September 8 marked the International Day of Journalists’ Solidarity (instituted in memory of the Czech anti-Nazi journalist Julius Fucik who was executed by the Nazis on September 8, 1943). Apparently little has changed since then in Ukraine, given that journalists keep being killed in this country, part of Europe in the 21st century, and their murder cases remain unsolved. A month ago, Vasyl Klementiev, the editor in chief of Kharkiv’s newspaper Novy styl (The New Style) was placed on the missing persons list. The militia can’t find him while the newspaper’s deputy editor in chief Petro Matvienko is convinced that Klementiev was killed. The law enforcement agencies have opened a criminal case under the deliberate murder article of the Criminal Code, but there are still no suspects. Recently, the prosecutor’s office refused criminal proceeding on charges of obstruction of professional activities after the STB Channel’s journalist Serhii Andrushko filed the complaint. Several days ago, security guards of the City Mayor, Volodymyr Saldo physically assaulted Dementii Bely, journalist with the newspaper Svobodny vybor (The Free Choice). For the Ukrainian journalist community these facts are additional evidence of the folding up of the freedom of expression in this country.
Regrettably, the tragic page with Gongadze’s murder has not been turned. It is good that the GPO has made public the pertinent information, although most likely it constitutes only ten percent of the full solution to the murder case. Are those currently in power capable of completely cleansing themselves of their sins? The scope of moral degradation is such that there is little likelihood of anyone succeeding in bringing the situation back to normal.
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Ex-President Leonid Kuchma has described the Gongadze case as an international provocation: “This international provocation is aimed at discrediting Ukraine. They wouldn’t let me or Ukraine live in peace for five years!” He added that foreign special services were behind the kidnapping of the journalist, and that it is a widely known fact.
