You're reading: Melnychenko says he has been summoned for face-to-face meeting with Kuchma (updated)

Former officer of the State Guard Department Mykola Melnychenko has said that he has been summoned to the main investigation department of the Prosecutor General's Office on Thursday for a face-to-face meeting with second Ukrainian President (1994-2005) Leonid Kuchma.

"In an hour or so I am to come for a face-to-face meeting with Kuchma," Melnychenko told reporters on Thursday.

As reported, before entering the PGO for interrogation on Thursday, Kuchma said he does not want a face-to-face meeting with Melnychenko, but will agree to it if the Prosecutor General’s Office insists. Kuchma called Melnychenko "a betrayer of the country" and said he was involved in "forgery and falsification", including in the case on the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze.

First Deputy Prosecutor General Rinat Kuzmin said on March 23 that records of conversations of Kuchma and the tapes of Melnychenko were recognized as material evidence in the case on the murder of Gongadze.

A criminal case was opened against Kuchma, who is suspected of abusing his office with giving illegal directives to Interior Ministry officials, which led to the murder of Gongadze.