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Eve of the inauguration On the day of Viktor Yushchenko's inauguration, Tom Mangold reveals the extraordinary story of his rivals' plot to deny him power. It's inauguration day for new President Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine's modernist President, a reformer who beat a brutal and medieval assassination attempt by poisoning and an outrageous example of poll rigging last November to become Ukraine's new leader. And only now are the astonishing truths of Mr Yushchenko's fight for the leadership he had earned being revealed. An investigation has discovered: · Britain's germ warfare laboratory in Porton Down has received a biopsy of his skin...

(AP) - A Kyiv court opened proceedings Jan. 21 on whether to annul the privatization of Ukraine's largest steel mill, which was sold for $800 million (665 million euros) last year to a group that included the president's son-in-law. The court proceedings were proposed by a parliamentary commission and a lawmaker loyal to President-elect Viktor Yushchenko, and underlined expectations that the new administration will re-examine some of Ukraine's murkiest business deals. The Krivoryzhstal steel mill was sold by the state to coal and steel tycoons Rinat Akhmetov and Viktor Pinchuk, the son-in-law of outgoing President Leonid Kuchma, despite reported higher...

KIEV, Ukraine, Jan. 16 - As protests here against a rigged presidential election overwhelmed the capital last fall, an alarm sounded at Interior Ministry bases outside the city. It was just after 10 p.m. on Nov. 28. More than 10,000 troops scrambled toward trucks. Most had helmets, shields and clubs. Three thousand carried guns. Many wore black masks. Within 45 minutes, according to their commander, Lt. Gen. Sergei Popkov, they had distributed ammunition and tear gas and were rushing out the gates. Kiev was tilting toward a terrible clash, a Soviet-style crackdown that could have brought civil war. And then,...

In the past, Ukrainians often referred to Western democracies as “civilized,” with the inherent implication that post-Soviet Ukraine was not. The “Orange Revolution,” which led, on 26 December, to the victory of the opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko in rerun elections has opened the door for Ukrainians to a new, “civilized” future. The results suggested, though, that many Ukrainians do not accept either that the West is civilized or that the Ukraine of President Leonid Kuchma was uncivilized (or both). The preliminary results in the final round showed Ukraine almost as deeply divided as the fraud-marred earlier rounds had suggested. Yushchenko...

Ukraine minister's death could have been murder disguised as suicide Whether the death of Ukrainian Transport Minister Heorhiy Kyrpa on 27 December was suicide or murder disguised as suicide is less important than the reasons behind it, according to an article by Oleksandra Prymachenko in the Ukrainian weekly Zerkalo Nedeli. Just like the banker Yuriy Lyakh, who was found dead in suspicious circumstances last month, Kyrpa knew a lot about the criminal activities in which many leaders of the outgoing administration reportedly engaged. This made him a liability to outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and his other close associates and a...

The extent of an apparent plot to poison Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine's opposition leader, and then cover up the evidence now reaches across Europe. Soon after Yushchenko first claimed he had been poisoned, President Leonid Kuchma's son-in-law engaged a French public relations team to initiate a media campaign, centered on a Vienna clinic, calculated to disparage the poisoning accusations, the newspaper said. Yffic Nouvellon of EuroRSCG and his public relations team arranged a press conference where Lothar Wicke, general manager of Vienna's Rudolfinerhaus Clinic, contradicted Yushchenko's poisoning allegations. Nouvellon also contacted international media offering "evidence" Yushchenko had not been poisoned. When...

Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian opposition leader, claimed on Thursday he was poisoned at a dinner in early September with the heads of the country's secret police. "That was the only place where no one from my team was present and no precautions were taken concerning the food," he said. "It was a project of political murder, prepared by the authorities." An official investigation by the Ukrainian prosecutor general into the poisoning of Mr Yushchenko is under way. The investigation was launched after the Rudolfinerhaus clinic in Vienna, where Mr Yushchenko underwent tests, confirmed last weekend he was suffering from dioxin...

Ukraine judges 'under pressure' to reverse ruling By Tom Warner in Kiev Published: December 15 2004 17:37 | Last updated: December 15 2004 17:37 Volodymyr Lytvyn, the speaker of Ukraine's parliament, said on Wednesday that court judges were being pressured to reverse a decision that stripped Volodymyr Satsyuk, deputy chief of the SBU secret police, of parliamentary immunity. Mr Satsyuk, who is also a member of parliament, hosted a late-night meeting with Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition leader, hours before the latter's poisoning symptoms first appeared in early September. An official investigation into the poisoning of the presidential candidate is under...

