2000: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Ukraine's domestic affairs: the good, the bad, the ugly

On the domestic front in 2000 it was a roller coaster ride for Ukraine, the economy being one of the few surprisingly steady elements in an otherwise unstable year.

The new millennium began at a high point for Ukraine. At the end of 1999 the nation had re-elected a president who, in turn, had appointed the first truly reform-minded prime minister in the country's short history.

Then the Constitutional Court of Ukraine gave Ukraine a further push toward Europe when it ruled on the next to last day of the year that capital punishment is not in line with the country's fundamental law and ordered it stricken from the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The Verkhovna Rada made the required legislative changes on February 22 when it voted to abolish the death penalty. The decision fulfilled a pledge made to the Council of Europe in 1995, based upon which Ukraine gained admission to the European human rights parliament.

The Verkhovna Rada also ratified Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the European Convention), which provides for the abolition of the death penalty except during war or the imminent threat of war.

But it was the appointment of Prime Minister Viktor Yuschenko by President Leonid Kuchma, which many political experts speculated was a result of pressure from the West, that gave reason for well-founded optimism as the country entered the new year. The Ukrainian president gave Mr. Yuschenko a free hand in appointing his Cabinet of Ministers and overall responsibility for the economic reform process. The prime minister, in turn, appointed a Cabinet composed of an eclectic mix of veteran bureaucrats, dedicated reformers and unexpected newcomers, which surprised experts.

President Kuchma confirmed all of the appointments, which included Yurii Yekhanurov as first vice prime minister; Yulia Tymoshenko as vice prime minister of energy affairs; Mykola Zhulynskyi as vice prime minister of humanitarian affairs; Serhii Tyhypko as minister of the economy; Serhii Tulub as minister of fuel and energy; and Bohdan Stupka as minister of culture.

While Mr. Stupka's appointment was considered unusual because until that moment he had been merely an actor of some note with absolutely no government or administrative experience, it was the addition of Ms. Tymoshenko to the prime minister's team that caused the most resonance. Ms. Tymoshenko is the controversial president of United Energy Systems, an oil and gas trading company with a checkered past and close ties to former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who has been charged with illegal money laundering in several countries. Many, including eventually the president, expressed concern that the appointment of Ms. Tymoshenko would produce a dangerous conflict of interest.

Nonetheless, more good news appeared in early March when Mr. Yuschenko announced the first gains in Ukraine's economy in nearly nine years of independence. He told journalists on March 7 that the country's gross domestic product (GDP) had risen by 3.5 percent in January and that industrial output had risen by nearly 5 percent over the same period of the previous year, with a January to February increase of 10 percent.

The healthy economic indicators, which some economists and many politicians initially downplayed as aberrations caused by a currency devaluation that occurred at the end of 1999, remained upbeat for the entire year. In December the government announced that the GDP would finish at 5.6 percent for the year and industrial output at better than 11 percent. The only indicators that remained flat or deteriorated were unemployment, which continued to stagnate at unofficial levels of between 30 to 40 percent, and inflation, which came in at 25 percent for the year. Government experts said they were not too concerned about the inflation rate because the cumulative figure was a result of increases in gas, water and electricity rates in the spring that the economy had already absorbed. They predicted that in 2001 the rate of inflation would be just over 13 percent.

In the first concrete step towards initiating the comprehensive reforms that President Kuchma and his new government had pledged, the Cabinet of Ministers announced a reform program on March 3, called "Reforms for Prosperity." The 105-page, five-part plan, which was developed from the state of the nation address presented by President Kuchma to the Verkhovna Rada on February 22, aimed to "increase the economic independence of the citizenry and to promote entrepreneurial activity," said Minister of the Economy Tyhypko.

Mr. Tyhypko, who left the government a few weeks later over disagreements with Ms. Tymoshenko and was elected to a vacant Parliament seat in June, indicated that the program would assure deficit-free budgets, and even budget surpluses for Ukraine, which could lead to repayment of wage and debt arrears, a radical reduction in the country's debt load and a stable currency. A stated longer-term goal was the privatization of land and resurgence of the agricultural sector.

