From an old piece on Kravchenko - Ukrainska Pravda, Dec. 4, 2000 - nearly two and a half months since Gongadze's disappearance, about a month since the discovery of the headless body, and slightly over a week since the tape scandal broke out:

[...] here's Kravchenko's last answer to the question as to whether he would consider himself innocent in 5-10 years, looking back at and evaluating today's events.

Perhaps, things look different from afar; history is being written by analyzing political and economic events. But with conscience - there's always a dialogue. Because there are inner convictions, and there are also objective conditions affecting the country's and the society's development. There is the Law, which does not correspond to the norms that we call conscience. And in ten years, we'll be returning to these extreme events in our thoughts, and we'll be evaluating them. But those are inner evaluations. The external ones are those of the people. The people, the public, they see the actions, listen to various information, have their own likes and dislikes. Some people have a solid trust in what's being said, others have doubts, still others would brush it all aside as nonsense. But in the end, everything boils down to the fact that there exist the norms of the Law.

Understand it whichever way you like. The only thing clear is that Kravchenko was expecting the exposure, and in ten years he'll be justifying his actions by the law. And drowning his conscience in vodka...

Kravchenko's note, according to Yuri Lutsenko, minister of internal affairs:

My dear ones. I'm not guilty of anything. Forgive me. I've fallen victim to political intrigues of President Kuchma and his circle. I'm leaving you with a clear conscience. Farewell.

Ukrainska Pravda is in its weekend mode - hence, these two stupid graphics that accompany the story, both obviously unrelated to the actual note:

A SILLY UPDATE: the first graphic is now gone, the second one remains.

According to Gazeta.ru, Kuchma's on his way to Kyiv, and Turchynov, head of the SBU, is ready to either detain him or provide him with guards, depending on the orders from the Prosecutor General.

From Our Man in Panama
by John Dinges

Random House
February 24, 1990

***


Hugo Spadafora Franco
(1940 - 1985)

***

pp. 216-219:

On Saturday morning, September 14, a young Costa Rican peasant, Franklin Vargas, walked across a small wooden bridge near his home just a few hundred yards north of the Panamanian border. He was going after some chickens that had strayed. The locale was known as Laurel de Corredores - a few farmhouses along a dirt road that crossed unrestricted into Panama. Glancing over the side of the bridge, Vargas saw two legs sticking out of the shallow water. The rest of the body was submerged and hidden inside an olive green canvas bag.

The rural police arrived about an hour later and pulled out the body of a tall white man. The man's head had been hacked off. They slogged through the weeds and water and searched the road. Two freshly broken teeth were found, but no head. The bag tied around the body bore the legend "Domestic: U.S. Mail, J 460 1." In the middle of the victim's back, someone had scratched "F-8."

Hugo Spadafora should have arrived by bus in Panama City on Friday night, and when he didn't his father, Carmelo, began to look for him. Ari Spadafora arrived by plane from Costa Rica the next morning. She said that Hugo had left home at eight A.M. on Friday, on his normal route to Panama: commuter plane to a town near the border, taxi to the border, walk across the border to avoid Costa Rican authorities, catch a bus to David and then to Panama City. On Sunday, Ari got some chilling news. Three friends of Hugo's, Panamanian brigadistas who had fought with Spadafora against Somoza and had recently rejoined him to fight with the Miskitos, said they were in a bus going from Panama to Costa Rica and had seen Spadafora taken off a bus at a PDF border post several miles inside Panama on Friday just after noon. Ari and Carmelo quickly obtained a writ of habeas corpus to determine where he was being held.

On Monday, Spadafora's friend Risa Morales went to the San Jose morgue and identified the headless body found near the border as that of Hugo Spadafora. He recognized an old scar on Spadafora's leg. About the same time, Costa Rican police investigators received a copy of Spadafora's fingerprints from Panama and verified that the body was Spadafora's.

