The outcome of the Ukraine crisis may depend on continuing attempts to determine whether Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko was intentionally poisoned. If compelling evidence of poisoning emerges, the "pro-Russian" party of candidate Viktor Yanukovych could find itself discredited.
On Sept. 5 candidate Yushchenko developed mysterious symptoms. According to Dr. Nikolai Korpan, "He had acute pancreatitus, he had acute gastritis, he had acute proctocolitus, acute myositis [muscle inflammation], acute paralysis of the facial nerve and he was [suffering] different pain symptoms, for example in the area of the abdominal cavity and thorax cavity, the breast cavity." On Sept. 10 Yushchenko was treated in Vienna, at the Rudolfinerhaus clinic. His condition was described as "grave." Cysts and lesions appeared on his face, causing disfigurement. According to Dr. Korpan's statement, "This case is not a typical case in medicine. It is seldom that one observes in clinical practice complex acute diseases combined with neurological signs."
On Sept. 21 Yushchenko, having returned from an initial round of treatment, told a group of Ukrainian legislators, "Look at my face, listen to my articulation. These are just small indications of the problem I had. What happened to me is not a problem of food or my eating habits. It is a problem of the political regime in this country."
In a sensational report, Times ONLINE (UK) journalist Jeremy Page says that Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko "was poisoned in an attempt on his life during election campaigning" according to the "the doctor who supervised his treatment at an Austrian clinic...." But recent press releases from Rudolfinerhaus hospital in Vienna do not reflect any conclusions, as yet, about the cause of Yushchenko's medical condition. The initial press release from Rudolfinerhaus hospital stated: "It is impossible to confirm or exclude intentional poisoning." More recently, on Dec. 4, the International Herald Tribune's Elisabeth Rosenthal wrote: "In interviews this week, the Austrian doctors were quick to stress that scientifically they cannot say that the candidate was poisoned." According to Rosenthal, the Rudolfinerhaus doctors consulted biological and chemical warfare specialists in an attempt to discover the causes of Yushchenko's condition.
On Dec. 7 the official web site of Viktor Yushchenko referred to an appeal from the Rudolfinerhaus doctors to request assistance from "certain international organizations ... since we have come to a conclusion that clinical sympomatology and the course of a range of diseases does not correspond to the course of diseases common in civil medicine. We have arrived at a clear decision that your [Yushchenko's] illness is atypical, thus there are reasons to suspect the use of a biological weapon."
On Dec. 8 Yushchenko's web site said the Rudolfinerhaus doctors would attempt to "verify" the use of a biological weapon against the Ukrainian presidential candidate. Yushchenko's physician, Dr. Korpan, hinted that the Rudolfinerhaus doctors have "been provided with new data" regarding the cause of Yushchenko's illness. According to Page, the Rudolfinerhaus clinic is "within days of identifying the substance that left Mr. Yushchenko's face disfigured with cysts and lesions." Page wrote that the doctors were "in no doubt" that the responsible agents were "administered deliberately."
This is very dramatic, to be sure, but will any proof - beyond a shadow of doubt - emerge?
Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty interviewed Dr. Marc Siegel, a specialist at New York University's School of Medicine. Siegel questioned the statements of the Rudolfinerhaus doctors, disputing the notion that food poisoning could be ruled out in the absence of a final diagnosis. There is no doubt, he explained, "there are certain bacteria that you can get by eating bad food that can give you multi-system involvement." Siegel said e-coli and salmonella could cause a wide variety of symptoms, affecting many organs. "These bacteria make toxins ... so I'm not hearing anything to make me convinced this isn't food poisoning." Siegel also questioned the methodology of the Vienna doctors, saying he could not understand why they did not test for a virus when they had the chance. In early November a 15-member Ukrainian parliamentary commission found no evidence of poisoning with regard to Yushchenko's blood, hair, nails or urine.
