Leonid Kuchma

Leonid Danylovych Kuchma (Ukrainian: Леонід Данилович Кучма) (born 9 August 1938) was the second President of independent Ukraine from 19 July 1994, to 23 January 2005. Kuchma took office after winning the 1994 presidential election against his rival, incumbent Leonid Kravchuk. Kuchma won re-election for an additional 5-year term in 1999.

His presidency was surrounded by numerous corruption scandals and the lessening of media freedoms. Corruption accelerated after Kuchma's election in 1994, but in 2000–2001, his power began to weaken in the face of exposures in the media.

Under his watch the Ukrainian economy continued to decline until 1999, whereas growth was recorded since 2000, bringing relative prosperity to some segments of urban residents. During his presidency, Ukrainian-Russian ties began to improve.

Early life

Kuchma was born in a village of Chaikine Chernihiv Oblast. His father Danylo Prokopovych (1901–1942) had died at the field hospital 756 near a village of Novoselytsia during World War II and his mother Paraska Trokhymivna worked at a farm. Kuchma attended the Kostoborove general education school in the neighboring Semenivka Raion. He enrolled to Dnipropetrovsk National University and graduated it in 1960 with a degree in rocket science as an engineer-mechanic. Kuchma is a candidate of technical sciences. The same year he joined the Communist Party of Soviet Union.

After graduation Kuchma worked in a field of aerospace engineering for the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau. At 28 he became a deployed testing director for the Bureau at the Baikonur cosmodrome. There are many suggestions that Kuchma's earlier career was significantly boosted by his marriage to Lyudmila Talalayeva, an adopted daughter of Gennadiy Tumanov, the Yuzhmash chief engineering officer and later the Soviet Minister of Medium Machine Building. At 38 Kuchma became the Communist party chairman at Yuzhmash and a member of the Central Committee of Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine. He was a delegate of the 27th and 28th Congresses of the Communist Party of Soviet Union.

In 1982 Kuchma was appointed the first deputy of general design engineer and from 1986 to 1992 he held position of a general director at the manufacturing complex "Yuzhny Machine-building Plant". From 1990 to 1992 Kuchma was a member of the Ukrainian parliament (1st (12) convocation, Committee on Defence and State Security), and became Prime Minister of Ukraine in 1992.

President (1994–2005)

Kuchma resigned from the position of Prime Minister of Ukraine in September 1993 to successfully run for the presidency in 1994 on a platform to boost the economy by restoring economic relations with Russia and faster pro-market reforms. He was re-elected in 1999 to his second term. During Kuchma's Presidency opposition papers were closed and several journalists died in mysterious circumstances.

Domestic policy

In October 1994, Kuchma announced comprehensive economic reforms, including reduced subsidies, lifting of price controls, lower taxes, privatization of industry and agriculture, and reforms in currency regulation and banking. The parliament approved the plan's main points. The International Monetary Fund promised a $360 million loan to initiate reforms.

He was re-elected in 1999 to his second term. Opponents accused him of involvement in the killing in 2000 of journalist Georgiy Gongadze (see also SBU, "Cassette Scandal", Mykola Mel'nychenko), which he has always denied. Critics also blamed Kuchma for restrictions on press freedom. Kuchma is believed to have played a key role in sacking the Cabinet of Viktor Yushchenko by Verkhovna Rada on 26 April 2001.

Kuchma's Prime Minister from 2002 until early January 2005 was Viktor Yanukovych, after Kuchma dismissed Anatoliy Kinakh, his previous appointee.

Foreign policy

Leonid Kuchma with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Kuchma signed a "Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership" with Russia, and endorsed a round of talks with the CIS. Additionally, he referred to Russian as "an official language". He signed a special partnership agreement with NATO and even raised the possibility of membership of the alliance.

After Kuchma's popularity at home and abroad sank as he became mired in corruption scandals, he turned to Russia as his new ally, saying Ukraine needed a "multivector" foreign policy that balanced eastern and western interests^{[citation needed]}.

Kuchma and the Cassette Scandal

From 1998 to 2000, Kuchma's bodyguard and former KGB employee, Mykola Mel'nychenko, bugged Kuchma's office and turned over the recordings to an opposition member of the Ukraine Parliament. The release of the tapes – dubbed "Kuchmagate" by the Ukrainian press – supposedly revealed Kuchma approving the sale of radar systems to Saddam Hussein and ordering the director of Ukraine's intelligence agency to "take care" of journalist Georgiy Gongadze, who had been following the government’s connections to illegal arms sales, among other allegations.

