In their own words: Yushchenko and Tymoshenko on the government crisis (09/25/05)

In their own words: Yushchenko and Tymoshenko on the government crisis

President Viktor Yushchenko offered his version of the conflict with former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko during a press briefing with Western and American journalists on September 13 in the Presidential Secretariat building on Bankova Street.

When I began my election campaign, around me was a complicated entourage. (Yulia) Tymoshenko, (Petro) Poroshenko, then (Oleksander) Zinchenko joined. When I traveled in eastern Ukraine, they asked, "Why is a bandit standing next to you?" And then when I crossed the Dnipro into western Ukraine, they said, "Viktor Andriyovych, you have to be with Yulia." I understood there were matters involving her and preceding matters: ($1.6 billion) in debt to the national budget and ($300 million) in debt to the Russian Federation.[Editor's note: The amounts were originally cited in hryvni.] I heard a lot about their life stories.

I was convinced of one thing: in this country we need to underline everything. In essence, we have to make this process more democratic - economically, politically. Above all, we are supposed to be building a new country. We declared on the maidan that we were striving for three things: wealth, liberty and progress.

I didn't idealize that every great person might have problems. My hope was that with each of these great people, they would resolve their relations and they wouldn't lay their problems on my shoulders and on the team. I thought that when they received their directions to work and they'd work in those directions, they wouldn't have time to work against each other. That didn't take place, although I had waited seven months for that.

In the last nights, I spent days and nights in the Cabinet just to find a resolution in the team. Not with me. I had no conflicts with anyone. There were conflicts in the team along the lines of Tymoshenko, Poroshenko and Zinchenko. If you look at source of this conflict, then you know there were signs and evidence of the prime minister taking advantage of her position and doing things behind the backs of the team that weren't proper.

The last straw was the privatization of Nikopol Ferroalloy factory. When behind the banks of government, through a system of illegitimate steps, with a legal decision from a higher court, a situation was provoked when thousands of people came out on the streets and stood on the brink of bloodshed. Only because Tymoshenko decided to carry out her own interests, not the government's or the country's interests, striving to obtain mass media in Ukraine and obtain a certain TV channel. She calculated that she could overstep the nation's interests with regard to the Nikopol factory.

This kind of cooperation became impossible. The question arose with this episode: What was going to be next? An aluminous factory, an Odesa factory, the Severodonetsk Azot. But this practice led to the point where I saw with my own eyes the government started to go in different directions and they didn't trust each other.

Several days before the resignations, I made a proposal. There are two paths to resolve the conflict: first, either everyone resigns or we accept partial resignations. The resignations included the National Security and Defense Council secretary, Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) chair, the customs chair and a few ministers who failed to ensure consistent policies. And we'll end it at that. Yulia agreed to this option.

After this, at night, she called a meeting. She called the procurator general and the SBU chief, and suggested that they hold their own press conferences the next morning betraying the option of reconciliation. She called me in the morning and said, "Viktor Andriyovych, I think it's best that I resign." I said fine. That's also an option. Let it be. Afterwards, I invited her to a press conference. I stress that I invited her, "Come and we will discuss the final matter."

When she came here, she started to plead with me to return to the option offered the night before. I said, "Yulia, this is after you organized a late night meeting of enforcement heads, you pressured the procurator general, after what you did with the judges, after Tomenko has already appeared on television, and he had already given his press conference at this point. This is after the president had made a decision and you judged him amongst a different circle.

I listened to hundreds of her prayers and spells that we are together, and that I'm not going anywhere, and so forth. I saw each time that in reality her actions were different. The country began to decay during these seven months. This was obvious. My view was that if we didn't stop this process, it would become a lot worse.

I am convinced the theme of corruption was floated because there was no other reason for the conflict in the team other than the prime minister's behavior. But only decent people recognize this: strong people, honest people. And that's why I don't regret for a single second my decision. For the last four days, I've been able to calmly go to work. The government's work is rational. The next year's budget is being formulated. In political circles, intrigues have declined. No one is calling the procurator general and telling him where he's supposed to be, and so forth.

