Vyacheslav Chornovil in February 1999 (http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2009/1/23/88382.htm). The crime is one of many high-profile crimes that remain unresolved during the decade of President Leonid Kuchma’s rule.
It would be a big breakthrough if Chornovil’s car accident was proven to be indeed murder. It could open the way to a resolution of many of the other high-profile crimes from the Kuchma era.
(https://archive.kyivpost.com/nation/31852)
I have three doubts that — even if evidence is found — anybody will be brought to justice — for Chornovil’s murder.
First, President Victor Yushchenko’s attitudes to Kuchma would get in the way of criminal charges. Yushchenko always opposed Kuchma’s impeachment: during the 2000 crisis when taped evidence was released accusing him of the involvement in the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze; all the way through the turbulent end of Kuchma’s term in office.
Yushchenko has never once condemned Kuchma and most likely gave him verbal immunity from prosecution during the December 2004 roundtables, no doubt with the support of then Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, and Yuschenko’s friends Ivan Pliushch and Petro Poroshenko.
Would Kendzior and Stoiko break with Yushchenko if he refused to press criminal charges against Kuchma? If they did, then the president would lose control of one of two of his support bases within Our Ukraine party, Vyacheslav Kyrylenko’s Za Ukrayinu group.
Second, the opposition was divided during the anti-Kuchma protests following the release of incriminating tapes (the so-called Kuchmagate). There were those called derzhavnyky (the pro-state group) who supported the president as head of state (Yushchenko, Roman Besmertnyi, Pliushch, the Rukh party) and Yulia Tymoshenko-led group who believed that Kuchma should be impeached and criminally charged. The derzhavnyky were convinced Kuchmagate was a ‘Russian conspiracy’ to undermine Ukrainian statehood and therefore resolved to support the head of state. Yushchenko and his allies have always condemned the Boyars, such as Kuchma’s then-Chief-of-Staff Victor Medvedchuk, but never the Tsar.
Would Kendzior and Stoyko now change Rukh’s attitude to prosecution of Ukrainian leaders and press for criminal charges against Kuchma?
Third, as Prosecutor Oleksandr Medvedko says (http://www.dt.ua/1000/1050/65190/), since the Orange Revolution there has been no change with regard to Ukraine’s elites remaining above the law. In discussing punishment of senior Ukrainian officials, Medvedko says, that criminal charges against state officials in the First and Second Categories (this is a formal rating of state officials) have not been successful and not a single person has been brought to justice. Until the prosecutor’s office is thoroughly cleaned out no criminal charges will ever be brought against Ukrainian elites who will continue to remain above the law.
