RFE/RL REPORT: Melnychenko speaks on the record (05/20/01)

RFE/RL REPORT: Melnychenko speaks on the record

RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

RFE/RL correspondent Askold Krushelnycky and two other journalists met with Mykola Melnychenko, a former bodyguard of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma while he was still in hiding at an undisclosed location in Central Europe. Below is Mr. Krushelnycky's account of the meeting.

Melnychenko's motivations

The audiotapes secretly made by former Ukrainian presidential bodyguard Mr. Melnychenko have fueled the biggest demonstrations in Ukraine since the country gained independence 10 years ago. Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, accusing President Kuchma of involvement in the disappearance, and presumed murder, of opposition journalist Heorhii Gongadze.

Mr. Kuchma has denied any involvement in Mr. Gongadze's disappearance. But in late November some excerpts from recordings of President Kuchma's conversations made by Mr. Melnychenko were released. The tapes purported to show that Mr. Kuchma had ordered that Mr. Gongadze be kidnapped. They also were said to reveal a foul-mouthed president discussing a range of corrupt deals for his personal enrichment.

Mr. Melnychenko said he left Ukraine with his wife and daughter two days before the first excerpts from the tapes were published on November 28.

Two journalists from RFE/RL and one from a U.S. newspaper were the first to meet with Mr. Melnychenko outside of Ukraine. They conducted an interview in a private room at an inn near the Hungarian border with Slovakia.

Mr. Melnychenko arrived in disguise. During a six-hour interview, the 34- year-old former security officer carefully measured his answers, as he explained why he made the recordings.

Mr. Melnychenko, who was born in Vasylkiv in the Kyiv region, said his childhood dream was to be in the army. After being refused admittance to the Kyiv military academy at the age of 16, Mr. Melnychenko joined the army. During his military service, he was asked to join the KGB. He eventually worked in the KGB's Ninth Directorate, which guarded VIPs. He said that for a time he was one of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's bodyguards.

After Ukraine attained independence, Mr. Melnychenko said he returned home and rejoined the army, where he received electronic surveillance training. He first became part of Mr. Kuchma's bodyguard team when he was prime minister. He continued in the job when Mr. Kuchma was first elected president in 1994.

Mr. Melnychenko said that at first he thought that Mr. Kuchma would be a good leader. He was often present during President Kuchma's meetings with senior officials and gradually, as he heard their conversations, he became disenchanted.

"The material that I've got ready clearly shows Mr. Kuchma is a criminal, that he gave illegal orders and oversaw their execution. These are various orders having to do with financial machinations, the political repression of opposition leaders and how he influenced individuals such as directors [of state enterprises], heads of government agencies and the like," Mr. Melnychenko said.

Mr. Melnychenko said he routinely overheard conversations between President Kuchma and others which showed how corrupt Mr. Kuchma was. He said he saw what he ironically called "gifts" of millions of dollars in cash being delivered to the president. He also talked with people who had dealings with Mr. Kuchma or who wanted access to him and thought that they could obtain it via Mr. Melnychenko.

All these elements, Mr. Melnychenko said, convinced him that President Kuchma and his closest cronies were thoroughly corrupt, out for their own personal gain with little or no concern for Ukraine's well-being.

Mr. Melnychenko said that what disgusted him most was that President Kuchma, in his words, "has ruined lots of businesses that could have provided work for ordinary people and could have brought economic benefit to Ukraine."

According to Mr. Melnychenko, if businesses were not paying for a "roof," President Kuchma would ask: "How can this be?" He said the president wanted everyone to pay protection money and, if they didn't, he sought to put them out of business.

Mr. Melnychenko summed up his view of the president in these words: "There is no greater criminal in the country than Mr. Kuchma. He has turned Ukraine into one big protection racket."

He said he decided to make secret recordings of President Kuchma's conversations because "every person has to make a choice at some stage [and] I decided to try to stop this kind of corruption."

His army training had furnished Mr. Melnychenko with knowledge of the surveillance techniques needed. With access to the president's rooms, he said, he was able to plant a listening device in the sofa in the president's inner office. The position of the microphone, he said, often made the sound quality of the recordings poor and it could only record President Kuchma's side of telephone conversations.

Mr. Melnychenko would not provide any details of the surveillance equipment he installed or say when he began making the recordings. He did say that he had had time to listen to less than half the recordings he made and indicated that they totaled more than 1,000 hours.

Mr. Melnychenko said that he is spending his time going through the tapes and is seeking to obtain special equipment to eliminate some of the background noise that obscures the voices in some recordings.

"I'm not sure how much time I need to study and transcribe all these [recordings]. To do it even superficially, and say who met whom and when, would take about one or two months. But if it is done more carefully - by piecing together all of President Kuchma's illegal activities and eliminating some of the background noise - well, for this I don't know how much time is needed."

Mr. Melnychenko said that when the media began reporting Mr. Gongadze's disappearance, he remembered that he had heard President Kuchma talking about the journalist with Internal Affairs Minister Yurii Kravchenko. He said he took some vacation time and spent about two weeks sifting through the recordings. By the middle of October what he heard on the tapes, pieced together with other information he had, convinced him that the president was linked to Mr. Gongadze's disappearance.

Some of those recordings - which the president's office says have been edited to distort their meaning - have already been published. Purportedly, Kuchma is heard to say that he wished Mr. Gongadze could be kidnapped by Chechen bandits.

Once he was convinced that President Kuchma was linked to Mr. Gongadze's disappearance, Mr. Melnychenko said, he looked around for someone to whom to funnel his information.