Tuesday's La Prensa carried the headline THEY EXECUTED SPADAFORA. Carmelo Spadafora, in a statement, said, "For me and for all our relatives and friends, the macabre murder of Dr. Hugo Spadafora Franco was planned and coldly executed by the chief of G2, Colonel Julio Ow Young, carrying out the orders of the Comandante of the National Guard, General Manuel A. Noriega."

[...]

The grieving face of Spadafora's septuagenarian father on television and in the newspapers had special impact.

[...]

This was not merely hysterical opposition rhetoric. Spadafora's murder was a blow that at once destroyed the already tattered myth of political reconciliation in the tradition of Torrijos and destroyed Panama's unique status as an exception to the violence convulsing Central America.

Thousands of people crowded the runway of Paitilla Airport to receive Spadafora's body when it arrived by small plane from Costa Rica. Although no soldiers were in evidence, the atmosphere was angry.

[...]

The chants were simple demands for "justicia" and emotional proclamations of "presente" whenever someone intoned Hugo's name. The signs scattered throughout the crowd were homemade, with no unified message. In fact, there was little indication of any formal organization, much less orchestration, of the event. Panama was unpracticed in the morbid politics of death that had become second nature to her neighbors - El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras - where murder and disappearance were more regular than elections and funerals were a political ritual. In Panama, the last suspected political assassination had occurred more than ten years before. Now, when some in the crowd shouted "Noriega, Asesino" it was as if they were borrowing some other country's vocabulary.

A decapitation; a missing head; a victim so visible, so protected by reputation and past political ties; an atrocity so black it defied even the logic of terrorism: This must be someplace else, people in the crowd said. This can't be happening in Panama.

pp. 229-230:

But the impact of the crime could not be covered up, no matter how embellished with official stamps and quasi-scientific procedures. Spadafora in life had been considered a gadfly, admired for his Quixotic crusades and guerrilla exploits, but hardly taken seriously as a force for political change. In death he came to symbolize the struggle for justice of a people grown so used to deals and compromise that they had to rediscover their own sense of moral outrage. The demand to find and punish those responsible for the murder created a new kind of opposition in Panama, an opposition that was pure and personal, targeted on Manuel Antonio Noriega and untainted by the pettiness of rabiblanco nostalgia for the old days of unchallenged rule by the elite.

It was of unmistakable significance that the first formidable challenge to Noriega's rule developed around a dead hero of Torrijismo, not out of the traditional opposition. When Spadafora was buried, eighty thousand people overwhelmed the streets of provincial Chitre to attend the funeral. While no one rallied to protest the overthrow of Barletta, hundreds and sometimes thousands gathered regularly to keep alive the demand for an honest investigation of Spadafora's death.

According to Korrespondent.net (via Channel 1+1), forensic experts who've had a look at Kravchenko's body consider each of the two wounds potentially lethal. One bullet entered through the chin and came out somewhere around the nose; the other one entered through the temple and came out at the back of the head.

With wounds like these, the victim would hardly be able to move.

***

Some unnamed sources told Ukrainska Pravda that in his note Kravchenko did not admit responsibility for Gongadze's murder. He called himself "a victim of Kuchma's political adventurism" - or something like that.

According to Gazeta.ru (via Interfax), Kravchenko "justified his [suicide] by his desire to protect his family and people close to him from harassment."

***

According to Korrespondent.net (via Channel 1+1), Kuchma is returning to Ukraine March 5 (today/tomorrow). He intends to testify at the Prosecutor General's office.

Kuchma said:

"...not many people would've been able to bear the crazy pressure [Kravchenko had been subjected to lately]. [...] I knew him well. He would've never given that criminal order [to kill Gongadze].

Petro Kolyada, deputy minister of internal affairs, says there were two shots (via Ukrainska Pravda):

"This is what I've been told by an officer on duty - that there'd been two shots," Kolyada told the journalists.

He also said there were two wounds on Kravchenko's body.

"They say there were two wounds," Kolyada said. At the same time, he noted that he hadn't been at the place of [the alleged suicide], but that the deputy prosecutor general Victor Shokin had. That's why Kolyada cannot explain how the body of someone who committed a suicide could have two wounds.

