The scars of a peaceful revolutionary

By Con Coughlin in Kiev
December 6, 2004
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/12/05/1102182160895.html?oneclick=true

Viktor Yushchenko is the face of Ukraine's "orange revolution". And it is not a face he is proud of.

The man who was once described as the Bill Clinton of eastern Europe for his charisma and good looks is now horribly disfigured by an attempt to poison him during the political battle for control of his country.

As he sat in the office of his wood-panelled dacha in the suburbs of Kiev on Saturday, Mr Yushchenko vowed to expose all the details of the plot that has left his face scarred with pock marks and a complexion the colour of dark blue bruising.

"I am sitting here with a completely different face," he said in his first interview since overturning the result of Ukraine's rigged presidential election. "I know the country I live in, and I was expecting that something would happen to me, but I did not expect that it would happen in this way."

Precisely what happened remains a mystery. All he knows is that he collapsed shortly after attending a dinner hosted by senior officials of Ukraine's SBU secret police a few weeks before the country's elections took place. He was taken to a hospital on the outskirts of Vienna, where a doctor declared he had rarely seen such a catastrophic condition without being able to give a proper diagnosis.

Mr Yushchenko was in a critical condition for days, and is convinced that he was poisoned in an attempt to prevent him standing against the Kremlin's favoured candidate, Viktor Yanukovich. Now the 50-year-old hero of Ukraine's remarkably peaceful revolution is determined to find out precisely what his political enemies did to him.

"These people would stop at nothing to stay in power," he said. "They were prepared to cause bloodshed, they were prepared to start a civil war. They cared nothing for Ukraine; all they cared about was themselves.

"Soon the world will know what happened. I will reveal all the details of what they gave me to look like this."

But asked if he suspected the Kremlin was involved, he replied enigmatically: "This is a subject that is too deep to go into now."

Mr Yushchenko was speaking the day after Ukraine's Supreme Court took the historic decision to order a new vote on December 26. He was still recovering from the highly emotional scenes of the previous night when 400,000 supporters - many of whom have lived for weeks in tents in sub-zero temperatures - crammed into Kiev's Independence Square to acclaim Mr Yushchenko's achievement of victory without civil war.

The revolution has been widely populist, to the extent that the country's No. 1 chart hit is a rap song called We Are Many, We Shall Not Be Beaten, by a group called Grindjoli (Sledge). Mr Yushchenko, an economist who came to prominence as the governor of Ukraine's central bank, has skilfully ridden the populist wave, and at Friday night's victory rally joined the crowd in singing the popular chorus, while his daughter Sophia, 4, hugged his leg.

"My three little children run around the house all day, waving my party's flags, singing this song," he said. "They have become true revolutionaries."

Apart from Mr Yushchenko's disfigurement, the revolution - as the Ukrainians call the events of the past few weeks - has exacted a heavy toll on his family. "Even today my family cannot live in Kiev. My children can't go to school. I believe the worst is behind us, but still it is not safe for my family. It will not be safe until we have completed the political transformation of this country."

As he spoke, details emerged of the mysterious death on Friday of Yuri Lyakh, the personal adviser of Viktor Medvedchuk, the departing head of Ukraine's administration under President Leonid Kuchma. Mr Lyakh, who knew all the financial details of the Kuchma regime, was reported to have committed suicide after writing a note stating "Sorry". However, the autopsy confirmed he died of a slit throat, and police officials, who have now pledged their loyalty to Mr Yushchenko's Nasha Ukraine (Our Ukraine) party, are treating the death as suspicious.

The safety of Mr Yushchenko's family has been under threat since his second wife, Katarina, was targeted by opposition groups. She has joint Ukrainian and US citizenship, which prompted accusations she was a CIA agent planted on him to sell the country's assets to the US.

Such was the strength of the Kremlin's support for Mr Yanukovich - and desperation to keep Ukraine, or "Little Russia", under Russian control - that there were genuine fears Kiev could suffer a repeat of the suppression of the uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1967.

Some sections of Mr Yushchenko's party urged him to storm parliament and the Supreme Court. But he consistently urged caution, and now says: "During the last 12 days the people of Ukraine have managed to determine their future without resorting to violence. The will of the people has triumphed and the old administration now understands that it has lost."

He is in no doubt the fresh election will hand him power in the new year, but he warns: "If the old regime tries to interfere in any way and tries to defy the will of the people and of parliament, we will simply storm our way into the cabinet office. This is what the people expect."

The Telegraph, London