Security Service probes alleged coup attempt (10/01/00)

Security Service probes alleged coup attempt

RFE/RL Newsline

KYIV - The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has instigated criminal proceedings in connection with the state coup attempt that it allegedly uncovered last week, Interfax reported on September 25.

Ivan Kononov, an SBU official from Chernihiv, told journalists that the SBU had arrested Yurii Petrovskyi, who is suspected of being the coup's organizer, and a resident of Chernihiv identified as Bulakhov. According to Mr. Kononov, all suspects in the case are members of either the All-Ukrainian Union of Soviet Officers or the Ukrainian Union of Soviet Officers.

Mr. Kononov showed journalists a leaflet allegedly printed by the coup plotters that calls for "returning power to the working people in the form of soviets" and re-introducing the 1977 Constitution of the Ukrainian SSR in Ukraine.

Verkhovna Rada Vice-Chairman Viktor Medvedchuk said on September 25 that the SBU report on foiling the state coup is "not serious." The other vice-chairman of the Rada, Stepan Havrysh, said the SBU's revelation is "superfluously sensational" and has a "destabilizing character."

Socialist Party leader Oleksander Moroz suggested the coup attempt was "invented," while Rukh leader Yurii Kostenko commented that Ukraine's constitutional system is threatened not by an anti-constitutional plot but by the current economic crisis.

Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko said the SBU report is "yet another planned, far-reaching provocation against the opposition-minded forces in society." According to Mr. Symonenko, the suggestion of a state coup prepared in the provinces is untenable since "all coups, as testified by history, are staged in the capital." Mr. Symonenko jeered at the SBU by noting that in their alleged bid to thwart the planned coup, SBU officers confiscated a "weapon for underwater hunting that today may be bought at any shop."

The SBU had announced on September 22 that it has arrested a group of people who were preparing an armed coup d'état. According to the SBU, the group - which included residents of Chernihiv, Sumy and Zaporizhia oblasts - had started setting up military groups and gathering intelligence on the location of military units and weapons deposits. The group had selected the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, the dam at the Kyiv water reservoir and gas pipelines as targets for terrorist attacks.

The SBU also said that the group had written leaflets calling for an armed revolt and for legislation to be passed by new authorities. "The persons under investigation wanted to destroy our system with violent methods," SBU Chief Leonid Derkach commented.

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