The government set as a goal an annual GDP increase of 6 to 7 percent within five years, with an initial rise in GDP in 2000 of 1 percent (a goal easily surpassed), followed by 6.5 percent in 2001. The plan envisaged a 1.3 to 1.4 percent increase in real incomes for Ukrainians at its completion.

A more immediate target set by Prime Minister Yuschenko was to restructure Ukraine's $2.6 billion foreign commercial debt, much of which was to come due by April 15. He and Finance Minister Mitiukov undertook a tour of Europe's financial capitals at the end of March to convince holders of Ukrainian Eurobonds to trade them for better yielding, long-term Ukrainian-held debt paper. By the deadline date some 98 percent of the creditors, among them many private individuals, had agreed to the debt swap.

The Verkhovna Rada gave the Cabinet even more good news on April 6 when it approved the "Reforms for Prosperity" economic program. During floor debate on the draft bill, Mr. Yuschenko called the economic revival plan his government developed "unique."

"This is not the first reform program," explained the prime minister, "but it is the first program that has a realistic chance of being given more than just formal political support."

In the first months of the new year, economic reform began to take hold in the agricultural sector as well - the result of a presidential decree from December 1999 that disbanded collective farms. On March 28 Vice Minister of Agriculture Roman Schmidt announced that, "the Soviet-era system of collective farms has ceased to exist in Ukraine." He said 10,551 collective farms had been reshaped into 11,100 new agricultural enterprises, mostly joint stock companies and cooperatives.

However, he added that some time would be needed to reshape the Soviet-era mentality of many farmers. "I am not sure if this Soviet collective farm system has ceased to exist in the minds [of agricultural workers]," explained Mr. Schmidt.

A survey released by the International Finance Corporation in mid-August on the changes in the agricultural sector since the reorganization showed that nearly half of farmers in Ukraine who took up free enterprise on their own were already making money.

In 1999, 47 percent of those who took the plunge into private farming prior to the presidential edict showed a profit, with an average level of 16 percent. The average area owned by a family farm enterprise was 4.4 hectares (10.8 acres). Those farmers who also leased neighbor's lands held between 16.5 and 20.9 hectares. About 13 percent of farmers leased land, according to the study, while another 51 percent were planning to do so.

The survey produced by the IFC came at the conclusion of a $40 million, five-year agricultural and land reform project.

Trouble in the energy sector

Reform of Ukraine's most troubled economic sector, fuel and energy, proceeded much more turbulently and claimed at least two victims. Ms. Tymoshenko, the controversial energy vice prime minister, was not, however, among them, although rumors of her impending political demise floated through the corridors of government throughout the year.

Ms. Tymoshenko's extensive energy sector reforms included decrees that made fuel and energy operations more transparent and banned barter operations in favor of a cash-only transaction policy. She also called for government regulations and oversight of the commodity market.

One of the first issues that confronted Ms. Tymoshenko was the large debt owed to Russia by Ukraine's quasi-private holding company Naftohaz Ukrainy. Ms. Tymoshenko, after meeting with the chairman of Russia's natural gas monopoly, Gazprom, in January returned to Ukraine with the shocking news that not only did the Ukrainian natural gas distributor owe Russia some $1 billion but that the company was stealing Russian gas from the Ukrainian pipeline that takes it to Western Europe.

At first Naftohaz Ukrainy denied the charges, but within days its president, Ihor Bakai, became the first casualty of the energy sector power struggle. Soon after his resignation the company began negotiations with Gazprom on debt repayment. At the time, Mr. Bakai said he was forced to resign under government pressure induced by Ms. Tymoshenko, who he said was looking to restructure the sector in her favor and to remove political and business competitors.

Ms. Tymoshenko was increasingly criticized by President Kuchma also, as the year went on, especially in mid-summer after she returned from Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, on July 27 and said that she had signed a deal for Turkmen natural gas at $42 per thousand cubic meters. The president said the vice prime minister did not have authority to conclude such a deal and that the agreement would be far too expensive after transportation costs were factored in, which would drive the price up to $90 per thousand cubic meters.

