You're reading: Lyovochkin: Kuchma likely has ‘grounds’ to implicate foreign agents in Gongadze murder, Melnychenko tape scandal

Serhiy Lyovochkin, chief of staff to Ukraine’s current President Viktor Yanukovych, said that his former boss, Leonid Kuchma, must have had “grounds” to suggest – as he did on Sept. 15 – that foreign intelligence services tried to undermine Ukraine by orchestrating the 2000 murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze and the subsequent Melnychenko tape scandal.

“Kuchma is a politician with a vast amount of experience. He likely had grounds to declare so,” said Lyovochkin, who served as Kuchma’s assistant in 2001 and top aid in 2002-2005.

The comment by Lvoyochkin was made in response to a question about Kuchma’s claim that Gongadze’s murder was part of an international provocation. “It’s an international scandal designed to compromise Ukraine. They didn’t give me or Ukraine any peace for five years,” Kuchma said on Sept. 15.

The former Ukrainian president hinted that foreign secret services were involved in Gongadze’s disappearance. He added that agents from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency were present at [anti-presidential] demonstrations following Gongadze’s disappearance.

“This was paid for. Money makes everything possible,” Kuchma said on Sept. 15, adding that he is satisfied that the U.S. under President Barack Obama has changed its view of the world and is no longer trying to spread democracy around the globe.

Lyovochkin, who was speaking to a group of journalists during a Sept. 20 briefing, did not directly answer whether he and Ukraine’s current president see evidence of such major interference from foreign intelligence agencies in Ukraine’s domestic affairs.

Kuchma claims to have seen such a risk. But he has, himself, been

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