On Dec. 5 former presidential bodyguard Major Mykola Melnychenko held a long-awaited press conference widely expected to produce sensational new revelations. Journalists were not the only ones who were looking forward to this event. Two hours before the press conference began men in civilian clothing occupied the first two rows of seats in the Interfax-Ukraine news agency’s small conference room. During the press conference it was learned that some of them used to be security service officers, i.e., Melnychenko’s colleagues. Many journalists were unable to attend the conference because there were no vacant seats.
A couple of times the men in civilian dress shouted things like “Do you think we are that naive?” and “Tell us who’s paying you!” One of them, Colonel Volodymyr Kosar, who was the deputy commandant in the Presidential Administration, even tried to convince the assembled journalists that Melnychenko could not possibly have bugged Leonid Kuchma’s office. “Melnychenko would go there once every three days or even once a week. Could he really slip a voice recorder under the sofa?” he asked. Yevhen Lauer, editor-in-chief of the Trybuna online publication, showered abuse on the ex-major, “performing seal” being one of his mildest invectives. Melnychenko hardly reacted to the provocations and even managed to make a few statements.
“A VOICE RECORDER UNDERNEATH THE HEART”
Melnychenko once again presented what he calls irrefutable proof that he was the one who made the recording in Kuchma’s office. He said he would carry the voice recorder “underneath the heart...personally place it under the sofa and take it from there.” To illustrate, he played a recording that he said was “the creaking of sofa springs in Kuchma’s office.” But it was practically impossible to make anything out: all we heard was a hissing sound. Another “host” of the news conference, ex-MP Oleksandr Yelyashkevych, kept reminding the audience that “Melnychenko risked his life every time he was doing the recordings. Distracting the attention of his colleagues, he would install and remove the voice recorder.”
CHERCHEZ LA FEMME
The former state security major claims that Verkhovna Rada Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn had personal motives for eliminating journalist Heorhiy Gongadze. “I emphasize that Lytvyn had private reasons for hating Gongadze,” he announced. Melnychenko refused to disclose these motives “for ethical reasons,” but Yelyashkevych partially satisfied the journalists’ curiosity: it was “a relationship with a woman.” As to the identity of this woman, Yelyashkevych referred the members of the audience to the Prosecutor-General’s Office because all the materials are there. He also said he demands Lytvyn’s dismissal from the post of Verkhovna Rada speaker. “I stress that I have repeatedly raised the Lytvyn question, even through the former US ambassador. Right after the death of [ex-interior minister] Yuriy Kravchenko Melnychenko also demanded that Lytvyn be immediately relieved of his duties because he was the main figure obstructing the investigation of high-profile criminal cases,” he said.
A BILLION FOR KUCHMA
According to the ex-major, there are Ukrainians who are ready to pay a billion US dollars to ensure that President Kuchma is not prosecuted. “One billion dollars is the price for clearing Kuchma of responsibility,” Melnychenko noted. He also said that the former presidential property manager Ihor Bakai, Kuchma’s top aide Serhiy Levochkin, and Kuchma’s son-in-law Viktor Pinchuk all tried to bribe him.
The “Orange team” also took some flak. Melnychenko alleged that on March 8 he met with former presidential aide Oleksandr Tretyakov, who asked him “to prevent Kuchma and Lytvyn from being brought to justice.” “But I do not believe that he was acting on the instructions of President Viktor Yushchenko,” Melnychenko said.
Asked why he did not warn Gongadze about the impending crime, Melnychenko said that the recordings did not contain a clear-cut order to kill. “There was only this: ‘Take him away to Chechnya and see what we can do’,” he said. Melnychenko also pointed out that it is up to law-enforcement agencies to find out what Kuchma meant.
As the news conference was drawing to a close, Melnychenko said he is not going to take part in the parliamentary elections. “I don’t have the slightest desire to be in the Verkhovna Rada and see the faces of Lytvyn, Volkov, and 283 more people’s deputies of this convocation,” the ex-major said.