Think please: In any country would it be possible to say that a fabricated Poltava court's ruling regarding Nikopol's privatization is legitimate? That an earlier shareholders meeting is legitimate? Evidence is being submitted by someone who doesn't have Ukrainian citizenship. Who needs this? To what extent can these backstage antics take place behind the back of the president and the government? Let the judges tell how many calls they received and how much they were pressured to produce evidence.

This was a fight of one against another: Poroshenko against Tymoshenko. I saw how the machine was falling apart while they were opposing each other. And both are too skillful to oppose each other. With all these emotions, I am the same as I was. I had no political right to act in a different way. This was an absolutely correct decision. I am happy that I made it. Perhaps this is the most important decision for me - it was the most complicated political decision. However, in various positions, I have made exceptionally complicated decisions.

Obviously, this was the most complicated. I am happy that I did it.

With every day, the world and nation are beginning to find out everything and see that I did it for Ukraine. [I was] not looking at it as a fight between a few people who could not figure out who is more important, to feel in charge, dragging in government officials at first, then the legal branches into their intrigues. I couldn't look at this anymore.

Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko offered her version of the conflict with President Viktor Yushchenko on September 9 on live national television on the Inter network.

This group from the president's inner circle realized that they should save their skins. They put the president in an extremely difficult situation. They were looking for a way out. When I felt that this critical situation started to avalanche, the president invited a broader circle that included Poroshenko, (Roman) Bezsmertnyi, (Mykola) Martynenko and other people. There I heard things which simply scared me.

It turned out that this team gathered to voice their complaints against me, to formalize them and to state that it is their decision to dismiss everyone - Poroshenko, (Oleksander) Tretiakov, the Cabinet - and in doing so to put an end to the scandal which took place. I heard things that I think will remain in my head for the rest of my life. Martynenko took the floor and said that I am implementing a special project against the president and that Zinchenko is part of my program to ruin the president's authority.

You know how inappropriate these people are. They do not understand that Zinchenko, who has been through a colossal stage in his life, you know that he was on the verge of death, that this man managed to rise above all these petty squabbles, over all this filth, over insincerity. This man's courage cannot be someone's program, project, or someone's terrible idea or conspiracy. I should say that they simply do not understand that a man like Zinchenko will not tolerate this and he is not my special project.

Then the president took the floor and said that he is absolutely indignant that I personally created such a situation in the state that in the media the president looks weak and incapable of running things, while the prime minister seems strong, efficient, and that he would never allow this to continue. He said that there are other countries - Russia and Belarus. He said, "Look at Putin or Lukashenka." They have brilliant prime ministers. No one ever sees them on television.

The second serious claim against me was that I should not head the Cabinet in a manner that I give my public results of the Cabinet's performance, but everything that is happening in the Cabinet should be simply passed onto the presidential administration. Then after the president makes an announcement, I should simply do my routine job.

Dear friends, I am saying honestly that all this had ruined my hope. No claim was leveled against me in that I failed to do something in the economy or in the social sector. Because the president is a good economist and a good financier, and he knows better that anyone else about what has been done in this country. By the way, the president said this on the maidan when we marked Independence Day.

Then they told me that I had failed to come to terms with the president's inner circle, with his team, and that I should have done so. And after this I tried to prove that this was absurd, that the president's fears that I will run in the election separately were absurd. I want to work in a team, I want to be close, I want to be a supporter of the president. By the way, nothing has changed for me.

I do not want these people to be frustrated, their hearts broken, their families separated if one is for Yushchenko and another for Tymoshenko. For this reason I told the president that we should put this aside because I do not have to come to terms with his team. I need to have a president who lends me a hand, and this should be the hand of a friend.

Three days and half a night of these talks and after that - I think this is a key point - I was presented with a very clear set of conditions. The first condition was that I had to extend my hand, not to the president, but to his team - Poroshenko, Martynenko, Tretiakov, Bezsmertnyi. That I should give them a hand. But how could I extend my hand to them if their hands are constantly busy stealing something?

By the way, this idea to sack everyone at the same time - the Cabinet and those who were suspected of corruption - this idea came from Roman Petrovych Bezsmertnyi. I can say that this was a unique, destructive idea. I have just remembered how Bezsmertnyi proposed this territorial reform and traveled to his native village to present it. He almost got beaten up just for proposing it in his native village. He barely escaped from there.