"There are lethal and non-lethal wounds," said Kolyada.

***

This all reminds me of the time in August, when the Russian law enforcement spent three days or so pretending they could not determine that the two planes went down almost simultaneously as a result of terrorist attacks.

Mikhail Brodsky said today (via Gazeta.ru):

Judging by Melnychenko's recordings - and I completely believe in these recordings' authenticity - Volodymyr Lytvyn [parliamentary speaker] is the only one left to have witnessed the process of ordering and organizing Gongadze's murder. [...] His access to this information may present a significant problem to those who ordered the murder. That's why we have all the reasons to fear for his life.

Volodymyr Lytvyn said yesterday (via Korrespondent.net):

If I were feeling responsible [for Gongadze's murder] - I would no longer be in Ukraine.

Gazeta.ru also reports that Kuchma is planning to return to Ukraine on Sunday, March 6. He is currently in the Czech Republic.

When asked if there's something for Kuchma to fear now, transportation minister Yevhen Chervonenko replied (via Ukrainska Pravda):

Maybe there is.

Chervonenko also said this:

I know him [Kuchma] well enough. What he's living through now is life at his own funeral.

[...] People close enough to Kuchma are leaving life with the last argument - a gun.

[...] I used to warn Kuchma - why was he building this system?

Gazeta.ru reports that, according to RIA Novosti via Channel 5, two bullet holes have been found on Kravchenko's body. Does it mean that one bullet went all the way through, or that two bullets were fired? The law enforcement guys haven't yet confirmed any of this info, though.

According to Korrespondent.net, Kravchenko shot himself in the temple.

Kravchenko did like tennis - though who doesn't? (Even Petro Poroshenko plays sometimes, when he's not too busy.)

Here's part of the Feb. 27 Ukrainska Pravda piece, which mentions that last Kravchenko sighting, at the Crimea Regions Party branch conference in Simferopol:

[Kravchenko] refused to discuss with the local journalists the civilian appointments to the new government's "power" ministries' posts. He did point out that that he was currently more interested in tennis and football, because he was on vacation.

It remained unclear what exactly he was doing at the meeting of the Regions Party.

According to Gazeta.ru, Omelchenko spoke about Kravchenko's "psychological state" (see the previous entry) as recently as Wednesday, the day the Prosecutor General's office sent him a summons note for today's interrogation.

Why they couldn't question him on Thursday isn't clear. It looks like Prosecutor General Piskun was postponing Kravchenko's meeting with the investigators in every way possible, perhaps in an attempt to achieve the very result that we've got now.

So he (or they) waited till the very last moment: Ukrainska Pravda, via Channel 5, reports that Kravchenko died around 7:45 am today...

Here's from an updated boom! entry from Abdymok:

parliament deputy hryihory omelchenko, who chairs the ad hoc rada committee investigating the murder of georgy gongadze and other crimes, on july 1, 2004 urged that kravchenko be detained by law-enforcement authorities for his own protection.

"the measure could save his life. i know kravchenko's psychological state now. his life is in danger: he could have a breakdown and commit suicide, or could be murdered, or they could murder him and make it look like a suicide, or he could simply vanish," omelchenko said.

Abdymok also has Kravchenko's bio in English. From what I know, Kravchenko was a tennis fan, seen a couple times at private celebrations of members of Ukraine's tennis "beau monde." But that's not too relevant.

Just heard on RTR 11 am news that Kravchenko, former internal affairs minister, has been found dead at his dacha. No details were given, but Abdymok has already posted a note on it (at 8:06 am Kyiv time):

boom!

former minister of internal affairs yuri kravchenko was reportedly (interfax-ukraine) found dead at his dacha in koncha zaspe this morning.

sbu chief oleksandr turchinov has arrived on the scene with investigators.

kravchenko was to have been deposed this morning at 10:00 a.m. by the prosecutor general's office about the murder of journalist georgy gongadze.