In the fall, the president signed a slightly more beneficial deal, which gave Ukraine 30 billion cubic meters of Turkmen natural gas at a price of $37 per thousand cubic meters, while receiving guarantees from Russia that the energy source would be transported through the country to Ukraine at minimal cost.

A second casualty of the energy war was Minister of Fuel and Energy Tulub, one of Ms. Tymoshenko's subordinates, who resigned on June 15 over the reforms his boss was implementing. Mr. Tulub blamed Ms. Tymoshenko for being long on rhetoric and short on action.

"More than once we discussed the biggest problems of the energy sector, but our proposals were either ignored for months, and if accepted only too late," said Mr. Tulub, according to Interfax-Ukraine. Mr. Tulub also said he could not agree with Ms. Tymoshenko's effort to regulate the gas commodities market.

The market had long been the domain of the new "business oligarchs," such as National Deputy Hryhorii Surkis and his partner, First Vice-Chairman of the Parliament Viktor Medvedchuk, as well as National Deputy Oleksander Volkov, a close associate of President Kuchma. Mr. Surkis is reputed to have taken over the market formerly controlled by Mr. Lazarenko after he fled Ukraine, while under political attack for allegedly running an extensive criminal empire.

In July President Kuchma appointed Serhii Yermilov as the new fuel and energy minister and Vadym Kopylov as the new director of Naftohaz Ukrainy.

Language policy an issue

More controversy awaited the government's effort to put in place a comprehensive Ukrainian language policy. The program, which was presented to the government for final review on January 27, consisted of 26 measures to help raise the prestige of the Ukrainian language and promote its further development.

The project was influenced in part by a ruling of the Constitutional Court on December 14, 1999, which stipulated that the Ukrainian language is "the mandatory means of communication for state bodies and local administrations, as well as in the spheres of public life on the territory of Ukraine."

Basically, the court ruled that government officials must utilize the language in all work-related matters, as must schools in the teaching process, beginning with elementary grades through the university level.

The decisions to promulgate the Ukrainian language were met with sharp criticism from Moscow, which called the actions discrimination against the Russian-speaking minority in the country. Kyiv, for its part, responded by citing statistics that showed that the Ukrainian language and not the Russian language is the threatened language in the country. It also presented evidence to support its assertions that Moscow should review its own minority policies in Russia before criticizing those of its neighbor.

The death of Ihor Bilozir, a noted Ukrainian composer, on May 28 - some five weeks after being beaten by two youths after an argument in a Lviv café over his singing of Ukrainian songs - fanned the embers and renewed the debate. In response to his death and subsequent demonstrations, Lviv city and oblast administrations passed resolutions on June 19-20 that limited the use of the Russian language in the region, specifically in commercial transactions and placed a moratorium on the playing of Russian-language songs.

When Moscow again vented its disapproval of what it called more discrimination against Russian minorities, President Kuchma entered the fray and went on the attack when he criticized an absolute lack of Russian government support for the development of the Ukrainian culture in Russia. On July 27 in Sevastopol, he said: "Please give me an example from Russia - where more than 10 million Ukrainians reside - of at least one school, one newspaper, one radio or TV program in the Ukrainian language."

A presentation by National Deputy Les Taniuk in the Verkhovna Rada building in mid-June highlighted other ways in which the Ukrainian language continued to move to the periphery in Ukraine. Mr. Taniuk stated that Ukraine's publishing industry was in dire straits and soon could disappear altogether if government did not extend life support in the form of tax incentives.

The former theater director noted that in the last two years Russian products had glutted the book market in Ukraine, a direct result of a liberal tax policy adopted by the Russian government in 1995 to encourage the export of Russian-language publications, specifically to Ukraine. Mr. Taniuk called for legislation to give Ukrainian publishers tax incentives to keep them in business, especially relief from the burdensome 20 percent value-added tax (VAT).

Of the various reforms begun in 2000, the most radical and extensive was an effort, wholeheartedly supported if not officially organized by President Kuchma, to implement changes to the Constitution that would increase presidential power while restructuring the country's Parliament.

