Pukach, a former high-ranking Interior Ministry police administrator, seemed to be hiding in plain sight before his July 21 capture in nearby Zhytomyr Oblast. He became a fugitive more than five years ago. Investigators say he has confessed and is identifying those who ordered Gongadze’s murder.
The nation’s political leaders and law enforcement need to get it right this time, after a nine-year investigation marked by stonewalling, deception and outright official lies.
The continued impunity of some of the nation’s elite, who have pilfered the country’s riches at will since independence in 1991, needs to come to an end. And let Pukach’s arrest start the way.
The nation and the world need to know, once and for all, whether ex-President Leonid Kuchma or members of his inner circle of advisers ordered Gongadze’s murder as retribution for his brand of hard-hitting journalism.
The tapes recorded by former Kuchma bodygard Mykola Melnychenko are detailed and voluminous. Instead of competently investigating those 700-plus hours of conversations involving the ex-president, law enforcers have stonewalled on authenticating the tapes. If bogus, the tapes could easily have been exposed as such by now. We believe that at least some of the recorded conversations depict events as they actually happened. Competent investigators would determine which ones.
If the arrest of Pukach is another political stunt and if the Gongadze investigation degenerates into more smokescreens, the backlash against those in power should be swift and severe from the public, Western partners, human rights organizations and historians. There is no more room for cover-ups or foul-ups.
