My Life and Times

December 20, 2004
A Dinner in Ukraine Made for Agatha ChristieBy C. J. CHIVERS
IEV, Ukraine, Dec. 18 - The presidential candidate appeared for a hushed meeting an hour before midnight on Sept. 5, arriving in a black Mercedes-Benz at an exclusive dacha outside the capital here. He was accompanied by a campaign manager. He had left his bodyguards behind.
Waiting for the candidate, Viktor A. Yushchenko, were two leaders of the Security Service of Ukraine, or S.B.U., the country's successor to the K.G.B., including Gen. Ihor P. Smeshko, its chairman. Mr. Yushchenko was leading in the presidential race. He had sought the meeting to discuss, among other things, death threats against him.
The four men drank beer and ate boiled crayfish from a common bowl, as well as a salad made of tomatoes, cucumbers and corn. Later, they selected vodka and meats, and then cognacs for a last drink. When the meeting ended about 2 a.m., Mr. Yushchenko went home to bed and began, his supporters say, to die.
More than three months later, the dinner at the dacha has assumed the character of an Agatha Christie mystery mixed with a cold war spy tale. Mr. Yushchenko, his doctors say, had been poisoned. But how? And by whom?
In interviews with investigators, members of the Yushchenko campaign, toxicologists, a son-in-law of Ukraine's president and three of the four men at the dinner, a picture emerges of confusion and frustration at a criminal investigation laden with complexity.
The day after Mr. Yushchenko's late meal, which a Russian newspaper has called "The Last Supper," he was gravely ill. By the time he had been stabilized and stood in the Ukrainian Parliament on Sept. 21 to accuse the administration of the departing president, Leonid D. Kuchma, of plotting to kill him ("Do not ask who is next," he said. "Every one of us will be the next."), his face was erupting in a grotesque mask of cysts.
He was also racked with pain and weakened by what his doctors in Vienna now call a surreptitious dose of TCDD, the most toxic of the organic compounds known as dioxins, and a contaminant in Agent Orange.
That much is known. But the most popular theory - that Mr. Yushchenko was poisoned at the dacha - contains flaws, strong enough that even his own supporters raise questions about it. And as investigators seek deeper insight into the case, they say a chief obstacle has been Mr. Yushchenko himself, who has used the poisoning almost as a theme in his campaign, but has not fully cooperated with the authorities, even as the trail of his would-be assassin grows cold.
Ukraine is headed for a repeat presidential election on Dec. 26 that is likely to decide the direction of this nation of 48 million as it continues its evolution from a post-Soviet state. But since the political crisis set off by the disputed Nov. 21 election was defused by court and parliamentary decisions to hold a new race, this dinner has overshadowed almost all else.
With a plot that would make Christie proud, much of Ukraine's leadership finds itself in the role of suspect, including General Smeshko, the S.B.U. chairman, who met with a Western reporter for what he described as the first time in a 32-year career.
"The main message is this: Our security service did not do Mr. Yushchenko any harm, and did not try to do him any harm," he said. "This we know for sure. All other versions we will check."
When asked how he reacted to being mentioned publicly as a suspect, General Smeshko, who has two young sons, answered with a question. "How would you like it if your kids asked you, 'Did you do it, Dad?'" he said, locking eyes with a reporter for several long moments.
He added: "It is really painful. We will do everything to know the truth. Basically, this is a case for the dignity of our whole service."
To achieve that, the S.B.U. must navigate the demands of Ukraine's most intense criminal investigation while weathering a popular belief that it may have been involved in the crime. It faces a case in which the principal theories are many, varied and so far impossible to prove wrong. And politics are visible at every turn.
Depending on who is talking, Mr. Yushchenko was poisoned either by his enemies in Mr. Kuchma's government, or by members of his own inner circle. Alternately, he was poisoned by Russia's intelligence services, or by organized crime figures working for any of the above.
