It often happens that while reading a decent text, you agree with most of the author’s arguments and conclusions until you come across a small detail, and your impressions of the stuff change at once. Sometimes an individual may really be unaware of all the circumstances and make some slips. However, at other times untruth is a conscious choice. Still worse when it is prettily wrapped in good, sophisticated analysis.
Let us look at one of the recent texts at the website of the internet periodical Detector-Media under the title “Who Is a Greater Bot and a Lesser Patriot?”. Indeed, the article contains a profound and detailed analysis of why Ukraine does not know big problems with freedom of speech, and what are the true challenges of our media environment. But as you read through the text, you cannot but notice one essential detail. Speculating about certain publications in Western media, mentioned in the article, which “might alienate the West from Ukraine,” the author draws a historical analogy:
“Reminiscing the assassination of Georgy Gongadze now, 16 years later, we understand that even if it was not directly orchestrated by Russian special services, it still played in the Kremlin’s hands. President Leonid Kuchma, who at the beginning of his second presidency increased cooperation with the West, was forced to seek support in Moscow after Gongadze’s disappearance, as well as after the ‘cassette’ and ‘Kolchuga’ scandals. The West was disillusioned with the government which murders journalists.”
It might seem that now, 16 years after Gongadze’s assassination, one can find all information about this tragedy in the information space. However, media environment, including such a decent internet periodical, still keeps accentuating one of the popular versions from the instigators of the murder: the version about the Russian trace in this crime. It is hard to believe that this version is being spread by the journalists deliberately, but the authors of the article had used it more than once.
“First of all, the instigators of Gongadze’s assassination must be punished, regardless of who used this murder for the ends of foreign politics,” said Mykola Kniazhytsky, journalist and head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee for Culture and Spirituality, in his comment to The Day. “Indeed, the Kremlin has used this tragedy to its advantage, but had there been no crime, there would have been nothing to use.”
Thus, the key question is, why the instigators of the journalist’s assassination still go unpunished? And what should be done with the assault on Oleksii Podolsky, a public activist, three months prior to Gongadze’s murder, which was similarly directed? And still before that, there was an attempt on the life of an oppositionist MP Oleksandr Yeliashkevych, and why was this crime never definitely solved? By the way, all these three crimes are mentioned in Melnychenko tapes. Thus, if there is such a load of compromising evidence, foreign special services could not but use it to manipulate the then leadership of Ukraine. But wasn’t it the then President Kuchma who voluntarily drove himself in a trap and compromised the entire nation? These are the questions that journalists must ask in the first place, instead of which special services took advantage of it and where Kuchma was forced to seek support as the result of his very own faults.
“We all seem to know everything about our country’s most recent history, but for some reason in the key moments (in particular, despite the perfect knowledge of the circumstances of Georgy Gongadze’s murder) no one was punished. What can be more important than the insolent and cynical assassination of Georgy Gongadze?” emphasizes MP Ihor Lutsenko. “This moment destroys our legitimacy because state has left the culprits unpunished, and the entire society knows who they are. This contrast between the obvious and the government’s total inactivity for decades undermines any faith in the government. Consequently, due to the inertia of the government, certain insinuations concerning foreign secret services arise, not necessarily the Russian ones. Yet it would be a wasted opportunity, if a foreign secret service had not taken advantage of the weakness of our ‘elite.’ We must realize the main thing: the government ordered Gongadze’s murder, and the rest followed.”
Indeed, “the discord among journalists is a boon for the aggressor state,” states the article. But it is hard to speak of journalists’ unity when a part of the media has no principled stance on key issues like, for one, the Gongadze-Podolsky case. This reduces their good intentions to zero, even if they bring up other useful and important issues. To which extent have the instigators of the abovementioned crimes infected the media environment with their blame-shifting?
“Thing is that Kuchma and his nearest relatives have rather efficient teams for whitewashing their image. These people do not just comment, but they also can shape public opinion,” comments Lutsenko. “I would like to say that Pinchuk, for instance, does not mask his intentions and absolutely openly invites people (journalists included) to his programs. Society needs to be very intelligent in order to filter the imposed imperatives. Certain forces successfully mimic to blend into common European trends yet remaining donor to concrete oligarchs. For instance, Pinchuk, who financed them in an absolutely transparent manner, took part in the whitewashing of his father-in-law Kuchma.”
