Viktor Yushchenko Gets Cossacks’ Horse
// While Yulia Tymoshenko has become “bereginya”
Symbols of power
Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko and prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko visited Zaporozhye on Saturday. They spent the day sight-seeing and talking to the Ukrainian Cossacks and leadership of the region. They both returned to Kyiv with some acquisition: Viktor Yushchenko received a horse as a gift, while Yulia Tymoshenko was proclaimed “bereginya”, a female guardian of Ukraine.
Viktor Yushchenko’s wife Ekaterina Chumachenko visited Zaporozhye before his husband on June 1. Mrs Chumachenko took part in the festivities dedicated to the International Children’s Day. She met local businessmen and reminded them of the fact that the public expected from them not only the economic achievement, but also participation in tackling social issues.
A few days later, it was prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, not Mrs Chumachenko, who accompanied Viktor Yushchenko on his trip to Zaporozhye. The president and the prime minister’s last joint visit was to Kanev, on May 22 when they and Vladimir Litvin, speaker of Supreme Rada, came to see the tomb of Taras Shevchenko. Viktor Yushchenko stated during that visit that the forces he led would run the 2006 parliamentary elections together.
Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko set off to the isle of Khortitsa on Saturday morning to join the constituent session of the Coordinating Rada of the Ukrainian Cossacks. Mr. Yushchenko addressed 5,000 Ukrainian Cossacks saying he had signed a decree on the creation of the Council of the Ukrainian Cossacks, a deliberative body under the Ukrainian president. The president would personally head the council, while the functions of the secretary would be performed by Stanislav Arzhevitin, the elected former paymaster general of the Cossacks. Arzhevitin, CEO of Azhio Bank, would become the presidential advisor on the Cossacks affairs. As a sign of their gratitude, the Cossacks handed Viktor Yushchenko a “universal” (a solemn deed) that recognized him hetman of Ukraine. The representatives of the Crimean Cossacks Union gave the President a horse keeping the old tradition. Prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko was named “bereginya” (female guardian of Ukraine) by the Cossacks.
Relations between Viktor Yushchenko and the Ukrainian Cossacks were not so cloudless before. A year ago, May 22, 2004, Viktor Yushchenko was expelled from the Ukrainian Cossacks’ organization he had belonged to since his premiership on the grounds of “the systematic non-payment of member dues” and was “denuded of the Cossacks military rank of esaul-general of the Ukrainian Cossacks and all decorations”. It was at that time that the Cossacks expressed their “wide support” of Viktor Yanukovich who also ran for presidency. January 22, 2005, a day before the inauguration of the new Ukrainian president, the Cossacks, however, proclaimed Yushchenko hetman. Leonid Kuchma, who was proclaimed hetman in 2000, was never stripped of the hetman mace, though.
After the conversation with the Cossacks, the president and the prime minister went to meet the leaders of the region, business circles and intellectuals. Mr. Yushchenko broached in his speech the problems of small and medium-size business, the agro industrial complex and ecology. He also made it clear that he enjoyed his role of hetman, which was very flattering for him to get. He read out extracts from the letters of the businessmen who rallied at the Zaporozhye airport and told Zaporozhye mayor Evgeny Kartashev: “Authorities should be servants of their citizens, while you’re making a criminal authority of yourself!”
The Ukrainian president and the prime minister came back to Kyiv Saturday night.
&Viktor Yanukovich to Visit Investigators Again
Viktor Yanukovich, former Ukrainian prime minister, now leader of the opposition Party of Regions was summoned again for a questioning at the Ukrainian Interior Ministry’s Organized Crime Chief Department.
The questioning is to begin today at 12 am, local time (1 pm, Moscow time), head of the PR department of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry Konstantin Stogny said. This is the third time that the investigators try to question ex-premier on the criminal case initiated in relation to $1 million transferred last summer by Yanukovich’s government from state coffers to buy special equipment for the airport in Donetsk.
Viktor Yanukovich was first summoned to the prosecutors on May 30, but he did not come saying he had not received summons. The second try was taken on June 2, but the former premier did not turn up either. He never explained his absence. Therefore this time the summons was handed to his lawyer and also forwarded to the quarters of the Party of Regions.
The Prosecutor General’s Office already questioned Viktor Yanukovich early May. But then he was asked to come as a witness to the case of Boris Kolesnikov, head of Donetsky Regional Council, who was suspected of extortion of the stocks of Bely Lebedy shopping centre in Donetsk.
Alexander Vinogradov, Kyiv
All the Article in Russian as of June 06, 2005
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