Pukach case: decision to be made on New Year’s Eve

Once the aggrieved party, Oleksii Podolsky, and his representatives walked out of the Oleksii Pukach trial in protest, things began to run at a hectic pace. The board of justices with Stepan Hladii at the head “solved the case” in a matter of a few days and announced that it was prepared to hand down a ruling as soon as December 30 regarding the appeal against the life sentence the Pechersk District Court had imposed on Pukach for the crimes against journalist Georgy Gongadze and public activist Podolsky.

In a Den article on December 11, when the court was holding a regular session, Podolsky’s proxy Oleksandr Yeliashkevych presumed: “I do not rule out that Pukach was given time to think, and he may be ‘receiving help’ to ‘think correctly.’ The judges are also spending this time [to decide on the challenge the aggrieved party’s proxies Shyshkin and Yeliashkevych lodged against the board of justices for infringing the law and the rights of the parties to the trial. – Author] for receiving precise instructions from the ‘system administrator.’”

Predictably, the judges rejected the challenge against themselves. In response, Podolsky’s side refused to further attend the trial.

“We were forced to walk out of this trial not because we don’t want to take part in it but because the board [of justices] has created the conditions that hinder us from exercising our rights,” Yeliashkevych said at the press conference. “Our main complaint is that Mr. Podolsky, the only living victim of Pukach, was illegally withdrawn from the rest of this trial. All the time since August 11 this year, Mr. Podolsky has been denied the right to take part in this trial due to illegitimate, cynical, and amoral decisions of the board of justices, which led to his withdrawal, even though there is not a single provision in the Constitution that allows doing so. For a year on end, the board of justices has been grossly violating the law and has entered not a single decision into the Consolidated Stare Register of Judicial Rulings. Or, even if it entered some, these were deliberately presented in such a way that society could not understand their essence. The names of the parties to the trial were encoded: for example, Podolsky had the code name ‘Person No.6.’”

In spite of the Podolsky side’s protest, the judges continued the session well into the next day – December 16. “I can presume that the judges work under somebody’s instructions or influence,” says Viktor Shyshkin, a well-known constitutionalist. “What the mechanisms of this influence are and whether there are any grounds for this is a different question to be dealt with by investigative bodies and journalists.”

The “contribution” of journalists is a special subject. A considerable part of the mass media must admit full responsibility for what has been going on in this court for many years.

At the latest sessions, this time without the aggrieved party, Pukach said he had had no motives or evil designs about murdering Gongadze and added that he had not been hiding from prosecution. Accordingly, Pukach’s defense asked the court to commute the life sentence to eight years in custody. Myroslava Gongadze’s proxy Valentyna Telychenko and the Prosecutor General’s Office requested the court to uphold the conviction.

“Yes, Pukach killed Gongadze, but he is an instrument of the murder, like a knife or a pistol that has a soul and a heart, so he must be held responsible,” Podolsky says. “But the ultimate responsibility lies with those who issued criminal orders to beat me and kill Gongadze.”

As soon as Podolsky’s side walked out of the trial, it became clear that there were no more checks left. Yeliashkevych had warned long ago about this course of events. He emphasizes now: “It is no accident that ‘the Kuchma system’ in the shape of Court of Appeals judges is going to hand down its ruling on New Year’s Eve – they don’t want society to notice an injustice.”

But this step may in fact further mobilize the public in a struggle against the truth in this case if, of course, the public is strong enough, because the crime organizers have “worked” here as well. But healthy forces will always adhere to principles.