There is another aspect to this complicated story. Yushchenko's wife, Kateryna Chumachenko, is an American of Ukrainian descent. It is difficult to imagine what a woman born in Chicago must think of Ukrainian politics, post-Soviet high finance or the East European milieu. She entered Ukraine in 1991 to study banking. Idealistic and naïve, she married a Soviet-trained banker (Yushchenko) - which is the equivalent (in Chicago) of marrying a mafia accountant. In a corrupt system, where money laundering is mixed with brutal arm-twisting, her husband became the governor of the National Bank. Accused of diverting funds to benefit relatives, Yushchenko fell into quarrelling with the International Monetary Fund over the misuse of IMF loans to distort Ukraine's credit position (thereby lining the pockets of key political players, assuring his appointment as the country's prime minister). Yushchenko's behavior as banker and politician was no doubt guided, in part, by the assassination of his mentor and predecessor, Vadim Hetman (underscoring the fact that Ukrainian banking is, indeed, a gangster milieu).
In October 1997 a fascinating article was posted on a Ukrainian research web site titled The Fifth Element. According to this posting, President Leonid Kuchma mentioned Yushchenko as his successor following a cynical aside from presidential chief of staff Dmytro Tabachnyk, who said the regime needed someone who could be "realistically made up" as a new pretender for the presidency. Yushchenko was a perfect fit because he was already known, and would be spared "extra scrutiny."
Implicated in the decapitation of an Internet journalist, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma is an international pariah - a typical post-Soviet gangster-apparatchik. Given this situation, how does the Ukrainian government get its good name back? Meanwhile, the right-of-center Yushchenko has been traveling the world, winning the West's confidence. Yushchenko even met with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, if only to emphasize his free market credentials. It is doubly useful, in this regard, that Yushchenko's wife has been accused of being an American spy.
On a strict political basis, the alleged poisoning of Yushchenko makes little sense (unless it was carried out by a more intimate enemy, for personal rather than political reasons). If Yushchenko had died in September, the Kuchma regime would've been seriously embarrassed. The question then follows: Why would the Kuchma regime want to guarantee an opposition political victory? The alleged motive for poisoning Yushchenko is, in fact, no motive at all. Time will tell, of course, whether Yushchenko is seriously anti-Russian and pro-Western. As this column admitted last week, there is no way to know the truth in advance.
Yushchenko could be a hero, of course; but we have the recent false liberalization in Georgia to lead our suspicions, and after 15 years we see what has happened in Hungary and Poland and Czechoslovakia and Romania. Democracy is a word and anyone can use it. Oligarchy, on the other hand, is more than a word. It is day-to-day reality. A reader of this column recently wrote to say that Moscow doesn't need to play a double game in Ukraine. But the Russians are always playing double games because that is what they do - in Chechnya, in Georgia, in Central Asia and Central Europe. The collapse of the Soviet Union was a big game indeed, and successfully played. Ukraine allegedly became an "independent democracy" 13 years ago. Okay, what happened to this "independent" country that is suddenly described as a Russian satellite? Now we think that Ukraine is being liberated for real. And several years from now, when the country is run in the same way as before, with the same basic structures intact, we will once again find ourselves describing Ukraine as a Russian "satellite." How many of these "liberations" do we have to witness before we understand the game of these post-Soviet apparatchiks-turned-democrats? The formula is clear, is it not? It is the political equivalent of "the check is in the mail." These countries are always becoming democratic or capitalist. They always have their hands out for Western credits. And yet, the elections in these countries are never free or fair, as the leadership always remains autocratic and thuggish. This is what we have seen for the past 15 years.
Yushchenko is no James Madison or Alexander Hamilton. His thinking is not that of a Western-style republican. He was raised under the Soviet system, and educated, and indoctrinated, and acclimated to conspiratorial methods. If he was a fighter against dictatorship his whole life, imbued with the spirit of freedom, we might safely credit his excellence as a reformer. But please don't say that this careerist, this functionary is now "a man of the people," an instant democrat summoned by the multitude.
Poison or no poison, do not expect major changes in Ukraine.
