ANALYSIS: Kuchmagate - Act III (03/14/04)

ANALYSIS

Kuchmagate - Act III

by Taras Kuzio
RFE/RL Newsline

The series of scandals collectively known as Kuchmagate first erupted in November 2000 when Socialist Party leader Oleksander Moroz released excerpts from audio recordings made in President Leonid Kuchma's office by presidential security service officer Mykola Melnychenko.

In September 2002, Kuchmagate II began when the U.S. government announced that the FBI had confirmed that the Melnychenko tapes revealed that President Kuchma authorized the sale of Kolchuha radar systems to Iraq in July 2000.

Kuchmagate III began a day before President Kuchma's February 19 visit to Germany, where he met with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

One day before Mr. Kuchma arrived in Germany, Valeriy Kravchenko, an officer of the Security Service of Ukraine (known by its Ukrainian acronym as SBU) assigned to the Ukrainian Embassy in Berlin, visited the offices of Deutsche Welle and gave an interview in which he claimed he had refused to obey orders sent by SBU headquarters demanding that he follow national deputies, especially from the opposition, and even government ministers when they visited Germany.

Gen. Kravchenko said the latest orders he received demanded that he monitor preparations for an upcoming Our Ukraine forum in Kyiv that was being assisted by people in Germany. He said he refused to obey these purported orders because, under the 2001 law on intelligence, the SBU has no right to meddle in politics or spy on the opposition. President Kuchma oversees control over the "power ministries" and, therefore, was likely aware of these "illegal" orders, according to Gen. Kravchenko.

Gen. Kravchenko told Deutsche Welle he complained to SBU headquarters, but was informed by his superiors that "it was none of my business and that I must obey the orders from the center." He said he ignored the orders, and after he was replaced on February 16 by another SBU officer he decided to go public.

Gen. Kravchenko showed the orders to Deutsche Welle, which said they appeared to be official SBU documents. He has offered the documents to the Ukrainian Procurator General's Office and the Verkhovna Rada's human rights ombudsman. National Deputy Mykola Tomenko of the Our Ukraine bloc brought some of the documents to Ukraine on February 26, after he met with Gen. Kravchenko in Germany the day before.

In his Deutsche Welle interview, Gen. Kravchenko said responsibility for the orders lies with SBU Chairman Ihor Smeshko and the head of the SBU directorate on intelligence, Oleh Synianskyi. SBU Chairman Smeshko is reportedly aligned with the Social Democratic Party-United led by Viktor Medvedchuk.

The SBU and President Kuchma were obviously taken off guard by Gen. Kravchenko breaking ranks with the SBU and publicizing these purported orders. President Kuchma, who has been isolated in the West since the previous Kuchmagate episodes and who may have been hoping to use the Berlin visit to present a reformed image of himself, was visibly angered when the issue dominated his press conference with Chancellor Schroeder at the end of his visit.

The SBU has issued a statement claiming that Gen. Kravchenko's allegations are "absurd in nature" and denying that the SBU has ever issued any such order or undertaken any actions, "including political meddling, that are banned according to Ukrainian laws." Mr. Kuchma also ridiculed the idea that the Ukrainian authorities, including the SBU, would attempt to shadow the opposition. "This is absolutely absurd," the president said at the press conference.

However, it is notable that the Ukrainian authorities denied all of the allegations that surfaced during the first and second acts of Kuchmagate, and those denials were then contradicted by the revival of Soviet-era jamming of Western radio stations that broadcast the allegations. In the wake of the latest scandal, Deutsche Welle's Ukrainian FM rebroadcaster, Radio Kontynent, issued a statement claiming that the station was jammed on February 19 through the use of "methods that were used in Soviet times" when it aired Kravchenko's interview.

Gen. Kravchenko's allegations, if true, would not come as a surprise. Western NGOs working in Ukraine have claimed that they are routinely followed by the SBU. The International Republican Institute told the Kyiv Post in January that its staff believed they were being tailed as they traveled around Ukraine and suspected their telephones were tapped. During elections, Ukrainian drivers and interpreters used by foreign OSCE observers, who are officially invited to Ukraine, are regularly questioned as to whom the observers meet and what they talk about.

Western intelligence services have also noticed that SBU officers working out of embassies abroad have begun to collect information on members of the Ukrainian diaspora who make a habit of criticizing the present leadership in Ukraine.

Since President Kuchma was re-elected in 1999, Ukrainian oppositionists and former diplomats have also complained that they are followed by the SBU and their telephones are tapped. Parliamentary deputies have found listening devices in their offices. When Ukrainian parliamentarians went to Prague to meet Mr. Melnychenko in late 2000, they were followed and upon returning to Ukraine their video interview was destroyed by Customs, even though their official status exempted them from undergoing customs control. Prior to, and during, mass anti-Kuchma demonstrations in 2000-2003 the opposition and student members were regularly approached, warned, and interrogated by the SBU and Interior Ministry.

Gen. Kravchenko told Deutsche Welle that all state institutions are being used to "compromise the opposition and to obtain information about it." Bohdan Sokolovskyi, a former adviser to the Ukrainian embassies in the United States and Germany, partially confirmed Gen. Kravchenko's allegations in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda. He said that, while serving as a diplomat in those countries, he was followed by individuals he believes were SBU agents. Mr. Sokolovskyi characterized Gen. Kravchenko, whom he knew while serving in Germany as "without doubt a conscientious and patriotically inclined Ukrainian citizen." After this interview he was released from his duties by the Foreign Affairs Ministry.

Ironically, the latest development in the Kuchmagate saga coincides with the purported promulgation on February 18 of an as-yet-unpublished presidential decree that Mr. Kuchma has described as ensuring the "de-KGB-ization" of Ukrainian state structures through the removal of SBU officers. This step, according to the president, will contribute to the process of democratization in Ukraine.

It is, however, widely believed to be routine practice for such decrees to be ignored or even countermanded by secret instructions (such as the "temnyky" through which the presidential administration controls state and private television coverage) or Soviet-style "telephone law." The scale of the deception can be seen when secret instructions issued by the presidential administration to undermine the opposition or media freedom are leaked. Only after complaints are made are decrees issued to investigate the very same infringements that the leaked instructions ordered.

If Gen. Kravchenko's claims pan out, he has revealed the degree of legal nihilism that pervades the very top of the Ukrainian leadership.

Dr. Taras Kuzio is a resident fellow at the Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto.

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