After organizers, led by National Deputy Oleksander Volkov's Democratic Union Party, gathered nearly 4 million votes - a million more than needed - President Kuchma issued a decree on January 15 setting April 16 as the date for the nationwide referendum.

The initiative for the plebiscite, which the president's advisors insisted was not being driven by their efforts but was the result of a spontaneous grass-roots movement, came from a speech by President Kuchma to a gathering of regional and local leaders during which he proposed to reorganize Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada into a bicameral parliament.

Ultimately, the proposed referendum came to include six questions: Were Ukrainians ready to express a vote of no confidence in their current Parliament; if so, would they give the president the power to dismiss the Parliament after such a vote? Should the president have the power to dismiss the Parliament if it failed to organize a sustainable majority within 30 days or if it failed to pass a budget within 90 days? Should the immunity of national deputies from criminal prosecution be removed? Should the composition of the Parliament be reduced from 450 to 300 lawmakers? Should the Constitution of Ukraine also be ratified by an all-Ukrainian referendum? Should the country move to a bicameral parliamentary system?

Verkhovna Rada Chairman Oleksander Tkachenko, under fire for his increasingly leftist views and also for an inability to get a paralyzed Verkhovna Rada moving, protested the presidential decree, calling it a power grab.

"The declaration of the president for a national referendum is no more than the ambition of the president to obtain unlimited powers, destroy the Parliament and restrict the rights and freedoms of all the citizens of Ukraine," said Mr. Tkachenko on January 17.

The constitutionality of the six questions immediately became an issue, with various national deputies, led by Socialist Party leader Oleksander Moroz and maverick lawmaker Serhii Holovatyi, filing complaints with both Ukraine's Constitutional Court and the Council of Europe. While the country's highest court heard arguments from both sides on the issue, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) stridently voiced its opposition to the referendum in the format presented.

President Kuchma faced down PACE - which sent a monitoring committee to Ukraine and asked its advisory council on constitutional questions to establish whether the referendum met European standards - and responded to their assertions that the plebiscite was unconstitutional with a stinging response in which he accused the organization of intruding into the internal affairs of a sovereign country.

Mr. Kuchma received little satisfaction from the Constitutional Court's decision on the national referendum. On March 29 Ukraine's highest court threw out two of the six questions, specifically the first, which gave the president the authority to dismiss the Verkhovna Rada, and the sixth, which gave the people the power to ratify the Constitution. It also ruled that the referendum held an imperative character, which meant that it was not to be merely an advisory ballot and the results would have to be implemented.

While presidential critics such as Mr. Holovatyi applauded the court's decision, the president quietly signed a decree the same day bringing the referendum into line with the court's decision.

The last and deciding round of the political joust, however, went to President Kuchma, when on April 16 more than 80 percent of voters answered in the affirmative to each of the four proposals placed before them - with better than 90 percent supporting three of them. The results exceeded even the most optimistic expectations and political surveys.

But again charges surfaced that the referendum, like the December presidential elections, had been manipulated to Mr. Kuchma's advantage. Many also criticized the decision to allow 10 days of absentee balloting to ensure the 50 percent turnout needed to sustain the results. There were accusations that workers and students were forced to vote during work and class hours, which was specifically forbidden.

Rada Vice-Chairman Medvedchuk said on April 3 that the Parliament would put forward legislation to implement the people's will, but warned that he could not be sure the 300 votes required to make changes to the Constitution would be found. He explained that the recently organized parliamentary majority could guarantee only 276 votes.

Crisis in the Verkhovna Rada

The parliamentary majority, the first voting bloc in the Verkhovna Rada organized to cooperate with the president and the government in passing legislation, caused a major political crisis within the country early in the year, which at some point looked as if it might become an unhealable political wound on the parliamentary body.

The groundwork for the crisis was laid on January 13 when former President Leonid Kravchuk announced the formation of a majority coalition of 11 political factions representing centrist and center-right democratic forces in the Verkhovna Rada as a voting bloc and stated that its first assignment would be to remove the Rada's increasingly leftist and politically belligerent chairman, Mr. Tkachenko.

