Intrigue deepens

last updated 8 January 2015

Kiev, Ukraine

Former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma said this week that he would gladly answer questions about the 2000 murder of a journalist who criticized him. Kuchma’s former interior minister, Yuri Kravchenko, shot himself last week on the day he was to testify in the case. One of Kuchma’s former bodyguards released an audiotape of a conversation between Kuchma and Kravchenko that, if authentic, implicates both in the killing. Kravchenko left a suicide note maintaining his innocence. “I have become a victim of political intrigues by President Kuchma and his entourage,” he wrote. “I am leaving you with a clear conscience.” Kuchma said the tape must have been doctored by someone trying to frame him. “This is all a game,” he said.