...The oligarchs have another fear: that a Yushchenko victory could push them out of the inner circle of power and perhaps force a review of controversial privatization deals under which the clans acquired huge state-owned industrial facilities, sometimes for hundreds of millions of dollars below market value. Yushchenko's campaign has made its position clear. "When you see a country that's been turned into a limited joint stock company that's controlled by a handful of people, this is something we can't accept," Oleksandr Zinchenko, a key Yushchenko lieutenant, said in an interview this year. "The system requires radical change." Akhmetov, a...

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...

KIEV -- Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, whose Orange Revolution has brought him to the edge of power, now faces a stark choice between seeking compromise with President Leonid Kuchma's regime or inheriting a country spiralling into chaos, a key government insider said yesterday. Viktor Pinchuk, a powerful business tycoon and Mr. Kuchma's son-in-law, told The Globe and Mail that if Mr. Yushchenko did not back down, the country could be crippled by a deepening economic crisis, as well as separatism in the east of the country. Both, he said, were very real threats to the country's future if the...

Outgoing president Leonid Kuchma is threatening a collapse of the Ukraine economy to pressure the opposition. But really it's the country's industrialists and Kuchma's own policies that are to blame. Millions flow into their pockets each day. Thirty-seven-year-old dental technician Igor Brodan is married and has two children. He lives in Trostanez, a city 400 kilometers northeast of Kiev, where one of the major employers is a chocolate factory. One would think a job there would be sufficient to put meat and potatos, a bottle of vodka and some sweets on the table -- albeit with a lifetime supply of...

UKRAINE’S opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko, must choose between becoming President of a divided and bankrupt nation or severing links with radical allies and sharing power with a compromise figure, according to one of the country’s most powerful men. Viktor Pinchuk, son-in-law of Leonid Kuchma, the outgoing President, told The Times that a new presidential election, with some new candidates, was the only way out of the crisis. “If he is a patriot, he has to understand the real situation: we must find a compromise,” Mr Pinchuk, a billionaire and member of the Ukrainian parliament, said. “The best way is for...

The sight of hundreds of thousands of protesters in Kiev has rocked Ukraine's business oligarchs who mostly backed the bid by Viktor Yanukovich, prime minister, for the presidency. Business leaders assumed the authorities would deliver the required result and deal effectively with any public backlash in favour of the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko. But the scale of the demonstrations, road blocks and strikes has shocked them, and their influence is critical, as they have acquired their wealth and power by working closely with Leonid Kuchma, the outgoing president. Most remain wedded to Mr Yanukovich, especially the barons of his political...

As a recent immigrant to the United States from Kharkov (XAPKOB) Ukraine I am amazed by the lack of insight by the news media.. The closest things to the truth that I have read comes from this blog... Behind the Scenes -- How and Why the Ukrainian Election was Stolen, Part I Reading through my comments, I'm seeing that the situation really isn't clear to some in the West. Discounting the reflexively silly Bush-haters, there are some normal people who are viewing this simply through the lens of election corruption. That's only the surface. You have to understand the situation...

Ukraine’s richest, most powerful people have stayed out of the spotlight during the five days of what’s being called the Ukrainian opposition’s “Orange Revolution.” That’s no surprise, as opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko has been calling them “bandits” during rallies, and saying they belong in jail after robbing the Ukrainian nation of its riches and suppressing democracy. Many believe that if the opposition takes control of the government, Ukraine’s so-called “oligarchs” – who backed the candidacy of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych - could be tried for stealing state property, election fraud, and other crimes. This group includes Presidential Administration head Viktor...

KYIV - Dr. Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State, Nobel Prize winner, author, and founder/chairman of Kissinger Associates in New York City, will speak in Kyiv, Ukraine late next week as part of an international lecture series according to reports in Kyiv. Dr. Kissinger will be the guest of Viktor Pinchuk, member of the Ukrainian Parliament, a leading industrialist who is the owner of several large businesses in Ukraine including the ICTV Channel. Mr. Pinchuk is married to Olena Franchuk, daughter of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. Olena Franchuk recently started a foundation in Ukraine to fight the spread of...