Mr. Kravchuk, who was elected the head of the coalition's Coordinating Council, explained that the voting bloc was formed to break the paralysis that had become the hallmark of the legislative branch of government and would take personal responsibility to begin moving economic and administrative reform legislation forward, which had been held up by the leftist forces.

A week later, in a move that split Ukraine's Parliament along ideological lines, the majority coalition voted unanimously to oust Mr. Tkachenko and his Communist first vice-chairman, Adam Martyniuk, for egregious violations of parliamentary procedure during a special session held outside the Verkhovna Rada session hall. They also voted with no dissenting voices to have the hammer and sickle, symbols of the Soviet era, removed at last from the façade and interior walls of the Verkhovna Rada building.

The majority coalition met at the Ukrainian Home on the last day of the winter session after Mr. Tkachenko refused for two days to allow a floor vote on a motion to suspend the speaker and his first assistant. The moves by the majority began when the chairman refused to accept a successful majority initiative of January 18 that would have required all floor votes outside of those mandated by the Constitution to take place in open, by-name polling.

After walking out of the session hall of the Verkhovna Rada Building on two consecutive days, the majority abandoned the venue altogether and called a special session at the Ukrainian Home of Exhibitions.

At a hastily called press conference after the decision became public, Mr. Tkachenko said he would not surrender his office. He explained that he would only obey decisions made in the Verkhovna Rada's normal session hall, in strict conformity with parliamentary rules and procedures. He also blamed Mr. Kuchma for the split, which he said would allow the president to organize a legislative branch that would better serve him and his ambitions. He filed a petition with Ukraine's Constitutional Court the next day to render a decision on the ouster.

Mr. Kuchma remained relatively quiet as the two-week crisis developed. He did, however, express support for the actions of the majority coalition, stating that the parliamentary paralysis had to end sooner or later.

The political rupture continued through February 1, when the center-right majority elected Ivan Pliusch, a member of the National Democratic faction, as the new chairman of the Verkhovna Rada at another special session at the Ukrainian Home. Mr. Pliusch had served as the Parliament chairman once before, in 1991-1994. Viktor Medvedchuk, head of the Socialist-Democratic (United) faction was elected first vice-chairman, and Stepan Havrysh of the Regional Rebirth faction, second vice-chairman.

As more than 2,000 supporters cheered the proceedings of the majority coalition, which continued after a week of parliamentary recess, the leftist factions and their ousted parliamentary leadership remained barricaded in the Verkhovna Rada building, which they had not left since January 21.

The same day the new parliamentary leadership was announced, Progressive Socialist leader Natalia Vitrenko and members of her party holed up in the Verkhovna Rada announced a hunger strike that was to last "until the people take back their Parliament."

Mr. Tkachenko, who continued to insist he was illegally ousted, asked that the full Parliament meet in normal session at the Verkhovna Rada Building and agree on a three-week moratorium on the issue of his leadership until it had passed a 2000 budget. The majority members rejected the offer stating that Mr. Tkachenko was no longer the chairman and did not have a voice in leadership matters.

On February 8 the members of the parliamentary coalition decided the time was right to return to the Verkhovna Rada building they had abandoned, which was still occupied by the leftist forces. The first regular session in more than two weeks was held that day - but not before a morning confrontation between the two sides, which included a battle between the lawmakers over physical control of the chairman's rostrum.

As the new leadership entered the hall, it was greeted with a standing ovation from the members of the majority coalition, while the leftist forces strenuously booed and chanted "Shame" and "Criminals!"

The next day several members of the majority announced that Mr. Tkachenko and his allies would face a criminal investigation into their actions and policies during the ousted chairman's reign.

A month later, another political crisis, albeit on a smaller and more innocuous scale, occurred when the national headquarters of the Communist Party of Ukraine was taken over by 10 members of a heretofore unknown organization called Independent Ukraine, which linked itself to the ideas promulgated by the early 20th century radical nationalist, Mykola Mikhnovsky. The group, consisting mostly of students, released a statement after they had occupied the Kyiv building, demanding the abolition of the Communist Party; the barring of CPU members, past and present, from positions in government; the withdrawal of Ukraine from the CIS; and recognition of former members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists as World War II veterans.