Such experiments must not be made in the country. That is why I told the president that instead of shaking hands with his entourage, I was ready to shake his hand personally, and to be by his side under any circumstances in any moment.

The second condition, which was set clearly, was that I had to close my door to the people who did a lot to help me work, to help the government work and to help the country work. I was presented with a condition that I could not have any political agreements on forming election teams with the Reform and Order Party, the Ukrainian People's Party led by Yurii Kostenko and that I had to publicly support Poroshenko, Tretiakov and Martynenko, to say that they were honest and moral people who had been slandered. At the same time, I had to publicly condemn Oleksander Zinchenko and I could not include him into my bloc's election list under any circumstances.

Another condition was that I sign decrees to dismiss those Cabinet members who supported me in that difficult situation of a two-chamber Cabinet, so to speak. These people supported me, helped me, they tried to protect me from all those splits in the government. I was supposed to sign decrees dismissing those people.

The main thing was that I had to agree to the dismissal of Oleksander Turchynov from the Security Service of Ukraine. I understand that it was discomforting to have the prime minister on one side and the SBU head on the other side: we could clearly see everything bad that was happening in the country - corruption, abuse and illegal lobbying. Of course, this tandem did not suit the president's entourage. I can say that 90 percent of these conditions were communicated by the so-called team, who demanded that I do it immediately.

In addition, in the joint election list for the parliamentary election, two-thirds had to be given to the president's team and one-third was to be given to our party. By the way, I was not against this. A coalition agreement and a joint election bloc - I welcomed this. It was the only way to resolve the situation.

However, honestly, I was somewhat psychologically shaken by this formal proposal. I asked the president whether it was possible to sack those who were suspected of corruption, and whether we could at least suspend them from their posts and later decide on their fate after the investigation.

But Viktor Andriyovych said, no, he could not do it because they were his team and they would feel that it was unfair that they were sacked and I stayed on. This would offset the balance. I wanted to ask, "What kind of balance can exist between the people who are suspected of corruption and those who are not? Sack them all together?"

I understood that I had to think about these conditions and I did not sign any decrees that night. I simply came to my team, I gathered everyone who would be affected by those conditions set by the president. I gathered those people because I could not just stab them in the back and do the things I couldn't do. I gathered them and sought their advice on the situation. We exchanged ideas on what to do and how to behave in this case.

I can say that they did not protest against their dismissals or anything at all. But the main thing was that I just could not do it. I could not do it because my seat means nothing to me. Hundreds of times I just wanted to drop it all, because it was torture to work under these conditions.

But I thought that I could not drop it, because it was not some officials who appointed me to this post. I was appointed by the people who trusted me, who stood in the squares and who voted for the president. I simply could not abandon it, because it would mean betrayal. It would be like deserting the battlefield from the barricades.

I could not do it by myself. So in the morning I spoke with the president by phone and I told him that I would not be able to accept those conditions because I would not be able to look in the mirror in the morning. I would want to spit at the mirror. I would always remember those whom I betrayed to keep this seat, which was not worth much in tactical terms.

I asked the president to meet one more time and to try to find an option that would not ruin our relations. I came to the president and we talked for 20 minutes before his fateful television appearance when he dismissed the Cabinet. I sat next to him, I took his hand in my hand and said, "Viktor Andriyovych, I am asking you, and I am struggling to find the right words, but don't ruin people's hopes, don't ruin the authority of our revolution, don't ruin the people's hope for morality, honesty and justice."

"Let us walk out to the cameras hand in hand, together, look at the cameras and say that as long as we are together, stability in Ukraine is guaranteed."

At some moment I thought the president hesitated but you know, fate will always be fate. At that moment, Poroshenko stormed into the president's office, without invitation, without knocking. He was covered, excuse me, in tears and snot, and he started yelling that he had just been stripped of his Parliament seat and that the decision had been backed by the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and that they were traitors who literally removed him from Parliament. It looked comical, honestly.

So the president looked, stood up, turned his back to me and said that the conversation was over. He went on, having practically destroyed our unity, our future and the future of our country. I would like to say that I consider this step absolutely illogical.

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