In September 2000 Gongadze disappeared and his headless corpse was found mutilated on 3 November 2000. On 28 November, opposition politician Oleksandr Moroz publicised the tape recordings implicating Kuchma in Gongadze's murder. In 2005 the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s office instigated criminal proceedings against Kuchma and members of his former administration in connection with the murder of Gongadze. It is rumored, however, that Kuchma had been unofficially granted immunity from prosecution in return for his graceful departure from office in 2005.

Critics of the tape point to the difficulty of Mel'nychenko recording 500 hours of dictaphone tape unaided and undetected, the lack of material evidence of said recording equipment and other doubts which question the authenticity and motive of the release of the tape. Kuchma did acknowledge in 2003 that his voice was indeed one of those on the tapes, but claimed that they had been selectively edited to distort his meaning.

The General Prosecutor of Ukraine's Office canceled its resolution to deny opening of criminal cases against Kuchma and other politicians within the Gongadze-case on 9 October 2010. On 22 March 2011, Ukraine opened an official investigation into the murder of Gongadze and two days later Ukrainian prosecutors charged Kuchma with involvement in the murder. A Ukrainian district court ordered prosecutors to drop criminal charges against Kuchma on 14 December 2011 on grounds that evidence linking him to the murder of Gongadze was insufficient. The court rejected Mel'nychenko's recordings as evidence. Gongadze's widow Myroslava Gongadze lodged an appeal against the ruling one week later.

Kuchma, Putin and transnational crime

One of the taped conversations is about the Saint Petersburg Immobilien und Beteiligungs AG, a company suspected of facilitating Saint Petersburg mobsters, Colombian drug lords, and transcontinental money laundering. Vladimir Putin was one of the company's advisers from 1992 until he became President of Russia in 2000. On the tapes, Kuchma discusses Putin's Europe-wide operation to get into possession of all documents that could be used as evidence.

Role in the election's crisis of 2004

Kuchma's role in the election's crisis of 2004 is not entirely clear. After the second round on 22 November 2004, it appeared that Yanukovych had won the election by fraud, which caused the opposition and independent observers to dispute the results, leading to the Orange Revolution.

Kuchma was urged by Yanukovych and Viktor Medvedchuk (the head of the presidential office) to declare a state of emergency and hold the inauguration of Yanukovych. He denied the request by admittedly stating in a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin that he refused to pass the government into the hands of an alleged Donetsk criminal.^{[citation needed]} Later, Yanukovych publicly accused Kuchma of a betrayal.

Nevertheless, Kuchma refused to officially dismiss Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovychafter the parliament passed a motion of no confidence against the Cabinet on 1 December 2004.

Soon after, Kuchma left the country. He returned to Ukraine in March 2005.

Kuchma stated in October 2009 he would vote for Victor Yanukovych at the Ukrainian presidential election, 2010. Although Kuchma in conversation with United States Ambassador to Ukraine John F. Tefft, in a document dated 2 February 2010 uncovered during the United States diplomatic cables leak, called the voters choice between Yanukovych and Yulia Tymoshenko during the second round of the 2010 presidential election as a choice between “bad and very bad" and praised (the candidate eliminated in the first round of the election) Arseniy Yatsenyuk instead.

As of September 2011 Kuchma believes that Yanukovych was the real winner of the 2004 election.

Politicians closely associated with Kuchma

Aides and advisors that became public figures after or before

• Volodymyr Horbulin – personal friend, aide, later Head of the National Security and Defense Council
• Volodymyr Lytvyn – long-term first aide, later Head of Presidential Administration, then Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada
• Viktor Medvedchuk – business oligarch, then First Vice Speaker of Verkhovna Rada, later Head of Presidential Administration (2001–2004)
• Dmytro Tabachnyk – manager of the Kuchma's first successful election campaign, later Head of Presidential Administration, then Vice Prime Minister; now Minister of Science and Education

Influential statesmen

• Leonid Derkach – personal friend, Head of the Security Service of Ukraine
• Yuri Kravchenko – Minister of Internal Affairs (police chief), committed suicide after the fall of Kuchma's regime
• Oleksandr Omelchenko – long-term governor and mayor of Kiev

Business oligarchs and managers of important state-owned companies

• Ihor Bakai – business oligarch, later head of Naftogas of Ukraine national gas and oil company, then Head of the State Accommodation Department, escaped to Russia after the fall of Kuchma's regime, refusing to ever return permanently
• Heorhiy Kirpa – long-term head of the Ukrzaliznytsia national railways, then Minister of Transportation, committed suicide after the fall of Kuchma's regime
• Viktor Pinchuk – second son-in-law, business oligarch in control of several important media