Several times during the Orange Revolution, I saw the words "Skinheads for Yushchenko" written in orange on the walls of Khreshchatyk buildings. My friend and I even tried to call Yushchenko's headquarters once, but it was busy for too long and we gave up. I didn't think the slogans, no matter how disgusting, were capable of tarnishing Yushchenko's reputation in any way (even though they looked like deliberate attempts to) - they were as harmless politically as announcing that in the crowd of a few hundred thousand wonderful people there was a bunch of assholes who happened to support Yushchenko, not Yanukovych. Of course, there were assholes at Maidan, and maybe some of them were skinheads - without it, the whole thing would've looked artificial.

But I felt a lot more uncomfortable seeing the skinheads' slogans in Kyiv because they reminded me of St. Petersburg. There, every once in while, a crowd of drunk animals would kill someone looking non-Slavic: a Vietnamese foreign student, an Azeri gastarbeiter, a 9-year-old Tajik girl. The girl was killed almost across the street from where we lived - and I'm still wondering what you have to do to your son for him to go out, get drunk, stab a black-haired child to death and then continue considering himself a man, not a little stinking piece of shit. And all the swastikas on the walls. And Hitler's birthday - I learned the date here in Moscow, not in St. Pete, because the police used to cordon off Moscow's center on April 20, to prevent the skins from making a really unignorable mess of a celebration.

In Kyiv, I was so proud of our young people - they made it all happen, and not a single person was killed. Not a single one. Amazing. Impossible to imagine something like this happening in Russia.

But it doesn't mean we don't have our own shit, including skinheads. And it's so sad.

Here's an English-language account of what happened to a black USAID employee yesterday, in Kyiv (from the Washington Times, via Registan.net):

Skinhead attack

A black American diplomat yesterday said he was severely beaten by a white thugs in the Ukrainian capital in an unusual racial attack in a country still celebrating its newly won democratic freedoms.

Robert Simmons, who serves with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Uzbekistan, said the attack occurred Saturday night, as he was walking along a street with friends during a visit to Kiev. He told the Associated Press that he was beaten by more than a dozen men who had shaved heads and wore combat boots.

"I was attacked because I am African American. They did not touch my friends who were there with me, but were not black," he told an AP reporter in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.

"They beat me in turns. It looked like training for them."

Police arrived after the attack by the skinheads, and the U.S. Embassy in Kiev said it will insist that the Ukrainian authorities find the assailants.

A spokeswoman for the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington said such attacks are rare.

"It is not common in Ukraine. We have a very friendly atmosphere for all foreign nationals," said Iryna Bezverkha.

Ukrainians are working hard to improve their country's government and human rights record after the December pro-democracy protests led to the election of reformist President Viktor Yushchenko.

In November, the U.S. Embassy warned of "racially motivated incidents against non-Caucasian foreigners, including American citizens of African and Asian descent."

The embassy also said that blacks and Asians "may be subject to various types of harassment, such as being stopped on the street by both civilians and law enforcement officials."

According to Gazeta.ru, Yushchenko said they were currently "collecting evidence scattered around in ponds, little rivers and pits."

As of today, Gongadze's head hasn't been found yet, said Yushchenko.

***

Me, I'm reading about Srebrenica right now, and though it's not making me feel less terrible about Gongadze, my perspective is somewhat different from what it could have been a while ago.

What a day...

Council for Security and Defense has approved the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Iraq (via Ukrainska Pravda, in Ukrainian).

Accorring to foreign affairs minister Borys Tarasyuk, the date for beginning of the withdrawal has been set, but it will be announced later, by Petro Poroshenko, the Council's secretary.

Tarasyuk said:

We've discussed not just the beginning of the withdrawal of the troops, but also the process of shifting from the military phase into that of reconstruction and build-up of non-military personnel.

[...]

The president has announced this a long time ago, and besides, there are two parliamentary decisions on it.

According to Ukrainska Pravda, Yushchenko said after the meeting that of the approximately 1,650 Ukrainian troops currently based in Iraq, 150 would leave in March, 530 more in May, and by October all would have withdrawn.