Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on Thursday accused the godfather of one of his children and a member of his own party of involvement in his near-fatal poisoning, a stunning twist to one of post-Soviet Ukraine’s most notorious scandals.
Yushchenko did not provide evidence for his claim that David Zhvania participated in administering him a massive dose of dioxin that sickened him and left his face badly scarred.
But Yushchenko’s statement raised the stakes in the nearly four-year-old probe of the poisoning, which so far has failed to yield tangible results and damaged the president’s image as a strong leader committed to the rule of law.
It also underlined the internecine nature of Ukrainian politics. Zhvania is a member of parliament representing the pro-presidential Our Ukraine-Self Defense bloc.
Yushchenko, while campaigning for the presidency, fell gravely ill after attending a dinner in September 2004 with Zhvania, which was hosted by two top security officials. Doctors in a respected Austrian clinic diagnosed his illness as severe dioxin poisoning.
This summer, Zhvania angered Yushchenko by claiming that the president suffered only from food poisoning and that his staff invented a politically motivated attack to boost his popularity during the closely fought presidential campaign.
Asked on Thursday at a news conference whether he thought Zhvania took part in the poisoning, Yushchenko answered: “I think yes, to put it mildly.”
Zhvania stood firm on Thursday, reiterating that Yushchenko’s poisoning has yet to be proved.
Yushchenko’s statement aas “absolutely ill-considered and irresponsible,” Zhvania said, adding that it shows his disregard for the rule of law.
“Such actions of V Yushchenko don’t disgrace him personally as much as they humiliate Ukraine in front of the international community,” Zhvania said in a statement.
The probe into the mysterious poisoning has been under way for almost four years, but prosecutors have failed to identify a single suspect. Yushchenko has consistently said he knew who was responsible for the poisoning but did not want to name them while an investigation continued.
He has accused Moscow of stalling the investigation by refusing to extradite key figures in the case, including one of the officials who hosted the dinner, and to provide Russian-made dioxin for testing.
Many in Ukraine point the finger at the Kremlin because Yushchenko was running against a Kremlin-backed candidate and because Russia is one of the few countries that produces the dioxin of the formula found in Yushchenko’s body.
But the failure of government investigators to solve the poisoning or at least name suspects has fueled speculation that Yushchenko does not want the truth to be made public. Some say he may be reluctant to spoil ties with Russia, on which Ukraine depends for energy; others say his power could be weakened by revealing that allies were involved.
WAKE-UP CALL: Firms in the private sector were not taking basic precautions, despite the cyberthreats from China and Russia, a US cybersecurity official said A ninth US telecom firm has been confirmed to have been hacked as part of a sprawling Chinese espionage campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and telephone conversations of an unknown number of Americans, a top White House official said on Friday. Officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden this month said that at least eight telecommunications companies, as well as dozens of nations, had been affected by the Chinese hacking blitz known as Salt Typhoon. US Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technologies Anne Neuberger on Friday told reporters that a ninth victim
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
MISSING: Prosecutors urged the company to move workers out of poor living conditions to hotels, but residents said many workers had already left the town Brazil has stopped issuing temporary work visas for BYD, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday, in the wake of accusations that some workers at a site owned by the Chinese electric vehicle producer had been victims of human trafficking. The announcement came days after labor authorities said they found 163 Chinese workers who had been brought to Brazil irregularly in “slavery-like” conditions at the BYD factory construction site in the northeastern state of Bahia. The workers were employed by contractor Jinjiang Group, which has denied any wrongdoing. Later, the authorities also said the workers were victims of human trafficking,
RSS