Also in the Gongadze-Podolsky case manipulations continue. As we all know, on October 12 the High Specialized Court will consider cassations of the verdict in the case of Oleksii Pukach, the major executor of these crimes. Previously, the Appeal Court of Kyiv left in force the ruling of the Pechersky Court (life imprisonment for the former chief of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry’s external surveillance department). Commenting cassation prospects, Valentyna Telychenko, who represented Myroslava Gongadze in court, said (curiously, to the same media outlet, Detector Media):
“Pukach has the right to appeal, and I am convinced that the court will thoroughly consider all his arguments, but there are no grounds for abrogating or changing the decision passed by the judges in the court of the first instance. That is why I do not think that this consideration will affect Pukach’s lot in any possible way. It is all clear with this case, everything is rounded up there. And the Cassation Court is, roughly speaking, just a formality, yet this formality is of utmost importance, it must make sure none of Pukach’s rights is violated, so that he has no grounds for speculations later. I will object to the satisfaction of Pukach’s cassation and consider it to be ungrounded. I think the Cassation Court will make a legal ruling, leaving unchanged the decisions of the court of the first instance and the Court of Appeals.”
In this case, Telychenko is keeping something back. That Myroslava Gongadze’s party withdrew its appeal when the case was treated by the Court of Appeals, and did not submit a cassation to the Higher Specialized Court, does not mean that it was only convicted Pukach who submitted a cassation. The same was done by Oleksii Podolsky, victim in this case, and by his representatives.
“I think Telychenko is doing this deliberately, because her behavior and actions suggest that she has long joined the team of the instigators,” says Podolsky in his commentary to The Day. “She is part of the mechanism, consequently, she will do as she will be told by the power-wielding agencies, which have a ready script for this particular case. At the trials Telychenko in fact supported the prosecutors and judges who forged the case. And the case was forged, as former president of the Court of Appeals Anton Chernushenko shared in his video address. He emphasized that the case was personally monitored by the president and his deputy chief of staff Oleksii Filatov.”
An important detail: Telychenko has repeatedly said that indeed the trial of executor Pukach should be brought to a close, and then instigators should be investigated in a separate trial. Yet if the court never established Pukach’s motive (he did not choose to kill Gongadze and assault Podolsky on his own accord, nor did he get his orders from the then minister of interior Yuri Kravchenko), why close the case? There were other people who gave the order and whose voices are recorded on the Melnychenko tapes. Moreover, it turns out that Podolsky has absolutely no status in the case concerning a part of the instigators (this illustrates the progress Prosecutor General’s office has made in this direction).
“I appealed because there was in fact no trial in the court of the first instance and in the Court of Appeals whatsoever: no investigation was carried out, motives were not established, and evidence was ignored. Moreover, in the Court of Appeals I was illegitimately excluded from the process, consequently, my appeal was never considered in essence. They are simply trying to shift the blame on executors in order to protect the instigators of Gongadze’s murder and of other crimes,” said Podolsky explaining the motivation behind his steps. “The Gongadze case is a precedent which has been used by all presidents. They do not want to bring the case to an end as they grew accustomed to using law-enforcement authorities for their own ends, in particular, using them as weapons against opponents. That is why there is no true reform in the interior ministry, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and the Prosecutor General’s office, which remain essentially Stalinism-style bodies. The Gongadze case is valuable because it could trigger the genuine reform of law-enforcement agencies, making them truly democratic and controlled by society.
“My cassation is not the end of the trial, it is merely a formal stage enabling an appeal to higher international courts later, because one needs to go through all court instances in Ukraine. I think that Ukraine will be forced to ratify the Rome Statute, which will allow to bring top officials to answer in international bodies – in particular, for their crimes in the Gongadze case. This case concerns not only me personally, or Gongadze, or Yeliashkevych: it concerns all Ukrainians who are still helpless before the highest power, in particular, law-enforcement agencies. This is my major mission: not only to make sure that the killers and instigators in this high profile case are punished, but to start the process of genuine cleansing.”
