Yuschenkos subjected to smear campaign (04/29/01)

Yuschenkos subjected to smear campaign

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - The political tactics utilized to discredit Ukraine's Prime Minister Viktor Yuschenko in the Ukrainian media in the days prior to the April 26 vote that brought down his government included a vicious smear campaign.

In the trenches of political warfare in Ukraine, slanderous accusations are not rare. But the propaganda campaign against Mr. Yuschenko, which carried on for nearly two months, went beyond the usual twisting of his record and implications of criminal wrongdoing, to include attacks on his wife and questions about his loyalty to Ukraine.

Much of the campaign to dirty Mr. Yuschenko came through media outlets owned by two leading members of the Social Democratic Party (United): the Russian-language Kyiv daily Kievskie Viedomosti owned by Hryhorii Surkis and the Russian-language television channel Inter controlled by Oleksander Zinchenko and considered one of the top two broadcast outlets in the country.

In the most vicious of the fabricated news reports, Mr. Yuschenko's wife, Katherine (née Chumachenko), 40, who is a U.S. citizen born and raised there, was accused of being a CIA operative placed by the United States to begin a relationship with the prominent Ukrainian reformer when he was still the head of the National Bank of Ukraine. The Yuschenkos were married in 1998 after a lengthy romance; they have two daughters.

The fabricated accusations first surfaced in a report on Russia's government-owned ORT television channel on April 10. During a short program that appears regularly after the evening news titled "Odnako" - in which a commentator gives his opinions on a wide variety of current political events, nearly always Russian-oriented - the subject of Mr. Yuschenko's wife came up during critical remarks made about the Ukrainian prime minister, who happened to be in Moscow at the time.

The commentator called Prime Minister Yuschenko a political opportunist who wanted President Leonid Kuchma's chair and was willing to go to great lengths to get it. He said that the U.S. government was manipulating Mr. Yuschenko and had created the Gongadze affair in order to discredit President Kuchma and put their man in office. The commentator then accused the prime minister's wife of being the go-between in pushing Mr. Yuschenko to do the bidding of the United States.

Although Ukraine's Inter channel carries the Russian ORT news program each evening, it had never broadcast the "Odnako" commentary that follows it. On this day, however, the commentary somehow made the Ukrainian airwaves, which Inter explained as a mistake due to a technical error.

The program caused an uproar in Ukraine and resulted in a formal request by the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs to request a full investigation by the Russian government into how a "baseless" and "slanderous" commentary had made the airwaves of the Russian government channel.

Another example of the blatant disinformation published in the anti-Yuschenko media in Kyiv - where four of the six major channels and a majority of the print media are controlled by the business oligarchs who finally succeeded in bringing down the Yuschenko government on April 26 - occurred four days later. On April 14 Kievskie Viedomosti published an article in which it described the lavish facilities and appointments of the Yuschenko dacha, including an expensive billiards table and a swimming pool.

The smear campaign took on a state character when the highly controversial Sunday evening news program "Sim Dniv" (Seven Days) of the official government channel UT-1 utilized aspects of ORT's "Odnako" program to produce a report critical of Mr. Yuschenko. That report aired on April 22.

In response to the attacks, Prime Minister Yuschenko's press secretary, Natalia Zarudna, twice responded officially. On April 11 she said she had information that the ORT program was prepared in Kyiv by opponents of the prime minister.

Then, on April 23, Ms. Zarudna said that a "moral Rubicon" had been crossed in Ukrainian politics with the broadcast of the ORT piece. She explained that even during the politically heated presidential campaign of 1999 "nobody was mean enough to fight against wives, family members or children of candidates." She called the actions "a precedent for the next elections."

Addressing the subject of Mr. Yuschenko's dacha, the press secretary denied that he had pools, saunas, billiards, "a shooting gallery," or even wide-open spaces, and invited journalists to tour the place in the near future.

She added that the prime minister had refused to take a state dacha, which normally is given to high-ranking government and state officials, to spare taxpayers' money.

The smear campaign inadvertently went international on April 17 when the respected London-based Financial Times ran an error-filled story written by its Kyiv correspondent, Charles Clover, which stated that Mrs. Yuschenko once worked for the U.S. National Security Council. The article included the Kievskie Viedomosti fabrications describing the Yuschenko country home as luxurious.

The unfortunate piece evoked a quick response from Mrs. Yuschenko, who wrote a letter to the editor in which she expressed disappointment that the reporter never contacted her to clarify the assertions. She denied any connections to the U.S. National Security Council, while describing her previous and current work history. She invited Mr. Clover to join other journalists on a tour of their country home.

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