Mustafa Nayyem, the former investigative journalist who is now a member of Ukraine’s parliament, said on March 25 that slain ex-Russian member of parliament Denys Voronenkov should have gotten better protection from Ukraine’s government.
“It looks like our secret services and prosecutors’ offices, they are so calm, they don’t even try to protect this guy,” Nayyem told the Kyiv Post after speaking at the newspaper’s spring Employment Fair on March 25 in Olympic Stadium. “I am not specialist, but it’s strange that members of the Ukrainian parliament – corruptionists – are protected by secret services and this witness is who so important has only one bodyguard.”
Voronenkov, 45, was gunned down in broad daylight about 11:30am. in central Kyiv on street corner outside the Premier Palace Hotel by an assassin identified by Ukrainian authorities as a 28-year-old Russian agent named Pavlo Parshov, 28, who may have served in Ukraine’s National Guard.
Parshov was fatally wounded by Voronenkov’s state-provided bodyguard in a shootout that also left the bodyguard hospitalize with less serious gunshot injuries.
At the time he was killed, Voronenkov had gone from being a loyal Kremlin insider to harsh critic, giving testimony in Ukraine’s criminal investigation against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who is now under the protection of Russian President Vladimir Putin after fleeing Ukraine in 2014. Voronenko was in a position to expose Kremlin secrets. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko blamed Putin for the assassination, calling the murder “an act of state terrorism.”
Nayyem questions why Voronenkov was not admitted into Ukraine’s secret witness protection program, where he would have been given a higher level of protection.
“We have this witness protection program and even more,” Nayyem said, although he doesn’t know who is currently in the program. “In court, we have a very specific unit which is to protect witnesses. I don’t know why it wasn’t used to protect Voronenkov.”
Instead, Voronenkov’s assassination not only exposes the impotence of Ukraine’s law enforcement but also could deter future Kremlin critics from fleeing Russia and settling in Ukraine.
“Let’s understand by Voronenkov was important for Ukraine. He was, first a guy who escaped from Russia who was really an insider, a member of parliament. He worked close to these guys. He could describe the reality from the inside. Now he’s outside. This guy described the real situation, not only as a witness was he useful, he was a symbol.”
Unfortunately, Nayyem said, Ukraine’s government didn’t use Voronenkov as a symbol of freedom – of someone who escaped Putin’s dictatorship and came to a democracy to tell about the experience publicly.
“We didn’t even try to use him that way,” Nayyem said. “I think that we should be more mature on these issues … It is a loss.”
Surveillance video records the March 23 assassination in Kyiv of exiled Russian member of parliament Denys Voronenkov by a gunman who later died of gunshot wounds inflicted by Voronenkov’s bodyguard.
Voronenkov’s brazen assassination “will scare those people in Russia” who maybe want to leave Russia for more open societies, but may now avoid ex-Soviet countries. “Unfortunately we are more free but we are not more secure than the other side,” Nayyem said.
Events, Nayyem said, are clearly showing that Russia is the enemy of Europe. He is currently encouraged by what he expects to be the repudiation by European voters of right-wing nationalist parties with links to Putin. He is heartened by recent election results in The Netherlands and also expects the pro-Russian parties to be repudiated in coming elections in France and Germany.
Going back a decade or more, when he was a top investigative journalist at Ukrainska Pravda, Nayyem said he chronicled the links that are now just re-emerging publicly again between American political consultant Paul Manafort, Yanukovych Putin and Kremlin-connected billionaire Oleg Deripaska.
Manafort worked for Yanukovych for a decade and served as U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s campaign manager for several months.
Nayyem said that Derispaska told billionaire Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov about Manafort’s services and that Akhmetov recommended him to Yanukovych, who after unsuccessfully trying to rig the 2004 presidential election in Ukraine, had a poor reputation in the West. Manafort improved Yanukovych’s image enough to get him elected as Ukraine’s president in 2010.
“It’s nothing new that he worked with Deripaska,” Nayyem said of Manafort. “Look at the biography of Mr. Manafort. All his life, what he did, he was arriving in ‘third-world’ countries he doesn’t respect,” teaching “tricks” to help dictators win unfair or rigged elections.
Nayyem said more revelations are to come involving dirty money in politics connecting Manafort, Trump and his allies and Putin. “This is a very big game, not only in Ukraine,” he said, with many people in many nations digging for the truth.
Understanding the financial links and motives, Nayyem said, will help democrats worldwide fight back and eventually prevail in America, Europe — and Ukraine.
“The victory of Trump is a very bad thing for the short term, but in the long term this is a very right thing strategically,” Nayyem said. “Now we can see the consequences now we can see how it could be.”
