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Trial of suspect Oleksiy Pukach may take place as early as January.

Ukrainian prosecutors say they have finished preparing their case against a high-ranking police officer accused of organizing and executing the nation’s arguably most infamous murder – that of investigative journalist Georgiy Gongadze.

But many have long believed that the ultimate blame for the Sept. 16, 2000, assassination of Gongadze goes straight to the top of the nation’s power structure then – to former President Leonid Kuchma and his then chief of staff Volodymyr Lytvyn, the current speaker of parliament.

Both men have repeatedly denied involvement in the murder and could not be reached for comment for this story. However, evidence has repeatedly surfaced over the decade tying Kuchma and Lytvyn not only to the murder, but to the subsequent cover-up as well.

After more than 10 years, the top-ranking suspect – former Interior Ministry General Oleksiy Pukach – has been imprisoned since July 2009 and is now awaiting trial.


Oleksiy Pukach on July 21, 2009, when he was arrested. (Courtesy)

Also publicly accused is Pukach’s long-dead former boss, Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko, who allegedly gave the order to kill Gongadze.

Kravchenko was a close confidant of Kuchma. Three lower-ranking police officers – all subordinates of Pukach – have been convicted of participating in the murder and are serving prison sentences.

The pre-trial investigation has established that, on the night of Sept. 16, 2000, Oleksiy Pukach under instructions from Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko and other officials, and in preliminary agreement with a group of persons, committed the premeditated murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze, because the victim was fulfilling public and journalistic duties.”

– Public statement released by Ukrainian General Prosecutor Viktor Pshonka.

A lawyer for the victim’s widow and a man who survived a similar attack by Pukach responded to the latest developments by accusing prosecutors and President Viktor Yanukovych of protecting those who ordered Gongadze’s murder.

Questions are also being raised anew about Kravchenko’s mysterious death from two gunshot wounds to the head on March 4, 2005, officially ruled as suicide but widely suspected to have been an execution of a key witness to the crime.

Ukrainian General Prosecutor Viktor Pshonka released the following statement to the public on Dec. 7:

“The pre-trial investigation has established that, on the night of Sept. 16, 2000, Oleksiy Pukach under instructions from Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko and other officials, and in preliminary agreement with a group of persons, committed the premeditated murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze, because the victim was fulfilling public and journalistic duties.”
The “other officials” mentioned by the prosecutor’s statement refers to “a wide range of people who worked with Pukach in the Interior Ministry’s Surveillance Department as well as those who helped him hide from investigators when he was on the run,” prosecutors spokesman Yuriy Boychenko said.

Boychenko wouldn’t specify whether Kuchma or Lytvyn are accomplices in the grisly murder. Pukach, arrested in July 2009 after years as a fugitive, allegedly confessed and implicated Kuchma and Lytvyn in the crime.

But Boychenko said Kuchma and Lytvyn are considered as witnesses in the case.

When asked whether there is enough evidence to charge Kuchma or Lytvyn, Boychenko said: “It is for the investigator to decide whether the testimony of one person is enough to accuse another person.”

Pukach is, however, far from the only person accusing Kuchma and Lytvyn.

Oleksiy Podolsky, a human rights activist and former journalist, almost met the same fate as Gongadze – who was kidnapped, taken to the woods outside Kyiv, beaten and strangled, then beheaded and buried.

Podolsky was also taken in 2000 to woods outside Kyiv, allegedly by Pukach and police officers, but released after being beaten.

He thinks Kuchma and Lytvyn are accomplices and that Yanukovych is covering up for them.

His views are based largely on conversations allegedly taped in Kuchma’s office by presidential guard Mykola Melnychenko before Gongadze’s murder.

I trust former Kuchma security guard Mykola Melnychenko’s tapes, which confirm that Lytvyn and Kuchma ordered the killing of Gongadze. Regarding their motive, Lytvyn and Kuchma did not like Gonzadze’s criticism of the Russia-style power grab they were doing.”

– Oleksiy Podolsky, human rights activist and former journalist.

Those recordings, disputed by Kuchma and Lytvyn, show that the two men viewed the journalist’s hard-hitting style as a threat and decided to eliminate him.
Gongadze founded Ukrainska Pravda, the muckraking Internet news site that remains one of the nation’s most popular sources of news.

“I trust former Kuchma security guard Mykola Melnychenko’s tapes, which confirm that Lytvyn and Kuchma ordered the killing of Gongadze. Regarding their motive, Lytvyn and Kuchma did not like Gonzadze’s criticism of the Russia-style power grab they were doing,” Podolsky told the Kyiv Post.

