Last Wednesday Leonid Kuchma appointed Yevhen Marchuk Secretary of the National Defense and Security Council.
Interfax Ukraine quotes the President as saying that he has “no differences in views with Yevhen Marchuk” and the election campaign is the election campaign. When asked by journalists whether Mr. Marchuk’s appointment is a repetition of the Russian scenario (when Aleksandr Lebed was offered to head the Security Council between the first and second rounds of the presidential campaign and by accepting it transferred his votes to Boris Yeltsin), Mr. Kuchma replied, “This question would be relevant if I gave the post to a presidential candidate specializing in agriculture. Yevhen Marchuk is an expert in the field and will do the job better than anyone else.” Moreover, he does not want the return of Communism either, the President added.
Prior to the appointment, Yevhen Marchuk declared that he had shared with the President his views on Ukraine’s future, as laid down in his program “The New Strategy of Ukrainian Development.” National reconciliation was among his major campaign theses and Mr. Marchuk believes now that the Ukrainians face the final choice in the runoff, the main thing is to prevent a nationwide confrontation, something that may well happen should the Communists come to power. In an interview with The Day, he stated that he cannot support the Communist future of Ukraine: “We cannot step into the twenty-first century with the same ideas and results with which we entered the twentieth century.” In fact, shortly before the first round of the campaign he stressed that he would be prepared to quit the Kaniv Four if it were joined by Communist leader Petro Symonenko.







