12/24/2002 | Йванко

In Ukraine, opposition feels the pain
Struggling president's aides accused of intimidating critics

Sharon LaFraniere, Washington Post Friday, December 20, 2002


Kiev, Ukraine -- Having built a multimillion-dollar enterprise over the last decade by making and selling shingles and tar paper, Volodmyr Shandra knows all there is to know about the business of roofing.

It's in the business of politics -- he's a new member of parliament and a critic of Ukraine's struggling president, Leonid Kuchma -- that the roof has come crashing down around his head.

Shandra, 39, was elected to the legislature in April as a member of the Our Ukraine faction, the leading opposition to Kuchma's increasingly auto- cratic rule. In July, he said, a friend passed along a message from a top official in Kuchma's government: If Shandra did not join the pro-Kuchma lawmakers, his factory would find itself in deep trouble.

Within a month, he said, a cadre of masked officers toting machine guns showed up at the factory in the western city of Slavuta. They seized a dozen computers and 3,000 pounds of documents.

The factory was all but paralyzed during the critical summer construction season, he said, wreaking havoc with its clients and dealers. Now it faces a criminal investigation for supposed financial improprieties.

Muscling legislators is just the most visible of a variety of hardball tactics that critics say have intensified as Kuchma's government sinks deeper into scandal and loses popular support. Other methods include retaliating against insufficiently loyal businessmen and independent judges, and cowing the media.

"You get a sense of sustained pressure, across the board," said Markian Bilynskyj, director of field operations for the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation.

Kuchma, who is scheduled to leave office in two years, said Ukraine is on its way to becoming a modern European democracy and just needs time to develop.

His aides deny the government engages in censorship or uses law enforcement and the courts for political ends.


LEADER HANGS ON
For the moment, the strong-arm tactics are helping Kuchma maintain his grip after opposition forces managed their largest show of strength to date, drawing tens of thousands of protesters to the streets in September. After what critics describe as a campaign of threats and hefty bribes, a razor-slim majority of legislators pledged last week to work with the executive branch.

Television news coverage of Kuchma is now relentlessly positive: When he was humiliated at last month's NATO summit in Prague, for instance, Ukrainian media painted it as a diplomatic victory for the 64-year-old leader.

But some analysts say the real beneficiary of Kuchma's crackdown is its architect: Viktor Medvedchuk, the president's new and increasingly powerful chief of staff and one of Ukraine's richest oligarchs.

"There is a real sense that this administration is being run by Medvedchuk, and that he is performing a kind of dress rehearsal for when he becomes president," Bilynskyj said. "I don't think Kuchma is controlling all of this. But he is not stopping it."

The trend worries Western leaders, who once dreamed that Ukrainian democracy would flourish. With almost 50 million people, a territory the size of France and an arsenal that includes missile and nuclear technology, Ukraine was judged worthy of grooming for a democratic future. It has been one of the top recipients of U.S. aid and political support.

But that may be changing. The United States has given Kuchma the cold shoulder since determining this fall that he signed off on a clandestine plan to sell powerful Kolchuga aircraft tracking stations to Iraq in clear violation of an international embargo.

U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual said last month that the Kolchuga affair and other disagreements have led to "a crisis of confidence" in Ukraine's top leadership. Kuchma denies approving the sale.

His administration is powerless to silence American grumbling. But the growing list of incidents involving political opponents, businesspeople and journalists suggests domestic critics sometimes pay a steep price.


FOES FACE FINANCIAL RUIN
Take Serhiy Danylov, whose printing house published 900,000 copies of a book about Yulia Timoshenko, a leader of the opposition to Kuchma, in February.

Now on his press is another book, documenting what he says is the punishment tax authorities have meted out since then: more than 100 visits to his office and warnings to his clients. His business almost ruined, he has cut his workforce from 304 employees to 25.

Or consider Yevhen Chervonenko, a legislator who spent the last decade building an international trucking firm. He said his support for Viktor Yushchenko, head of Our Ukraine and the country's most popular politician, has so far cost the firm at least $1 million in business after tax police this year froze bank accounts and seized trucks.

"I was an adviser of the president. I was a minister," he said. "When I was there, they did not touch me. But since I began to support Yushchenko . . . I am being told I will lose everything."