Not the last fight

On Tuesday, the Kyiv Appellate Court had a session to review the comments on court records in the case of Oleksii Pukach. Oleksandr Yeliashkevych, Oleksii Podolsky’s representative, commented to The Day: “In fact, it was an additional hearing on the falsifications in the Pukach case.” The court did not admit any discrepancy between the court protocol and the audio record from August past year, although it is clearly heard as the judge interrupted the victim’s representatives, not giving them the possibility to convey their message in full as they were asked to speak. Besides, the defendant of the case, Pukach himself, was not present.

The trial, which eventually sentenced Pukach to life imprisonment, went on after the murder of Georgy Gongadze in 2000, and the disclosure of Melnychenko tapes. The tapes contain recordings of voices that might belong to persons behind the scenes of the contract murder, of which Pukach was the perpetrator. The appeals, filed by both Pukach and Podolsky, another victim in the case who was unhappy that only the executor was punished, were not satisfied by the court. It is time now for the next phase of the struggle – the cassation. The victim journalist said that he was not going to turn the trial into a casuistry competition. Podolsky’s aim is to give a verdict to the whole system. The main foci of the victim’s appeal are the following: first, the mystery (“Top secret” stamp was used to conceal important details, according to the cassation text); second, the crime of pressuring Pukach into refusing to name his clients; third, the preparation to and the attempted terrorist act, which, according to Podolsky, happened with the direct participation of law-enforcement agencies on September 11, 2015; fourth is the infringements of the Kyiv Court of Appeal’s panel of judges, who persistently refused to act on the deliberate violation of the most basic principle of justice, committed by the first instance court, which did not investigate the evidence that could shed light on Pukach’s motives in the crime; fifth, the refusal of the panel to satisfy the appeal on their withdrawal, when the circumstances and evidence of violations in the automated selection of judges came to light; sixth is an accusation of the law-enforcement and judicial systems of corruption that prevents the truth from being established in this case.

Oleksii PODOLSKY, social activist:

“At the March 29 hearings Oleksii Pukach was absent. The question is – why? At a closed technical meeting in the Pechersk Court on the appeal, Pukach specifically stated his comments on the report; and that was the first time I heard that he had been blackmailed. Then he said that he was not allowed to read the protocol, but instead some strangers came to him, with the permission of Judge Melnyk, and threatened him so that Pukach would not talk about Kuchma and Lytvyn on the hearing. I do not know whether anyone was afraid that Pukach would have been talking like that now, but in my opinion Pukach as the defendant is unnecessary for the crime’s masterminds. He is a mere tool. And what do the murderers get rid of first of all? The body and the weapon. Pukach is a live weapon of murder. So I have nothing personal against him here. He is an executioner. Moreover, he begged me to forgive him. I do not know how sincere he was, it is a personal matter for everyone. But it is true – he asked me for forgiveness and was going to kneel before me. His crime had no personal reasons. So I am indifferent to him. But I do care about Kuchma – and not only because he killed Gongadze and attacked me. That’s because we are living in the 21st century, and having had the same starting chance as the Baltic States, we are now living as a third world country. The Baltic countries are now enjoying the membership of NATO and the EU. So, in this Kravchuk, Kuchma, Yushchenko, Yanukovych, and current President Poroshenko are to blame. This is the fate of not only me personally, but of my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. I filed the cassation on Wednesday, March 30. I am not a traditional lawyer who writes such things formally. References to articles, trivia, and other trickery and casuistry is a different issue altogether. There are professional lawyers for that, led by Shyshkin. Personally, I defend the truth that people need to know. I believe that the function of a journalist is to understand the society’s phenomena deeply, not just to transmit information. So, going through the judicial system and the experience of political struggle, I will raise the questions as I understand the process, as I understand the judicial corruption, as I understand Poroshenko, Kuchma, and Judge Hladii. All these personalities are the face of Ukrainian corruption. For corruption has a face and a name. So, I wrote the cassation not for the court, but for the people and for my conscience. That is why the epigraph to this appeal I the quote I took from Makhno: ‘do not believe, do not fear, do not ask.’ I do not believe the Ukrainian judicial system, which is a part of the corruption. I fear nobody and I never will ask for nothing. Finally, we also need to understand why all the five presidents, who were elected by the people, become another painful experience. That is not an accident, but a pattern, founded on the fact that Kravchuk, Kuchma, Yushchenko, Yanukovych, and Poroshenko are our mirror.”