Kiev’s strongman seeks immunity

UKRAINE’S outgoing president, Leonid Kuchma, is trying to negotiate a deal that would guarantee him and his family immunity from prosecution in return for satisfying opposition demands over the rerunning of elections on December 26. As jubilant supporters of Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition leader, partied on the streets of the capital Kiev last night to celebrate the success of their historic two-week campaign to annul the result of last month’s presidential vote, it emerged that Kuchma is locked in frosty talks to secure his own future.

Presidential sources said Kuchma, 66, a former Communist party boss, is seeking assurances he will not be pursued over allegations of corruption during his 10-year rule and over the gruesome killing of Georgy Gongadze, a high-profile opposition journalist whose headless torso was found in a wood outside Kiev in 2000. He is also said to want to be allowed to keep his state-owned dacha and a £3m yacht the Ukrainian press says belongs to him.

The outgoing leader — who has denied any wrongdoing — is believed to be ready in return to sack Yushchenko’s challenger, Viktor Yanukovych, from his post of prime minister, and dismiss members of the election commission.

Parliament last week passed a vote of no confidence in Yanukovych’s government but Kuchma has so far resisted calls to fire his ally and Yanukovych surprised observers yesterday by announcing he would, after all, stand again in the new poll after the Supreme Court on Friday ordered a rerun.

Yushchenko’s supporters are also yet to be sure of how fair the rerun will be: in a setback for the opposition, parliament adjourned for 10 days last night without approving changes in the electoral law intended to make cheating more difficult.

Yanukovych, favoured by the Kremlin, won the disputed poll only after widespread vote-rigging. It would be much more difficult for him to repeat this if he were out of power, without access to government resources and support from the electoral commission.

Sources close to Kuchma said securing his own future and that of his family and close associates remained a crucial consideration in his handling of the crisis, which has spilt onto the streets of Kiev in a dramatic explosion of “people power”.

“He has many enemies in the opposition, who have called for him to be prosecuted and jailed,” one source said. “He wants guarantees that if he backs down and gives in he will not end up in the dock or, even worse, in a prison cell.”

Kuchma is believed to be particularly anxious over the case of Gongadze, who was killed while investigating allegations of corruption surrounding the president.

One of the president’s bodyguards, who fled to the West after the discovery of the journalist’s dismembered body, revealed he had secretly recorded hundreds of hours of the president’s private conversations. They included an excerpt in which an angry Kuchma is heard ordering that the journalist “be taken care of”.

The scandal — which became know as Kuchmagate — led to attempts by the opposition to impeach the president. The moves failed and Kuchma sacked the prosecutor-general when he sought to investigate claims that the killing was linked to the president’s inner circle.

Four years later, the case is still open and nobody has been charged. Gongadze’s remains lie in a Kiev morgue.

Kuchma’s enemies also want an investigation into allegations that he used his power to help his businessman son-in-law Viktor Pinchuk amass a fortune estimated at more than £1 billion. Critics allege that Pinchuk, 43, who heads a steel pipe-making empire and is also a member of parliament, won state privatisation contracts at a fraction of their market value thanks to his family ties.

In June this year, Kryvorizhstal, the country’s largest state steel plant, was sold to a consortium backed by Pinchuk and Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man — who is close to Yanukovych — for £418m. A rival US-British consortium offered £770m and pledged to invest £617m in the plant.

An old, old article on George Soros's involvement in the Ukraine:

Connie Bruck The New Yorker 23-Jan-1995 George Soros buys Ukraine

(SNIP)

Ukraine's own Mother Theresa. Of course it is always a bit of mystery to see someone like George Soros behaving philanthropically, giving away vast sums of money merely to do good to others. To Ukraine, George Soros appears in the guise of a selfless Mother Theresa — and yet selflessness is such a rare trait that when it makes its appearance, some observers can only stand and stare at it in wonder, and sometimes even in disbelief.

Part time philanthropist, part time plunderer? How to avoid noticing that this particular philanthropist's career consists in getting rich by taking money away from others in a vast, international poker game, in which no goods or services trade hands, and in which the only goal is to pauperize all opponents by outwitting them? How does a poker player who thrives under the guidance of this motivation find room in his personality for selfless philanthropy? How can such a philanthropist manage to avoid viewing the very people that he is giving money to as sheep that he will be able to shear tomorrow just like the sheep that he sheared yesterday? Had it been the case that subsequent to George Soros's intervention in Ukraine, the nation had prospered, then we would be obligated to consider thanking him. But as, instead, Ukraine has instead been plundered, what thanks are owed George Soros?

(SNIP)

Any harm in George Soros? Is there evidence that George Soros works to injure Ukraine? The Ukrainian Archive lacks the resources to systematically gather such evidence. This is a job for the Ukrainian press, which, however, Leonid Kuchma has made giant strides toward intimidating and suppressing what he has been unable to buy up. Not likely, therefore, that the Ukrainian press will ever discover that Leonid Kuchma first strode upon the world stage as a George Soros flunkey. Curious that George "Mother Theresa" Soros is unable to prevail upon his protégé, Leonid Kuchma, to allow a free press — one might have imagined that in his selfless efforts to modernize Ukraine, a free press would have been among Soros's most urgent goals. But instead, despite all of George Soros's efforts, somehow Ukraine has ended up with the press of a police state, in which journalists are sued, harassed, beaten, and assassinated. Despite such daunting obstacles to arriving at a clear view of what is happening, suggestive clues that George Soros works to injure Ukraine do emerge.

