Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko says he will support President Petro Poroshenko at the presidential election in March, but in the parliamentary election in October he may run as a candidate himself.
Lutsenko said this and much more in his five-hour-long video interview to journalist Dmytro Gordon published on Jan. 22.
In his longest-ever interview, Lutsenko told numerous anecdotes from his life and career, shared his opinions about the current Ukrainian politics, and boasted a surprising mastery of prison slang – something he picked up in the 2.5 years he spent in jail in 2010-2013 being sentenced in a politically motivated case.
Among such anecdotes, the prosecutor general recalled that a Ukrainian oligarch once offered him a monthly bribe of $100,000 in exchange for loyalty, which he said he refused. He didn’t name the oligarch, however.
He also said he believed that Russian FSB agents provoked violence against protesters of the EuroMaidan Revolution in February 2014, resulting in about 100 murders. Five years later, the EuroMaidan murders remain unsolved.
Lutsenko, 54, started his political career in 1996, joining the Socialist Party of Ukraine. He was three times elected in parliament and was an interior minister in 2005-2010, under President Viktor Yushchenko. He also was an active participant in three major anti-government protest movements, including Ukraine Without (President Leonid) Kuchma in 2000-2001, the Orange Revolution in 2004, and the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2013-2014.
Formerly a top name on Poroshenko Bloc, a leading party with 135 seats in parliament, Lutsenko has served as prosecutor general since May 2016. He continues to be a vehement supporter of Poroshenko, who is expected to announce his bid for re-election on Jan. 29.
In his interview, Lutsenko, known for blunt remarks and salacious jokes, gave witty characteristics to many of current and former top politicians.
On Yanukovych
Lutsenko called ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, ousted as a result of the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2014, a “classical thug boss.”
“He used the state as a tool to accumulate wealth. He is smart, cunning, and vindictive,” he said. “For him, the only values were strength and money. I worked under him as Interior Minister for several months. And he told me – ‘You do not understand, thugs are also a tool to control the country’.”
Lutsenko said he once threw a crystal wine decanter at Yanukovych in the heat of a dispute. It was during the time Yanukovych was the prime minister in 2006-2007, and Lutsenko was the interior minister.
“The security guard ran into the room, and he (Yanukovych) said: ‘We’ll solve it ourselves. A rumble is a rumble’,” Lutsenko remembers.
Lutsenko claimed that when he was in prison, sentenced to serve four years by Yanukovych’s regime, he was told that Yanukovych said about him: “I would rather stick a rake up my ass than free Lutsenko.”
But eventually Yanukovych pardoned Lutsenko in spring 2013.
On Tymoshenko
Lutsenko said when being in jail he once met with former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was then also brought to Lukianivske pre-trial jail. Lutsenko said he had taught her some tricks.
“I taught (Tymoshenko) how to hand over ‘kites’ (maliava, or messages) when kissing. You wrap a little note in cellophane, kiss and give it to the person,” he said.
He claimed both him and Tymoshenko had cameras in their prison cells by Yanukovych’s order.
“He liked to watch us,” he said.
Lutsenko said he still has good relations with Tymoshenko and doesn’t believe she’s secretly pro-Russian – a message being pushed by some of his and Poroshenko’s allies ahead of the March 31 presidential election with Tymoshenko being the current leader of the polls.
“I firmly deny that she is a Russian agent,” he said.
At the same time, he criticized Tymoshenko for her “crazy populism.”
“Tymoshenko is a bullet flying the trajectory that no one but herself knows. This is dangerous,” he said.
On Kuchma
Lutsenko said he had no evidence that ex-President Leonid Kuchma gave direct orders to kill the journalist Georgiy Gongadze in 2000.
“However, Kuchma created an atmosphere in which the president’s henchmen were ready to please him at all costs,” Lutsenko said.
Gongadze was kidnapped and murdered in September 2000 by several high-ranking law enforcement officers, who were convicted for the murder only in 2013. Soon after the murder, leaked recordings of Kuchma’s phone calls showed the president demanding that “something was done about Gongadze,” who was critical about his regime. The tapes were never taken into official evidence.
Lutsenko said that since Mykola Melnychenko, a Ukrainian intelligence officer who produced and then leaked the tapes, refused to give Ukraine’s law enforcement the original recordings and refused to cooperate with them “it is impossible to legally prosecute Kuchma.”
Lutsenko also believes that Melnychenko cooperated with FSB, the Russian state security bureau, to use his tapes against Kuchma “who dared to turn Ukraine towards NATO.”
“Melnychenko was in Moscow in late 2004, while on an international wanted list. He demanded a ransom for the tapes, receiving 2 million dollars from Ihor Bakay, Kuchma’s man, after which the tapes were officially transferred to Ukraine,” he said.
Speaking about Viktor Medvedchuk, a pro-Russian politician who was Kuchma’s chief of staff, Lutsenko turned to ancient Greek mythology.
“He’s like Charon, in Greek mythology a henchman of Hades, the god of the dead. He transfers the souls from the side of the living to the empire of the dead,” he said.
On EuroMaidan Revolution
Lutsenko said he had evidence of the Russian FSB involvement in the EuroMaidan Revolution.
“People from the FSB came to Kyiv during the 2013-2014 Revolution… (Records show) their mobile phones showed up in the government block. And the wave of violence against protesters coincides with their arrival,” he said.
The investigation materials also confirm that Yanukovych, his Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko, and Oleksandr Yakymenko, ex-head of the SBU state security service, were responsible for the deaths of protesters during the revolution.
“We have a video of every second of the revolution,” Lutsenko said.
He said the investigators also discovered that “there were groups in Kherson supported by Vladimir Konstantinov, head of the Crimean branch of the Party of Regions, and Sergey Aksenov, current head of the annexed Crimea.”
On his performance as prosecutor general
Lutsenko once again said he didn’t like the procedure by which he was appointed as Prosecutor General. The parliament had to change the legislation so that a person without a law degree could obtain this post. But he said his achievements at this post outweigh that violation.
He boasted that since he took the job in May 2016, his office delivered prison sentences for 2,637 “category B” officials, or officials of the level of a deputy governor and lower.
Lutsenko, however, admitted a set of unsolved cases.
For instance, the unsolved murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet is “a very difficult case; even the FBI could not help us.”
In another high-profile murder case, that of the activist Kateryna Gandziuk, Lutsenko says he knows the main suspect and believes the prosecutors have sufficient evidence. Recently, Lutsenko has got under criticism for leaking sensitive information in the Gandziuk case and potentially hurting the investigation.
Lutsenko said he might run for parliament again in October.
“I have a lot to say on economic and social issues,” he said.
