Lviv boy who survived Sknyliv disaster among survivors of Moscow hostage drama (11/03/02)

Lviv boy who survived Sknyliv disaster among survivors of Moscow hostage drama

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Kyrylo Holovenko, 13, of Lviv survived the Sknyliv Air Show in July only to travel to Moscow two months later, where his mother, her sister and he decided to go to see the Russian musical, "Nord-Ost," on October 23. To their misfortune, it was the same day a group of Chechen extremists bent on suicide in order to further the cause of an independent Chechnya took siege of the theater and demanded that all Russian troops should leave Chechnya or else some 800 theater-goers would die.

Today, Kyrylo can say he escaped the Moscow tragedy, too - albeit barely. On Monday evening he awoke from a two-day coma in a Moscow hospital as his parents watched.

Others were not as lucky. Three Ukrainians were among the nearly 120 victims of the gassing of the Moscow theater that preceded the freeing of the hostages, while another three Ukrainians still are not accounted for, reported Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on October 30. The Chechen guerrilas held 40 Ukrainians during the three days they had control of the Russian Palace of Culture in the Dubrovka section of southern Moscow.

The gas that was released into the building after the Chechens began shooting hostages in response to Russian failures to heed their demands, according to government officials, knocked out the 50 or so terrorists and their hundreds of hostages. Russian special forces troops then stormed the building, killing all but a few of the Chechen guerrillas.

While journalists and many Western officials questioned why it took the Russian government four days to reveal that the gaseous chemical they released into the theater was an opiate derivative called Fantonyl - a delay that cost dozens of lives because doctors did not know how to treat the victims - Ukrainian officials said they fully understood the reason for maintaining secrecy and supported the manner in which the hostage-taking was ended.

"These are national secrets which may be of use in future actions," explained Yevhen Marchuk on Studio 1+1 Television's evening news program on October 28. "No country releases such information."

President Leonid Kuchma, who cut short a state visit to Croatia on October 24 and returned to Kyiv to monitor the hostage situation, also fully supported the operation. On October 28, his press secretary, Olha Hromnytska, said the Ukrainian president had thanked the Russian military special services for their professionalism, while also offering condolences to the families of the Russian and Ukrainian victims.

"Despite all the talk about the expediency of using the gas during the hostage-release operation, the Russian authorities did their best to save human lives," said Ms. Hromnytska.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said during a news briefing that it did not believe the actions of the terrorists at the Moscow theater in anyway could be connected to the military struggle occurring in Chechnya.

"We differentiate the terrorist action from the demands and the desires of the Chechen people," explained State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Yurii Sergeyev.

The number of Ukrainians believed taken hostage fluctuated throughout the three-day crisis, ranging from 32 to 42 persons. Evidently Ukraine's Embassy in Moscow initially determined some of the individuals to be Ukrainian although they had already taken Russian citizenship since arriving in the country. Another reason for the difficulty in assessing the number was that several Russian hostages hid their passports and claimed they were Ukrainians when contact was initially made with the hostages via their cell phones.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ukrainians and Western hostages were kept apart from the Russians in separate rooms, which is the reason mostly Russians died as a result of the gas attack.

The Ukrainian government did not allow journalists access to the hostages after their release and the return of some to Kyiv. Mr. Marchuk, who escorted the first four hostages on a flight from Moscow to Boryspil Airport, told waiting news reporters that the individuals had left the airport by another route.

"They need to be with their families, with their mothers and fathers. They do not need to be retelling and reliving the terror," explained Mr. Marchuk.

Several Ukrainian national deputies who have a close relationship with Chechen freedom fighters flew to Moscow on the second day of the crisis to attempt to free some of the hostages after Ukraine's ambassador to Russia, Mykola Biloblotskyi received word that the terrorists might be ready to release Ukrainians. The three Ukrainian lawmakers, Taras Chornovil and Refat Chubarov of the Our Ukraine faction and Andrii Shkil of the Tymoshenko faction, ended up sitting on the sidelines after the terrorists decided they had already released enough hostages.

Ukraine has assigned psychiatrists to care for the 37 survivors who came out of the theater and has allocated each of them a $500 stipend for new clothes and immediate needs, as well as a paid flight back to Ukraine. The Russian government also said it would compensate all the former hostages and the families of the deceased. That will include 13-year-old Kyrylo, either the unluckiest person alive, or, as most would agree, the luckiest.

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