Yanukovych back at work after egging in Ivano-Frankivsk (10/03/04)

Yanukovych back at work after egging in Ivano-Frankivsk

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Nearly a week after he was pelted with at least one egg and perhaps other "solid objects," Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who trails front-runner Viktor Yushchenko in most pre-election surveys, was back at work in his office in the Cabinet of Ministers building, fully recuperated from the incident after spending a weekend in the hospital.

"When I saw him, he looked like he was just fine," explained Hanne Severinsen, a rapporteur for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, during a press conference on September 29. Ms. Severinsen had met with the prime minister the previous day.

Members of the presidential campaign staff and personal entourage of Mr. Yanukovych who traveled with him to Ivano-Frankivsk on September 24 as part of a campaign swing through the western region of Ukraine maintained that Mr. Yanukovych was hit with more than merely a single egg as he disembarked from his campaign bus on Friday morning to meet with students before Stefanyk Prykarpattia University. They state that at least one "hard object" caused injury to his head. However they have yet to identify exactly what that object was.

Mr. Yanukovych and his campaign officials decided not to pursue a criminal case after law enforcement officials apprehended and arrested a single student, Dmytro Romaniuk, a 17-year-old in his first year of university studies, who they said admitted to throwing the egg out of frustration over the events surrounding the health of Mr. Yushchenko, his favored candidate.

Mr. Yanukovych, who was hospitalized after the incident, said from his hospital room in a statement broadcast on all the major television news programs, that he would not pursue criminal prosecution and had forgiven the young man, whose father, as it turns out, is the rector of a local university. Mr. Yanukovych said he understood the mistakes of youth and did not want to leave the younger Mr. Romaniuk with a black mark that could affect his future.

The student's father, Mykhailo Romaniuk, a dean of economics at Stefanyk Prykarpattia University, earlier made a plea for forgiveness for his son, who he said was contrite and cognizant that he had made a mistake in lobbing the egg.

Mr. Yanukovych saved his vitriol instead for officials of Mr. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine organization. The prime minister said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine after he returned to Kyiv that he had gone to the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast as the head of government to better understand the problems the region faces. He said he failed to grasp why he had been treated so badly.

"I as a politician have not said a single offensive word to my opponents for the whole election campaign. Now I understand: nationalism is a disease and unfortunately I must state this," he said.

Mykola Tomenko, an official of the Our Ukraine political coalition headed by Mr. Yushchenko and a ranking member of the Yushchenko campaign team, denied that the bloc or its campaign team were responsible for the events that had occurred in Ivano-Frankivsk.

"Since its founding, Yushchenko's bloc has never used dirty campaigning methods," explained Mr. Tomenko.

Perhaps still seething from the egg tossing incident in Ivano-Frankivsk three days earlier, Mr. Yanukovych made a declaration to a meeting with Russian journalists based in Kyiv on September 27 which no one had expected to be so radical in its dimension. The prime minister told the journalists that not only should Russian be the second official language in Ukraine, but also that Ukrainians should be allowed to take dual citizenship with Russia. He also affirmed that he had no intention of taking Ukraine into NATO should he become president.

Most Ukrainian television news media, which are controlled almost wholly by political forces aligned with the prime minister, failed to make a comprehensive, frame-by-frame analysis available to the Ukrainian public for its scrutiny of the incident in Ivano-Frankivsk, which received substantial news coverage from all the major mass media outlets.

Only Channel 5, considered an oppositionist broadcaster that supports the presidential candidacy of Mr. Yushchenko, provided its viewers with a slow-motion replay of the incident, which occurred before Stefanyk Prykarpattia University, where dozens of students had gathered to meet with the prime minister, some carrying placards in support of Mr. Yanukovych's candidacy, others holding aloft the orange campaign banners of Mr. Yushchenko.

Television footage did not clearly show what hit Mr. Yanukovych as he disembarked from his bus to greet students lined up on the sidewalk, although it appeared to be a single object. It did, however, clearly show the prime minister first looking down to his suit jacket to notice the object and then seemingly reacting to what he saw - rather than to what he felt - before falling backwards to the ground. His security detail immediately surrounded Mr. Yanukovych and carried him to a van that was part of the automobile cortege, which whisked the prime minister to a nearby hospital.

The first press reports made it clear that no one was sure, neither law enforcement officials nor members of the Yanukovych entourage, how to address what had happened. Initially, Mr. Yanukovych's press secretary, Hanna Herman, said that two objects were thrown at the prime minister, one of them solid. She also was quite earnest in noting that the injuries to the prime minister "were not life-threatening." She blamed "radical representatives of the Our Ukraine coalition" who she said were "acting aggressively," reported Interfax-Ukraine in its first release on the matter.

Mr. Tomenko of Our Ukraine dismissed Ms. Herman's remarks out of hand during his statement to the press soon after the incident. State militia noted eventually that Mr. Romaniuk, the student they had arrested, had no political affiliation.

However, Ms. Herman's remarks were only the beginning of a series of conflicting statements, most coming from the Kyiv and Ivano-Frankivsk offices of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Soon after Ms. Herman spoke, the state militia in Kyiv issued a statement in which it asserted that no "solid objects" had been thrown.

"It was just an egg," explained Tetianna Podoshevska, chief of the ministry's liaison department, some three hours after Ms. Herman had spoken, reported Interfax-Ukraine.

Two hours further down the line, the Internal Affairs Ministry's Ivano-Frankivsk office offered yet another theory. Interfax-Ukraine reported that the ministry asserted that two hard objects had been tossed at Mr. Yanukovych. The state militia official who made the remark noted also that the perpetrators were members of the Union of Young Nationalists. The official added that one of the prime minister's bodyguards also was injured.

With that report on the wire, the Internal Affairs Ministry's Kyiv office then changed its initial account of the incident and noted that in fact two solid objects had hit the prime minister, one in the head, the other in the chest. Meanwhile, the Moscow-based TASS news agency was reporting that it had information that a single sharp metal object had injured Mr. Yanukovych.

As Mr. Yanukovych recuperated in the Ivano-Frankivsk hospital before flying home to spend the weekend in the state hospital at Feofania, Vasyl Baziv, deputy chilef of the presidential administration, said during a weekly press briefing in the presidential administration building that a "vicious circle of escalation of hatred in society" was occurring.

"We've already come close to a dangerous point and all the participants in the political processes in Ukraine should come to their senses," stated Mr. Baziv.

A week ago Mr. Baziv had suggested that perhaps Mr. Yushchenko, who has alleged that he was poisoned in what could have been an assassination attempt, should have a food taster on his staff or at least drink vodka before his meals to sanitize his food.

On September 27 Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn called for a meeting among all the major presidential candidates to calm what he said was becoming an explosive situation within the country.

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