President Takes Sevastopol

However, those who watched on Thursday night a relatively free television channel noticed that our President seemed to dance squatting on the stage during a ceremonial meeting of war veterans. But after clearing up the circumstances, it was found that Leonid Kuchma simply knelt down before the audience, while the somewhat badly coordinated movements of the President simply gave the wrong impression. Mr. Kuchma was excited, as befits the occasion, and for this reason, he was hugging and kissing the veterans he decorated and slightly throwing them off balance. Which, nevertheless, was accepted with understanding by those veterans of the front to whom the President became closer in purely human terms.

Mr. Kuchma was, by all accounts, preoccupied with a crucial question to which he seems to be continually seeking an answer. This is why he would persistently ask: "Look, I am the son of a father who was killed in action during that war; I cannot even dream in a nightmare that I want you to live badly."

A voice rang out from the audience: "We live badly."

"Yes," said the President, "we do live badly. I want to ask you why we live so badly?" A few attempts to answer this question himself were slightly muddled up, though Mr. Kuchma assured the veterans: "I only want to be honest with you. You should know I will never veer off this path." But the answer was still out of sorts: "We are obliged; tell me please; upon my word; I have no right; life ran roughshod over me... I swear; I am ready to swear on the Constitution or the Bible that from the bottom of my heart I want you to live better than you do today. And I will do all I can." The audience, with sinking hearts burst into a friendly and rapid applause.

Perhaps precisely at this moment, the meeting organizers were approached by a city Communist Party committee representative who said: "Boys, you would do better to cut off the broadcast: the whole city is already falling down." But the Communist sour notes were ignored: we know what kind of people those Reds are!

The President moved everyone with his love of veterans, Russia, and Russian Minister of Defense Marshal Sergeyev. "We are rocketeers, and we are great friends," said the President. And he advised the doubting Thomases to ask Mr. Sergeyev's wife, also present at the meeting. But all believed him, the more so that the President confessed: the Russian minister and he "had at last struck a deal by morning" about a jointly-run hospital for Sevastopol veterans, and if some complained about something, the culprits would bite the dust. The consequences of the "negotiable" night may have made the President make another confession: "I am not a politician, I am a rocketeer. It was dictated by fate!" (i.e., he was thrown into politics). "I am now so sorry we have run apart and there are no nuclear weapons, for the Soviet Union's nuclear shield was forged in Ukraine," the President sincerely expressed his regret, finding great understanding on the part of the audience. If we add to this that Mr. Kuchma's pressure group (observers were quick to note the resemblance of its members to specially-trained ordinary citizens who "disperse" in large numbers among the crowd during all outdoor functions) marched downtown with pro-Kuchma slogans, and there were no Russian crowds with their leaders at all, while Mr. Kuchma was for the first time not in a prohibited area or the outskirts, we may then conclude: our President has at last taken Sevastopol. And the sorrowful note in the report of a Russian TV channel, "we are now only guests in the city of Russian glory," is a wonderful result.