Mudslinging at its Freest

Major Mykola Melnychenko is either a Russian secret service agent or a madman. This is basically what Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky said, via his confidant Alex Goldfarb, chairman of the Civil Liberties Foundation, about the former presidential guard’s sensational statement that Mr. Berezovsky intends to manipulate the recordings made in Leonid Kuchma’s office in order to help the ex-president escape criminal liability and to further his own political and economic interests. According to Mr. Goldfarb, his organization learned late last year, during the presidential elections in Ukraine, that Melnychenko visited Moscow several times to meet with top FSB (Federal Security Service of Russia) officials. “In my opinion, this was a shrewd FSB operation aimed at clearing Kuchma of responsibility for the Gongadze case, in the process using Mykola, the key witness, to discredit himself with his own hands,” Mr. Goldfarb said according to www.korrespondent.net.

It has already been reported that Mr. Berezovsky stated the other day that he has all the Melnychenko recordings. Mr. Goldfarb has publicly disclosed some fragments concerning the journalist Heorhiy Gongadze, which feature such well-known “figures on the tape recordings” as Leonid Kuchma, Vyacheslav Pikhovshek, Leonid Derkach, Yuriy Kravchenko, Volodymyr Lytvyn, as well as a new individual — Oleksandr Zinchenko, now a close associate of President Viktor Yushchenko. (Mr. Zinchenko denied this last Friday.) Mr. Goldfarb also noted they have no intentions of hiding any fragments even if they contain information that would compromise the new Ukrainian government.

This is creating the impression that we are witnessing one of two things. Firstly, this may be another stage of the tape scandal, in which the Gongadze affair is being foisted on President Yushchenko: it really appears as though Berezovsky has obtained the tapes and is trying to use them not only in his own interests in Ukraine but also in his fight with Russia’s President Putin. Secondly, this may be an attempt to discredit the tapes. This theory is quite credible if we admit that the information about Melnychenko’s contacts with the Russian FSB is true.

Last Friday, in an interview with the newspaper Fakty, SBU Colonel Oleksandr Zhyr, chairman of the parliamentary commission investigating the crime, revealed some new and rather significant details of the Gongadze case. With regard to the allegations that the journalist was kidnapped in connection with the tapes, Col. Zhyr said, “ I was the first to suggest this theory, and I want to take it back now. Naturally, it is not very convenient for those who were in the previous government and some of those who are holding high offices now. There is an ongoing debate about whether Kuchma ordered the journalist’s murder. I don’t know about any recording that shows Kuchma giving an order like this, but I do know that the tape fragments that mention Gongadze contain his instructions to ‘deal with Giya (Gongadze — Ed.)’.” Asked about the ex-president’s motives, the ex- MP said, “What is this crime connected to: in my view, both to journalistic activity and other things. The journalists who knew Giya very well also helped us establish the motives. I think we must look at those in the ex-president’s entourage who did not like him very much. Unfortunately, this is all I can say for now.”

On April 1 (All Fools’ Day, coincidentally), an Interfax-Ukraine report quoted ex-FSB Colonel Aleksandr Litvinenko, presumably Berezovsky’s man, as saying that it was Yevhen Marchuk who organized the bugging of Kuchma’s office. It is fascinating to note the breakneck speed with which Interfax reported the FSB officer’s mudslinging and the speed with which the Ukrainian media circulated it-in a tone of confirmation, without even the slightest hint of a possible difference of opinion. The theory circulated by Interfax seems to be part of a long-lasting campaign to bail out the real organizers and perpetrators of Gongadze’s murder.

A Cock-and-Bull Story That Dovetails Neatly with April Fools’ Day

Yevhen MARCHUK’S reaction (telephone interview):

“This is by no means the first attempt to pin the tape scandal and Gongadze affair on me. The organizers and perpetrators of Heorhiy’s murder are panicking at the fact that the whole criminal scheme is being successfully unraveled. So they are doing their best to draw public attention away from the true culprits. The only new point in these insinuations is the attempt to drag in the FSB. Incidentally, I would like to hear an official comment from the FSB on Lytvynenko’s role in this affair. It is also common knowledge that the much-quoted Melnychenko has said publicly that neither Marchuk nor [Oleksandr] Moroz had anything to do with bugging the president’s office.

“I categorically reject and repudiate these new attempts to discredit and link me to the tape scandal — both on April 1 and any other day.”