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.
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