Oleksandr Zinchenko, politician who turned away from Kuchma to support Orange Revolution, dies

Oleksandr Zinchenko, a Kyiv City Council member and former head of the National Space Agency, died on Wednesday. Anna Kalina, Zinchenko's press secretary, confirmed the death to Interfax-Ukraine News Agency. She had no immediate details.

Zinchenko was among the Ukrainian politicians who broke from ex-President Leonid Kuchma in 2004 and supported the Orange Revolution's presidential candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, who got elected on Dec. 26, 2004, following mass street protests that overturned an earlier rigged election for Kuchma's favored successor - Viktor Yanukovych.

However, in the early 2000s, Zinchenko was part of the authoritarian Kuchma government's attempts to stifle press freedoms in Ukraine. He was elected to parliament in 2002 as member of the Socialist Democratic Party of Ukraine (united) -- informally referred to as the "oligarch's party."

Suspicions that Zinchenko was then seeking to prevent leading journalists from criticizing Kuchma and top officials seemed to be confirmed in 2002 following the release of recordings secretly made in Kuchma’s office. During one conversation, dated May 2000, Zinchenko seemed to talk with Kuchma about efforts to co-opt critical journalists and harass media outlets.

A voice resembling Zinchenko’s criticized heavy-handed tactics used to bring irreverent journalists – and the media they work for – to heel, suggesting more indirect methods would be better. “I think that [the authorities] don’t understand what they’re doing when they attack newspapers like Silski Visti and the Kyiv Post. There are other ways – economic means, like doubling the rent, for example,” the voice said.

Zinchenko headed the National Space Agency from February 2009 to March 2010. He also served as leader of the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko minority faction on the Kyiv City Council.

Zinchenko was the son of a military counter-intelligence officer and nurse and born in Khmelnytsky Oblast on April 16, 1957. He graduated with a degree in physics from Chernivtsi University, where from 1983-1985 he headed the Komsomol youth organization.

Zinchenko headed Ometa-Merkantail and the joint stock company Balchug in Kyiv from 1993-1995. He was appointed director of the Ukraine-Express information agency and worked as president of Inter TV in 1996, the year he joined the Socialist Democratic Party of Ukraine (united), or SDPU.

Zinchenko became the SDPU’s chief deputy chairman in 1998 and headed the party’s parliament faction. In 2000, he chaired the parliament’s Freedom of Speech and Information Committee, which international media watchdogs criticized for doing little to bolster the sagging morale of Ukraine’s more adventurous scribes, who had grown weary of writing hagiographies for pro-presidential elites.

Zinchenko is an Academician of the National TV Academy of Ukraine and has received the Honored Journalist of Ukraine award. He was married to a TV host, Iryna, and had two daughters, Ekaterina and Aleksandra.