Taras Kuzio’s Blog

Remembering Moroz

Yes, its that time of year again. No, not Christmas, which, at least in Britain means little of anything spiritual but lots of drinking and shopping. No, it’s a far more sad occasion, the annual anniversary of the kidnapping and subsequent murder of Ukrainian journalist Heorhiy Gongadze.

Without Gongadze’s ultimate sacrifice, Viktor Yushchenko would not be President of Ukraine. And, without the subsequent Kuchmagate scandal, there would have been no Orange Revolution that began exactly four years after Oleksandr Moroz announced the existence of the Mykola Melnychenko tapes in parliament. The Revolution began on 22 November and the scandal hit the fan on the 28th.

Maybe then, there is no one better than parliamentary speaker Moroz to lead the anniversary commemorations? Sadly, no. To many of us, Moroz is no longer the honest, clean political leader that we had all bought into until his stunning defection from the Orange camp on 3 July.

While visiting my wife’s family in Nottingham, we watched Ukraine’s Channel 5 with disbelief as it reported that Moroz had defected to the Party of Regions. How could it be, we asked each other, that the honest Moroz could do such a thing? We were stunned. A stiff drink (or two) was called for.

Maybe, we thought, President Yushchenko understood now that he had to act forcefully. My father-in-law asked aloud, “Do you think there will be a second Maidan?” I replied, “I doubt it”.

Moroz has done nothing to pursue the Gongadze investigation and has even suggested to a British journalist who wrote a book on Gongadze’s murder and who is currently in Washington that the Melnychenko tapes should be destroyed. Moroz, like Yevhen Marchuk, both deny assisting Melnychenko because they are afraid that his taping could be defined in Ukrainian law as “illegal” and they therefore would be accomplices to an “illegal” act. This would only change if the “organizers” are convicted as then the taping would be seen as an attempt to thwart “illegal” activities.

As always, I opened Ukrayinska Pravda with my morning coffee and on the anniversary read that, “Yushchenko again promises to complete the Gongadze case to the end”. I nearly fell off my chair. Had not President Yushchenko told none other than the Maidan, his first press conference after being elected and the Council of Europe a month after coming to power that his “honour” was at stake over the Gongadze murder. He promised “to resolve the Gongadze affair within two months”. The Council reminded Yushchenko of these words last week.

Lets be quite candid here: I do not think that Yushchenko has any political will to complete this investigation. Naming a Kyiv street after Gongadze and putting three low ranking policeman on trial does not count as showing political will. Kyivites asked the same question on this years anniversary also did not believe that there would be progress in completing this investigation.

A Socialist Party deputy said the same week of the anniversary that no senior officials would be charged because they received immunity during round-table negotiations in the Orange Revolution. My personal view is that it would probably be better if President Yushchenko simply ignored the anniversary, rather than make false promises that are unlikely to be met.

My sadness at President Yushchenko’s lack of will on the Gongadze affair was made worse by two coincidences. The first happened the week before when I bumped by accident into Mykola Melnychenko at Washington’s Dulles airport. I was flying to a conference in Europe and Melnychenko back to Kyiv. I hoped him a safe and successful trip, while privately thinking that little would come of it.

The second came the week later as I had been reading Andrew Wilson’s “Ukraine’s Orange Revolution” with the aim of writing a book review that would also cover two other Orange books, one by an old British-Ukrainian friend, Askold Krushelnycky. Wilson’s book, which was completed in mid 2005, was optimistic about senior Kuchma era officials being charged with alleged election fraud and abuse of office. But, by the time I read the book a year after it was written and during the Gongadze anniversary those same Kuchma-era officials are all now back in government. I was reminded of my opinion article published a week earlier that only the US has ever sentenced senior Ukrainian officials, not Ukraine.

During the 2004 elections I remember reading Ukrainian polls that only two politicians were regarded as honest. These were Yushchenko and Moroz. I wonder what those polls would say today?

The sad fact about the Gongadze anniversary is that it puts Ukraine’s “democratic breakthrough” in comparative perspective and Ukraine’s elites come out looking worse. Peru also had a tape scandal around the same time and President Alberto Fujimoro, who was implicated, had to flee to Japan where he still lives. Just this week, protestors had caused havoc in Budapest after the President admitted to lying about the budget deficit. Wow, what would Hungarians have done if he had been accused of ordering violence against his media and political opponents?!

I did once propose to a Ukrainian diplomat that if the authorities did not want to charge the retired Kuchma than maybe he could be instead dispatched to Minsk where he could head a CIS committee dealing with important strategic questions, such as weight measurements or road improvements, in Eurasia. Sadly, this offer was never taken up.