The only problem with this scenario is that – after four intensive years of investigation by officials appointed by him – they could not find a scrap of evidence linking Kuchma’s administration or the SBU to the poisoning. Instead, Yushchenko occupied himself with the harassment and isolation of one of the few truly bright lights of post-independence Ukraine: Gen. Ihor Shmeshko, former defense attaché in Washington and head of both military intelligence and the SBU in the Kuchma administration.

As had already been reported by several Western intelligence sources, Ihor Smeshko was the true hero of the “Orange Revolution”. He openly opposed Yanukovich’s efforts to disperse the crowds by force and he threatened that SBU Special Forces would intervene and defend the protesters if military forces (then moving on Kyiv) entered the city. It was Smeshko’s SBU that prevented the bombing attack on Yushchenko’s campaign headquarters by two Russian assassins.

Instead of rewarding Smeshko for his courage, professionalism and integrity, Yushchenko, after taking office, has tried to preserve the myth of SBU (and, by extension, Kuchma) complicity in his poisoning. But without any evidence he finds himself in the embarrassing position of explaining away the length of the investigation. The most probable perpetrators are Russian officials working closely with one or two of their agents close to Yushchenko. But to identify members of his own inner group without being able to establish a Russian connection would seriously erode the myth he has spun for himself both domestically and internationally. Yushchenko knows that – short of a smoking gun – any evidence he produces of Russian complicity will be met with a wall of denial, ridicule, and vituperation on the Russian side.

So the “investigation” grinds on until he leaves office. By that time all parties will have agreed that the case had become “cold” and his poisoning would become simply another in a series of high-visibility political “unsolved mysteries”. But, without prosecution and trial, the real tragedy of this political theatre is that one of Ukraine’s most talented, honest and patriotic public officials, Ihor Smeshko, will be forced to live out his life under a cloud.