Moreover, according to Podolsky, Kuchma’s successors – first ex-President Viktor Yushchenko and now Yanukovych — are continuing to cover for him.

“Clearly, Kuchma was not interested in investigating this case because he was involved in it. But Yushchenko and Yanukovych are not interested in this investigation for a different reason – they do not want to make a precedent of holding a president accountable for his crimes, because any next president may hold them accountable for their crimes,” Podolsky said.

Podolsky also charged that “investigators do not want to see the direct evidence of the murder of a main witness in this case, former Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko, which is contained in the materials on the so-called suicide. Thus, they are doing everything so that neither the killers, nor those investigators and prosecutors who deliberately and intentionally falsified the conclusion on the suicide, nor those who ordered this murder and these falsifications, ever stand trial.”

Lawyer Valentyna Telychenko, who is representing Gongadze’s widow, Myroslava, in the case, also believes that prosecutors are part of the cover-up. As an example, she cites being denied access to some case materials because she received a late notice by mail to collect the materials.

In addition, in October, prosecutors announced that they had replaced the head of the investigative group in charge of the Pukach case.

The new investigative group then changed the indictment against Pukach from “murder in fulfillment of an order” to “premeditated murder by a group of people in collusion,” Telychenko told the Kyiv Post.

According to Telychenko, the change in wording demonstrates that investigators are ruling out that Kravchenko could have gotten his orders from higher up, as confessed murderer Pukach indicated to police.

If the investigators believed Pukach when he said Kravchenko gave him the order to kill Gongadze, why wouldn’t they believe him when he says that he heard the conversation with [Leonid] Kuchma, or that he had met with [Volodymyr] Lytvyn.”

– Valentyna Telychenko, lawyer representing Gongadze’s widow, Myroslava.

“If the investigators believed Pukach when he said Kravchenko gave him the order to kill Gongadze, why wouldn’t they believe him when he says that he heard the conversation with [Leonid] Kuchma, or that he had met with [Volodymyr] Lytvyn,” she said.

Telychenko has repeatedly pointed out that Kravchenko didn’t have any personal motivation to kill the journalist, so he must have acted upon somebody else’s orders, and the chain of command was pretty straightforward.

Lastly, the lawyer for the widow of the victim is even suspicious of the court trying the case.

“[Kyiv’s] Pechersk District Court is expected to hear the case, but taking into account the court’s dependence on the High Council of Justice [on which Security Service of Ukraine chief Valery Khoroshkovsky sits], I understand that the court might find all of my arguments unreasonable,” she said.

Pshonka, the top prosecutor appointed this autumn, has said that the murder trial will be in January. He is a close ally of Yanukovych, dating back to 1997, when Pshonka served as prosecutor in Donetsk when Yanukovych was the region’s governor.

The unindicted suspects – Kuchma and Lytvyn – have been peddling a story for years that foreigners may be responsible for Gongadze’s murder.

In a Sept. 16 interview with the Kyiv Post, Lytvyn said the Gongadze murder might have been organized from outside of Ukraine by someone seeking to damage the country’s independence.

“I have to say only one thing – the investigation has confirmed that I had nothing to do with it,” he added.

Kuchma has intimated that the United States was somehow behind the crime.

“It’s an international scandal designed to compromise Ukraine,” the former Ukrainian president was quoted as saying on Sept. 15. “This was paid for. Money makes everything possible.”

U.S. Ambassador John F. Tefft has categorically refuted the accusations, as did his predecessor at the time of the scandal, Carlos Pascual.

“Such allegations are clearly absurd.” Tefft told the Kyiv Post on Sept. 22.

It’s an international scandal designed to compromise Ukraine. This was paid for. Money makes everything possible.

– Leonid Kuchma, former president of Ukraine.

“As the Gongadze case enters the trial phase, we will continue to speak out in our efforts to ensure that those actually responsible for ordering his abduction and murder will be brought to justice and to support journalists everywhere who work to inform the public and expose corruption and injustice.”

Members of Yuriy Kravchenko’s family were unavailable or declined to comment for this article.

However, an official resolution dated April 3, 2007 and signed by the case’s then-lead investigator Oleksandr Kharchenko vindicated Kravchenko; Kharchenko reversed his position in September.

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John Marone can be reached at [email protected], Yuriy Onyshkiv at [email protected] and Olesia Oleshko at [email protected].

Read also Pukach beating victim Podolsky: Massive cover-up still under way‘.