While holding the building, the nine men and one woman defaced interior walls, overturned desks and bookshelves, and destroyed Communist mementos.

The group surrendered to state militia after nearly 12 hours of siege and extensive negotiations with National Deputies Hennadii Udovenko and Mykhailo Ratushnyi of the Rukh Party, who acted as intermediaries for the government.

Individuals of the group, who were charged with illegal seizure of a public building and infliction of bodily injuries, were released on August 1 after nearly five months of incarceration, and hunger strikes by several of the group's members. The releases came after parents of the detained threatened individual hunger strikes. Procurator General Mykhailo Potebenko said he did not see any benefit in keeping the young adults incarcerated.

Coincidentally or not, six days later the group's missing founder and leader, Oleksander Bashuk, 27, who masterminded the assault on CPU headquarters although he did not take part in the action itself, was arrested at a safe house in the Podil section of Kyiv. He was charged with two counts of conspiracy.

The Gongadze case

A third, much more serious political crisis, involving the president of Ukraine, was slower to develop, but its impact - if the charges leveled could be sustained - would be much larger.

It began with the disappearance on September 16 of Heorhii Gongadze, an outspoken and dogged journalist, who had increasingly criticized the presidential administration and the Ukrainian business oligarchs in stories that appeared in his Internet newspaper, Ukrainska Pravda, which he had started in April.

During December 1999, Mr. Gongadze joined a group of journalists who had traveled to the United States to publicize what many in Ukraine believed was a deteriorating situation for press freedom. The group met with Clinton administration officials, congressional staffers and representatives of various non-governmental organizations in both Washington and New York. They also presented a petition signed by 60 journalists, which appealed to the world community to focus on the problems of a free press in Ukraine.

Mr. Gongadze, 31, disappeared without a trace on a Saturday evening after leaving a close colleague's apartment to meet his wife and their twin daughters. After Kyiv journalists organized demonstrations and met with national deputies, the Verkhovna Rada organized an ad hoc committee to investigate the journalist's disappearance.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs said on September 20 that it was handling the matter as a murder investigation. At first investigators said they were considering three possibilities that might have caused Mr. Gongadze's disappearance: his professional work, business relations or a private relationship with a woman gone sour.

As the state militia maintained that its investigation had revealed no leads or witnesses in the first days, Mr. Gongadze's wife, Myroslava, herself a journalist, and Olena Prytula, the editor of Ukrainska Pravda who had last seen the missing journalist, called a press conference on September 19 to announce that the Georgian Embassy had received an anonymous phone call on September 18 from a man having the accent of a person from the Caucasus region, who said that the journalist was still alive and being held somewhere in Kyiv. The caller, who refused to give his name or the source of his information, added that National Deputy Volkov, a prominent Ukrainian mafia chieftain nicknamed "Kissel" and Minister of Internal Affairs Yurii Kravchenko were involved in the disappearance.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs irked national deputies and the press alike due to its unwillingness to reveal any aspects of its investigation. Mr. Kravchenko refused a request by the Verkhovna Rada that he should appear to answer questions on how the investigation was proceeding - a request that came after his assistant, Mykola Dzhyha told journalists that the state militia was not looking at a political motive in the investigation because Mr. Gongadze "is not an influential political or public figure."

Mr. Kravchenko quickly corrected the public record. Several days later Security Service of Ukraine Chairman Leonid Derkach told journalists that his organization had information that Mr. Gongadze was seen in Kyiv at a popular local club on September 21.

While law enforcement officials continued what they claimed was one of the largest criminal investigations ever organized in Ukraine - a search that revealed not a smidgeon of evidence on Mr. Gongadze's whereabouts - local demonstrations and a concerted effort by the Kyiv mass media kept the matter alive. President Kuchma and Prime Minister Yuschenko ordered daily updates.

