You're reading: Yushchenko doesn’t believe Kuchma ordered Gongadze’s murder

Ukraine's Third President Viktor Yushchenko has said that he believes in the authenticity of the recordings allegedly made by former officer of the presidential security guard Mykola Melnychenko in Second President Leonid Kuchma's office.

"The way these recordings sound and the testimonies in these recordings are very believable, so I trust them," he said on TVi on March 31 evening.

At the same time, Yushchenko said he doubted that these records were made by a single person. "I also doubt the way they came out. The endeavor of one security guard is not enough. This could not happen without a serious patronage," he said.

Yushchenko said that he welcomed the efforts to finally solve the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze, but he did not believe that Kuchma could order to kill anybody. "It is possible, that the president ordered some tough actions, such as persecution and beatings. But how could the president of Ukraine come up to killing someone…," he said.

Gongadze went missing on September 17, 2000, when Leonid Kuchma was Ukraine’s president, and Viktor Yushchenko served as the prime minister.