Oct. 14, 1999
You can be excused if you’re not paying as much attention to the recent attack on Natalia Vitrenko as it merits.
For one, the presidential candidate miraculously emerged from the incident practically unscathed. When Vitrenko held a press conference four days after attack, it was almost as if nothing had changed. The rhetoric was as hot, fiery and alarmist as ever, only, instead of bashing the IMF and the current government for raping the country, Vitrenko had turned to bashing all her rival candidates for trying to do her in.
Along with that, there is an overwhelming sense – common to all high-profile murders and murder attempts in Ukraine – that the case simply won’t be solved. Recent history tells us that the higher the profile of the victim, in fact, the less chance there is that the perpetrator will be caught. The killers of Ukraine’s two most high-profile victims over the last two years – banker Vadym Hetman and Donetsk regional offical Yevhen Shcherban – have not been brought to justice nor, apparently, will they be.
The recent attack on Vitrenko seems sure to exacerbate Ukrainians’ already well-established lack of trust in the crime-fighting apparatus of their country. It’s not that the people see their nations’ security personnel as stumbling, incompetent bumpkins that couldn’t catch a chicken in a coop. Worse than that, the people simply mistrust the motives of the State Security Service (SBU), whom they feel is in the hands of the executive branch.
That mistrust partially explains why many people refused to believe the official explanation for the death earlier this year of Rukh Party leader Vyacheslav Chornovil, even though there was plenty of evidence from eyewitnesses that backed up the official explanation that he died in a car crash. That mistrust also explains the circus that has developed over the search for Vitrenko’s assailants. A wave of ugly speculation as to who was behind the attack developed almost immediately. It was Moroz. No, it was the Russians. No, Vitrenko staged the attack herself. No, it was Islamic fundamentalists bent on destabilizing the country. No, the president himself ordered the attack. The SBU got into the act by quickly releasing the name of the man suspected of organizing the attack – Serhy Ivanchenko. When it quickly became known that Ivanchenko was a member of Moroz’s team, people began speculating that the executive branch – through the SBU – was using the incident for its own political purposes.
It was a bonehead move to toss Ivanchenko’s name into the media frenzy. Whatever credibility Ukraine’s credibility-starved police force could possibly gain from this case immediately went right out the window. The public assumed it was just a presidential ploy to slur the name of Moroz. When the SBU went on to announce that it had found an arsenal of artillery in Ivanchenko’s apartment earlier this week, most people just laughed. Nobody believed it!
The circus-like atmosphere of the procedings has led to the public not taking the assassination attempt on the nation’s leading presidential challenger seriously. But make no mistake – the attempted murder of Vitrenko is a big deal. If one really wanted to stretch it, one could draw a parallel to the assassination of U.S. presidential contender Bobby Kennedy in 1968. Kennedy died, of course. And Vitrenko’s no Kennedy. But she is running number two in the polls.
The police – and the executive branch – can still save face. They can bring the suspects to justice and do it swiftly and convincingly. But if we – the doubting public – are to believe them, we first need to see the circus end. We then need to see some proof that the suspect did it. That means more than an offhanded remark by the suspect’s brother’s girlfriend. And then, most importantly, we need to see a fair, professionally managed trial.
– Greg Bloom