Then on November 15 Ukrainska Pravda announced that a headless body found in a partially uncovered, shallow grave in wooded area near the city of Bila Tserkva two weeks earlier belonged to Mr. Gongadze. Ms. Prytula and a colleague had traveled to the local morgue in the town of Tarascha after hearing that a corpse had turned up that could be that of the missing journalist. They said the body they saw, although badly decomposed after being treated with a special agent, had markings that were similar to ones Mr. Gongadze carried. The local medical examiner also showed them jewelry found nearby and an x-ray of the hand, with a grenade fragment still located in the bone, which led them to confirm that it was Mr. Gongadze's remains, and the doctor to execute a death certificate.

State militia quickly and quietly transferred the corpse to Kyiv after the information became public and within two days arrested the coroner for prematurely divulging government information and issuing a death certificate.

Neither the missing journalist's wife nor his mother was allowed to see the body or the accouterments found near it while officials went through a process of identifying the remains. That would take at least a month, they announced, because of the need for DNA testing.

When Procurator General Potebenko, answering charges that his agency was moving much too slowly in the investigation, said that DNA testing had been delayed because Mr. Gongadze's mother had failed to submit a sample due to illness, she answered in an exclusive television interview that, on the contrary, she was in daily contact with law enforcement officials, pushing to get the testing completed. The next day the sample finally was taken.

The murder investigation blew up into a scandal and then a political crisis when National Deputy Moroz announced in the Verkhovna Rada on November 28 that he had an audiocassette tape implicating President Kuchma, his chief of staff, Volodymyr Lytvyn, and Internal Affairs Minister Kravchenko in the disappearance of the journalist.

"With sufficient evidence in hand, I am obliged to announce that President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma ordered the disappearance of journalist Heorhii Gongadze," Mr. Moroz told the stunned legislative body.

Mr. Moroz, chairman of Parliament in 1994-1998 and an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 1999, allowed journalists and lawmakers to hear the tape recording in question during a press conference that followed his shocking announcement from the Parliament floor. The poor quality of the recording made it difficult to follow the dialogue or identify the speakers. Mr. Moroz said, however, that experts had confirmed that the voices belonged to the three state leaders and that work would continue to improve the sound.

Mr. Moroz explained that he had received the audiotape in late October from an official in the Security Service of Ukraine who worked in communications surveillance, but had withheld making the recording public until the safety of the official and his family was assured. The leftist lawmaker said the Security Service official was ready to testify in a court of law if a trial should proceed from the matter.

The next day the Socialist Party of Ukraine posted a transcript of the tape recordings on its Internet news site, as did Mr. Gongadze's Ukrainska Pravda.

Messrs. Kravchenko and Lytvyn immediately filed criminal lawsuits against Mr. Moroz for libel and slander. A few days later it became known that an expert analysis of the tape had been done by the Dutch Institute of Applied Scientific Research, which concluded that the tape was not computer-generated voice data, as some in Kyiv had speculated. However, the firm could not confirm that the voices were those of Mr. Kuchma and his two subordinates.

Mr. Kuchma, for his part, would not comment on the tape's authenticity at first, although on December 16 he stated that his is not the voice on the tape and that he neither had nor would have anything to do with criminal actions.

Theories abounded that either Moscow or Washington were behind the development and release of the audiotape as political leverage against the Kuchma administration - theories the president suggested were plausible. On December 1, while in Miensk for the CIS Heads of State Summit, Mr. Kuchma said, without being specific: "This is a provocation, foreign special services may have had a hand in this."

The controversy escalated again on December 12 after Ukrainian lawmakers watched a videotape in which 34-year-old Security Service of Ukraine Maj. Mykola Melnychenko, the person who claims to have recorded the conversations and was now in hiding, explained how and why he had bugged the office of President Kuchma.

On December 13, the day after the videotape was played in the Verkhovna Rada, the president's spokesman, Oleksander Martynenko, continued to insist that the audiocassette was a falsification, part of a concerted political campaign to destabilize the presidency and the nation. "The president never gave orders to any law enforcement officials on Gongadze or on any other journalist," said Mr. Martynenko.

