05/17/2001 | New York Times

May 17, 2001

Ukraine Calls Newsman's Killing Nonpolitical; Skeptics Abound

By MICHAEL WINES

OSCOW, May 16 — Wielding adjectives like "stupid" and "plodding," critics of President Leonid
Kuchma heaped ridicule today on a government claim that a leading opposition journalist was killed not
for political reasons but randomly, by two hooligans who were themselves killed later.

Mr. Kuchma's government has been in crisis ever since a former presidential guard released tape recordings
that he said show Mr. Kuchma ordering underlings to "deal with" the journalist, Georgy Gongadze. Mr.
Kuchma insists the tapes were doctored.

Mr. Gongadze's headless corpse was found in November outside Kiev.

On Tuesday Mr. Kuchma's interior minister, Yuri Smirnov, declared the crime solved. He said the killing had
been traced to two members of a criminal gang, with no ties to politics, who were later killed by two gangsters
now in government custody.

"As minister, I consider this case solved," he said. "The two perpetrators have died. No one organized it,
because it was a spontaneous event."

Few seemed to buy that explanation. Instead, Mr. Kuchma's political critics dismissed Mr. Smirnov's statement
as an almost laughably clumsy attempt to divert public suspicion away from the president.

And they issued a grisly challenge to Mr. Smirnov: "If this case is cracked," the attorney for Mr. Gongadze's
mother, Andrei Fedov, said in a telephone interview tonight, "then we can expect that the minister would
produce the head of Mr. Gongadze. I don't think the minister is prepared to answer that question."

Mr. Fedov said he met with prosecutors today and was told they could not confirm the claim that the killing has
been solved. The prosecutor's office has not publicly commented on the ministry's claim.

Others were puzzled by the ministry's assertion that it had traced the murders to dead men who, presumably,
were unable to confess.

"Do the law enforcement agencies now have extrasensory perception, so they can conduct seances with
spirits?" was one question posted on a Web site, www.pravda.com.ua, that was set up by Mr. Gongadze
before his death.

"Nobody believes it," said Serhy P. Holovaty, a leading critic of President Kuchma and the head of a
parliamentary commission that investigated Mr. Gongadze's death. "They are perceived by our TV and press as
the most stupid, the most — I don't even know how to say more."

The Interior Ministry has not released any details that might corroborate its statement. But today the national
Ukrinform news agency quoted Deputy Interior Minister Mikola Djiga as saying Mr. Gongadze was killed by
two drug addicts who tried to rob him after he hitchhiked home in their car. Interviewed on Moscow's state-run
ORT television network, Mr. Dhiga called the attack "completely motiveless."

Mr. Gongadze, 31, disappeared in September after telling investigators he was being followed by a car he
suspected was owned by the Interior Ministry. His headless corpse was positively identified by American
experts only last week.

The disclosure of the secret recordings taped by Mr. Kuchma's former bodyguard set off a great public outcry,
and once seemed capable of toppling the president.

But in recent weeks the protests have waned, their energy sapped by feuding among Mr. Kuchma's opponents
and a growing belief that the political forces behind the president — largely parties controlled by industrial
magnates — have enough power to preserve his rule.


Copyright 2001 The New York Times