Quotable notes

"We have to get ready for a real war, and that is what I always tell Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine and Oleksander Moroz's Socialist Party. We have to prepare an extraordinary strategy of victory in the presidential election without expecting that this [presidential] team, which controls practically all spheres of our life, will act in accordance with laws. This recent act against Radio Liberty [the halting of FM retransmission of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service programming in Ukraine] has just signaled that they will fight to remain in power at any price."

- Yulia Tymoshenko, leader of the eponymous opposition bloc, in an interview with RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service on February 13, as cited by RFE/RL Belarus and Ukraine Report.

"The crisis caused by the killing of journalist Heorhii Gongadze and by the disclosure of Major [Mykola] Melnychenko's tapes that link [President Leonid] Kuchma to this case has demonstrated that the president plays a key role in the Ukrainian political system. His fate, his striving to guarantee personal security for himself have become the most important matters for the state, pushing aside social needs, economic development and the strengthening of Ukraine's international position. The entire state has de facto become a hostage to one person - Leonid Kuchma."

- Our Ukraine leader Viktor Yushchenko in the article "Ukraine's Choice" published in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza on February 11, as cited by RFE/RL Belarus and Ukraine Report.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 7, 2004, No. 10, Vol. LXXII

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