Tensions between the legislature and the executive heightened further when the three national deputies who had traveled to Europe to tape Melnychenko's testimony, were harassed at Boryspil Airport in Kyiv by Ukrainian Customs officials upon their return. The events led the Verkhovna Rada to demand the appearances of the heads of several of Ukraine's law enforcement agencies.

By the end of that week, Verkhovna Rada deputies had cross-examined and vilified the country's top spy, top cop, head of customs and its head prosecutor, and called for the resignation of all four.

As the year ended, demonstrators who had set up tents on Independence Square were calling for the resignation of the president, much as others had done exactly 10 years ago when student hunger strikes forced the resignation of the prime minister of the Ukrainian SSR, Vitalii Masol.

While political upheaval seemed to be the norm in Ukraine in 2000, it affected the work, and perhaps the future, only of high government officials. Other incidents, accidents of one sort or another, transformed the daily lives of many more citizens and led to suffering and even death.

In the first incident, 80 miners died when a methane explosion ripped through the Barakova mine, located in the city of Krasnodon, Luhansk Oblast, on March 11. The blast was a result of careless welding operations taking place in the mine, investigators later concluded. The accident, the largest calamity to hit Ukraine in its nine years of independence, caused worldwide reaction. Dozens of governments and international organizations sent food, clothing and money for the survivors.

The Ukrainian American diaspora got involved as well. On September 29, three organizations - the Ukrainian National Association, the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee and the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America - sent a total of $27,205 in cash to the families of the dead miners, money gathered from individual donations by Ukrainian Americans. The UCCA also sent a cargo container of clothing, while the UUARC made an earlier contribution of $16,700.

Then an affliction of unknown origin ravaged four villages in Odesa Oblast in June and July. Officials announced on August 4 that 400 residents of the villages of Boleslavchyk, Chausove, Michuryne and Pidhiria were suffering from toxic chemical poisoning, but hadn't yet identified the source of the contamination. While the press speculated that the widespread poisoning, marked by lethargy, nausea and headaches, was caused by rocket fuel errantly dumped in the area when nuclear missiles, which once were located nearby, were disassembled. Others said it was just general toxic waste that had accumulated in local dumpsites that had caused the sicknesses. After President Kuchma visited the area on August 29, the government invited foreign experts, who decided that the poisonings came from both sources and called for a major clean-up of the area.

Finally, on April 20, an errant missile fired from a Ukrainian military training ground hit an apartment complex in the city of Brovary, just outside Kyiv, killing three residents, injuring five others and leaving 91 people homeless.

The surface-to-surface missile, of the 9M-79 class, was launched from the Honcharivskyi firing range during a routine training session of the Rocket Brigade of the Northern Operations Command and was supposed to travel 60 kilometers (40 miles) to its target at the Desnianskyi firing range. Because of a mechanical failure, it failed to descend and traveled another 30 kilometers (20 miles) before dropping on the apartment building. The powerful missile has a range of 120 kilometers. Army officials gave several possible causes for the accident, including a failure of the control system and hydro-drive operations; de-pressurization of high-pressure pipelines: and computer failure.

Even celebrations during 2000 were overshadowed by crisis or upheaval. While Ukrainians commemorated nine years of independence on August 24, demonstrators gathered outside of the Pecherska Lavra (Monastery of the Caves) complex to protest a decision to turn over the recently rebuilt Uspenskyi Sobor (Dormition Cathedral) located on the grounds of the monastery to the Moscow Patriarchate. Some 2,000 demonstrators shouted and chanted as President Kuchma led a delegation of government officials who took part in the re-dedication service.

But other celebrations proved more upbeat, including the first ever marking of Unity Day, in commemoration of modern Ukraine's initial, brief fling with independence and the events of 1918-1919. The country also celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Declaration of Sovereignty, issued on July 16, 1990, by a Supreme Soviet of Soviet Ukraine dominated by national democratic forces.

Mr. Kuchma succinctly summed up the importance of that event during a flower-laying ceremony at the Taras Shevchenko Monument in Kyiv: "If there had been no declaration, there would not have been the other steps taken toward independence and the consolidation of Ukrainian statehood."

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 7, 2001, No. 1, Vol. LXIX

| Home Page |