You're reading: Kravchuk: We will never know who ordered Gongadze murdered, poisoned Yuschenko

First President of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk doesn't believe the names of those who murdered journalist Georgy Gongadze and poisoned 2004 presidential candidate Viktor Yuschenko will even be known, he has said in an interview with the Izvestia in Ukraine newspaper.

"Will the public ever know who put out the contract on Gongadze and who poisoned Yuschenko?" Kravchuk asked. "No, because they don’t want to."

"They started to question [former head of the external surveillance department of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry Oleksiy] Pukach, (who is being tried for murdering Gongadze), the tapes [made by former Presidential Guard Major Mykola Melnychenko] were brought to trial, and [former President Leonid] Kuchma was called in for questioning. Then the tide started to turn: the trial of Pukach is [now] held behind closed doors, and the public doesn’t know what Pukach is saying. And now Melnychenko is guilty because he illegally recorded conversations," Kravchuk said.

"The Security Service of Ukraine handed in a submission to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine claiming it was unnecessary to pay attention to evidence that was obtained illegally. It turns out that if you accidentally become the witness to a murder, and run to the Prosecutor General’s Office, you’ll be told: Go away, you were there illegally… But this is not the case," Kravchuk said.

"… If such a state of affairs continues, we’ll never know the truth. I realize that we have to defend the relatives [of the victims], but society also has to know where the truth is, and where it isn’t. When such a high-profile case is hidden from society, than everything becomes clear," he added.

"And concerning the Yuschenko case: We’ll never know the truth. I think Yuschenko doesn’t want [to know the truth] himself. Otherwise, how can we understand his behavior? [First] he undergoes medical tests, and then he doesn’t [want to undergo tests]. Maybe it means that he doesn’t really want to find out the truth of the matter. Why? I don’t know, and I don’t want to go into the details."