Kupchinsky, Ace of Spies?

The supposed scandal with illegal arms sales to Croatia gets curiouser and curiouser with the emergence of the name of Roman Kupchinsky. I must confess that I have only a nodding acquaintance with the supposed central figure, Yevhen Marchuk, but I have known Romko for almost twenty years. I have eaten his bread and stayed at his house. Just who this gentleman is may be of interest to anyone following this affair. Roman comes from the family of an old OUN-UPA commander. After serving with distinction in Vietnam, he joined the Prolog Research Corporation, then the publications branch of the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council, formed by the late commander of UPA Taras Shukhevych-Chuprynka. It published, among other things, Suchasnist, then the flagship journal of the Ukrainian emigration and now considered by many the most interesting journal in Ukraine. Roman became its president. Nobody made much of a secret of the fact that there were connections with the American intelligence community, and the Americans helped in making four issues a year of the monthly water soluble and downsizing it to the size of a matchbox for smuggling into Ukraine. The idea was that the reader, with or without a magnifying glass, could read a page, tear it off, and drop it into a glass of water so that there would be no telling evidence for the sheriff or his reverence. When Suchasnist came here and Prolog was no longer needed, Roman went on to head the Ukrainian service of Radio Liberty, also once subsidized by the CIA and evidence that this organization did some things that were not all that bad. At any rate, the allegation by the Derkach-controlled publications that Roman could be bought for $500 when his official annual income was at least one hundred times bigger is simply cretinous. My friend Kupchinsky comes from proud emigre parentage and would do anything for Ukraine within the realm of reason. I last saw Roman when Lazarenko was still prime minister, and he told me that the president had been given a list of “fourteen corrupt bastards (his words, not mine) headed by Lazarenko” that would have to be dismissed before this country got any more aid. He made no secret of his contempt for the bastards nor of his genuine respect and affection for Yevhen Marchuk, but it was clear to me that he had neither the moral “flexibility” nor pecuniary need to stoop to a deal that would clearly fall into the corrupt bastard category.

Roman has been accused of nefarious deeds before. When his excellent Russian language collection of documents, The Nationality Question in the USSR, was published in 1975, he was accused in the then KGB-controlled News from Ukraine of committing war crimes in World War II. He found it difficult then to defend himself adequately, because he was only three months old when the war ended and found it difficult to remember precisely what he had been doing at the time.