He told the journalists: "That's not an easy thing to do. You could draw up a list of 10 prominent politicians in Ukraine who you thought were honest, but I could show you such incriminating material about them that you wouldn't believe it. But there was nothing on Oleksander Moroz, the leader of the Socialist Party." Mr. Melnychenko approached Moroz, whom he trusted, and offered him copies of the recordings.

Mr. Melnychenko said he then had to get himself, his wife and child out of Ukraine before the recordings were made public by Mr. Moroz. He said he told his boss that he was resigning because he had been offered a lucrative job as head of security at a Ukrainian company and needed to leave Ukraine for a month of training in Britain and to get medical treatment for his daughter.

Despite his boss's suspicions, Mr. Melnychenko said he managed to leave Ukraine on November 26, 2000, two days before the first recordings were released to the public.

Mr. Melnychenko said he had saved $2,000, which he thought would be enough for him, his wife and child (who is not ill) to live for a few weeks abroad. He said he thought Mr. Kuchma would be forced to resign within a few weeks.

Mr. Melnychenko had been living with the help of friends in a Central European country; on February 25, his legal status in that country expired.

Mr. Melnychenko said he needs two to three months to complete his work and then wants to return to Ukraine. But Mr. Melnychenko said: "I do need protection. I want my wife and daughter to be safe. Not only are the Ukrainian intelligence services trying to find me, but professional killers are also trying to find me. I can't feel totally safe anywhere. I use disguises and am very careful about my movements."

Mr. Melnychenko said he is not afraid to return to Ukraine and is willing to take any test to prove he is telling the truth. But he wants President Kuchma to submit to the same tests.

"I'm not frightened to return to Ukraine because there is nothing more precious to me than my Ukraine. I'm a soldier of Ukraine, and I'm ready to do anything that's necessary for its independence and democracy. I'm also truly willing to give my life so that there is democracy in Ukraine and ordinary people can begin to live better and not in the way they have been driven to live today by Mr. Kuchma's policies," Mr. Melnychenko noted.

But Mr. Melnychenko said that he is worried for his family."I am frightened for my wife and for my child because I am familiar with the forces - not just Ukrainian but from elsewhere - that want to change what I've done and would try to influence me through [endangering] my wife. And they are capable of anything because they have no morals. They will protect themselves. I'm not just speaking about Mr. Kuchma or Mr. Kravchenko or their group but a much wider circle of people," Mr. Melnychenko said.

The Gongadze case

Mr. Melnychenko, who served as a presidential bodyguard for seven years, said he decided to publish excerpts of the secret tapes in the wake of last September's disappearance of Mr. Gongadze.

The debate over the authenticity of the tapes - which purportedly have President Kuchma saying he wished Gongadze could be kidnapped by Chechen "bandits" - will not be resolved quickly.

President Kuchma's aides have said that the tapes, which have fueled recent protests in Ukraine calling the president's ouster, were manipulated to alter the meaning of his recorded remarks. Perhaps feeling the heat of mounting public pressure, President Kuchma himself wrote a letter published February 27 in Britain's Financial Times saying the attacks against him were politically motivated. He added that Mr. Gongadze's death, although tragic, was not grounds for a murder accusation, and called allegations of his involvement "completely untrue."

Mr. Gongadze's headless corpse was discovered in a wood outside the Ukrainian capital Kyiv weeks after his disappearance on September 16. Mr. Melnychenko said the still-unreleased excerpts indicate that Mr. Gongadze was meant to be "removed" even earlier. But he said the journalist unwittingly bought himself time by filing a complaint that he was being followed with Vice Minister of Internal Affairs Yurii Opasenko.

According to the former bodyguard, Mr. Gongadze gave Mr. Opasenko the license plate numbers of the cars he said had been following them. The vice minister then caused delays by making official inquiries about the cars, which he traced back to the state security services.

Mr. Melnychenko said his recording captures Internal Minister Kravchenko telling President Kuchma that Mr. Opasenko was not trustworthy and that he regretted not firing him earlier.

On September 16, a Saturday, President Kuchma and Mr. Kravchenko were together on a hunting expedition. Four days later, when the press had already begun to ask questions about Mr. Gongadze's disappearance, Mr. Melnychenko says he recorded President Kuchma asking a security official whether the journalist was alive or dead. Mr. Kuchma went on to say that Mr. Gongadze should be found because the situation looked bad for the president.

Mr. Melnychenko said that at this stage President Kuchma already knew Mr. Gongadze was dead and was only feigning concern. The former bodyguard said of the Ukrainian president: "Kuchma can be a very good actor, and he is a very cunning man."

Since leaving his Ukraine, Mr. Melnychenko has been living in hiding with his wife and their 4-year-old daughter. Ukraine has issued a warrant for his arrest, and Mr. Melnychenko said he is aware of intelligence efforts to track him down.

He also said he is worried about his family's safety and is concerned that President Kuchma's allies may have hired professional killers to find him. But he said he has no plans to seek permanent asylum.

"Why should I ask for political asylum? Why should I be afraid? Of whom, Mr. Kuchma? He should be frightened of me. If I ask for political asylum in another country, that will immediately provoke a misleading reaction from Mr. Kuchma's people. They would say, 'Look, he's frightened, he's fleeing from justice.' But I'm not frightened. If these recordings were fake, then I would have sought political asylum straight after the first excerpts were published. But I am confident [of the tapes' authenticity] and Kuchma also knows that these recordings are accurate," Mr. Melnychenko said.

Mr. Melnychenko dismissed claims by the Kuchma administration that he is an employee of foreign intelligence agencies looking to destabilize Ukraine. He says frustration with the rampant corruption he saw in the presidential office is the only reason behind his decision to put his safety of himself and that of his family at risk.

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