Don't invest in terminal cases. For example, George Soros does invest in Russia, but does not invest in Ukraine — a discrepancy whose explanation might be that Soros is aware that the plan for Ukraine, but not for Russia, is economic collapse. If anyone can think of any other explanation for the combination of George Soros holding particular sway over Ukraine, and yet for George Soros designating Ukraine as the only country that is nurtured by his philanthropy and yet that he refuses to invest in, I would like to hear what that alternative explanation is. As investment may be considered to be one of the most efficient forms of philanthropy, we are faced here with a major incongruity.

Stealing Ukrainian brains for Russia? For another example, Net-Moscow Times-14Oct97 reports that George Soros donated $100 million to promote Internet access in Russian universities, but mentions no corresponding figure for Ukraine. If the figure for Ukraine is zero, or disproportionately less than for Russia, then the effect will be to draw Ukrainian brains to Russia, than which there could be no more devastating injury to Ukraine.

Saving a country by giving travel grants to its scientists. On top of that, evidence bearing on the possibility of a long-standing Soros policy to drain Ukraine of its brains may be found in the UKAR discussion — What's George Soros up to? — that travel grants may have as their chief goal the emigration or Ukrainian brains out of Ukraine.

He who pays the piper calls the tune. Another thought that the following quotations are capable of eliciting in some restless minds. That one way of guessing the likelihood that an individual will work toward the success of the Ukrainian State is to count the number of internal y's in his surname, or to see if it has some such ending as iuk or iak or yshyn or enko. Quite a different way, which does not always give the same answer as the first way, is to notice whose payroll he is on.

I will settle for a Ukraine as free as Poland and the Czech Republic. That would be major progress.

OK, do you want to emulate Polish way? Poles did not stage any Orange/Otpor style coup. They worked through the existing institutions, through the constitutional framework through a system of compromizes. The old Communists were allowed to transform and get back into power (as it is now). Polish liberation was not directed by the foreign Open Society stage conductors.

Any movement away from the current Kleptocracy and toward the West will be an improvement.

You are very mistaken - there are many pro-Western/West directed banana republics which are miserable and not so free. Ukraine is too cold for bananas my friend.

If Yushchenko gets into power through the formal, constitutional process it will benefit Ukraine. But if he gets in power at the expense of making constitutional framework a "living document" pliable to the street pressure and "democratic" dictat from the Western "friends", kiss your freedom and independence goodbye. One way or another you will get what you deserve.

The Pole's would not have stood for a fraudulent stolen election that keep Russian puppets in place. Seems they have a tradition of taking to the streets for just that purpose.

You are missing the point. It is something else to mount a street pressure to compel the government to follow or to change the law through the PROPER procedures if necessary. What Orange/Otpor style crowd coup do is to make law pliable, soft and "living document" which will deliver the country in the hands of manipulators (stage conductors).

The closest precedent from the past to this new style of coup d'etat was the 1922 Black Shirt march on the Rome directed by Mussolini.

Fascists had catchy slogans, music, street events, color (black), the emblem - fasces from the ancient Rome, (a bundle of rods surrounding an axe).

Emerging EUrabia is restoring the demagogic Fascist project in the new Politically Correct form.

Dzieki

BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4070389.stm

Outsiders warned off Ukraine poll

Ukraine's opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko has urged foreign nations not to interfere in the re-run of the presidential poll.
He told the BBC the only role for the world's community was to help ensure the 26 December balloting was fair.

West-leaning Mr Yushchenko faces a rematch with PM Viktor Yanukovych, after the Supreme Court ruled that the 21 November poll was fraudulent.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been openly backing Mr Yanukovych.

Mr Putin made two visits to Ukraine in the run-up to the original vote.

Mr Yushchenko himself has been accused of being a US puppet by the Yanukovych camp.

Tens of thousands of pro-Yushchenko supporters continued to hold their rallies in the capital, Kiev, and around Ukraine, buoyed by the court's decision on Friday to stage a repeat re-run.

Mr Yanukovych described the ruling as an unconstitutional measure but said he would contest the re-run.

The prime minister's supporters - mainly in eastern and southern Ukraine - vowed to vote for him again.

Ukraine 'not divided'

"The election of the president of Ukraine is exclusively an internal issue for 47 million Ukrainians," Mr Yushchenko told BBC1's Breakfast with Frost programme, speaking through an interpreter.

"I'm calling on all our international partners and neighbours to recognise one thing - that only the people of Ukraine could resolve this issue and their opinion should be respected.

"We need assistance in one thing only - to strengthen the measures for having honest, transparent and democratic elections," Mr Yushchenko added.

He also said that Moscow had nothing to fear from Ukraine if he were to win the elections.

"Russia will always be our neighbour," Mr Yushchenko said, without elaborating.

He also dismissed suggestions by some analysts that Ukraine was facing possible disintegration.

"I think that it is a completely wrong view to think that Ukraine is divided into west and east. Ukraine is not divided either by geography or language or religion," Mr Yushchenko said.

"No-one should even think that Ukraine is losing its territorial sovereignty or integrity."

Trading accusations

Mr Yushchenko was speaking a day after the emergency parliamentary session debating key electoral law changes to prevent fraud had been adjourned until 14 December after opposition factions failed to reach agreement.

Ukraine's Socialists and Communists had earlier promised to vote for the amendments if the opposition supported a constitutional reform aimed at trimming presidential powers.

But the deal collapsed after the Yushchenko camp said they would consider the constitutional changes only after the electoral amendments were approved.

Mr Yushchenko blamed the government of trying to stall the electoral reform, while outgoing President Leonid Kuchma - who handpicked Mr Yanukovych as his successor - accused the Yushchenko camp of sabotaging the deal.

"The opposition isn't fulfilling practically any of the agreements reached at a round table that involved European politicians," Mr Kuchma said, calling international mediators back to Kiev for a new round of talks on Monday.

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