You're reading: Kuchma never noticed Melnychenko before tape scandal

Ukraine's Second President (1994-2005) Leonid Kuchma has said that he had never noticed Mykola Melnychenko when he worked in the State Security Guard of Ukraine.

"I have never seen Melnychenko. He might have stood somewhere out there in the fifth row, might have moved in the background. Then I saw a photo, yes, I sort of saw him somewhere before. So what can we be talking (with Melnychenko) about?" he told journalists in Kyiv on Wednesday after leaving the Prosecutor General’s Office.