Some say the failed assassin was Vladimir N. Satsyuk, General Smeshko's former first deputy and a member of Parliament. He was the host of the dinner, at his private dacha. The food was prepared by his personal cook. He resigned from the S.B.U. last week. (Officially, the cases are unrelated; Mr. Satsyuk resigned after a court ruled he could not hold both an executive position in government and a seat in Parliament.)
Mr. Satsyuk bristles at the subject. "It deals with my honor and the honor of my family," he said. "I am ready to cooperate in order to find the real cause."
Finding the real cause seems unlikely for now. A thorough investigation would require a reconstruction of Mr. Yushchenko's meetings, movements and meals, but Mr. Yushchenko, busy with his campaign, has not been of much help.
Volodymyr Sivkovych, chairman of a parliamentary commission that has reopened its investigation into Mr. Yushchenko's illness, complained that Mr. Yushchenko has declined even to give a proper statement to his commission or to investigators. Nor have Ukrainian investigators received the latest test results from Vienna, which they say are essential evidence.
David V. Zhvaniya, the Yushchenko campaign manager who arranged the dacha meeting and attended it himself, said he and Mr. Yushchenko had refused to appear because they had no faith in the commission.
Mr. Sivkovych, he said, is aligned with Mr. Kuchma or Prime Minister Viktor F. Yanukovich, the rival to Mr. Yushchenko in the presidential race. Mr. Sivkovych called that assertion "lies."
Law enforcement officials also remain frustrated, even after the former general prosecutor, whom Mr. Yushchenko did not trust, was fired this month.
The investigation has been reopened by the new general prosecutor, with support from the S.B.U. But Lt. Gen. Igor V. Drizhchany, who is in charge of the S.B.U.'s legal department, said investigators are still learning of medical assessments through the news media.
"All the political goals have been achieved," he said. "But those who most need the evidence - the people who must catch a murderer - do not have it."
He continued: "I cannot reproach anybody, because I know that the presidential race is taking place. But these are still the facts."
Mr. Yushchenko declined to be interviewed on this subject; through a spokeswoman he said he relied on private medical information because he did not trust the government.
"I wanted the first word to be said by the doctors," he said in a statement. "Only then would come the turn of the investigators."
One senior law enforcement official said that after doctors found dioxin in Mr. Yushchenko's blood, the candidate met informally on Dec. 16 with a newly assigned prosecutor and pledged to cooperate, but only after the election.
Without his cooperation, the case has taken the form of theories, and for the news media the most popular has been the dinner at the dacha. But as details and a greater understanding emerge, that version remains open to question.
First, General Smeshko said, Mr. Yushchenko was ill and in pain before the meeting, and had postponed the dacha visit a day because of exhaustion and a backache. Mr. Zhvaniya confirmed that, but said Mr. Yushchenko has a history of back troubles, and his pain the previous night might not have been related to poison.
A second, more intriguing, complication is that toxicologists say that after a person is contaminated with dioxins, it typically takes three days to two weeks before symptoms appear. Mr. Yushchenko was racked with pain hours after the dacha dinner, which understandably cast initial suspicion on the meal. But the theory was weakened this month when doctors in Vienna announced that the poison was dioxin; his would be the only known case of a dioxin acting that fast.
Dr. Arnold Schecter, a specialist in dioxin contamination at the University of Texas, and co-editor of "Dioxins and Health," a medical reference, said it was possible but highly unlikely that Mr. Yushchenko was poisoned on Sept. 5. "It doesn't make sense, medically," he said. "I would go back 14 days before that."
Mr. Zhvaniya agreed. "It is a stupid theory," he said. "The poisoning could have happened at any moment. He was always touring. He met hundreds of people in hundreds of places. To link it to that evening can be called only paranoia."
Mr. Zhvaniya said that if Mr. Yushchenko had been intentionally poisoned, he believed it probably occurred while he was in the Crimea in late August. He also said the most likely suspect was an organized crime figure, perhaps collaborating with Russia and members of Mr. Kuchma's administration.
Mr. Zhvaniya, a member of Parliament and a commission on organized crime, said he had listened to a taped conversation of a Russian crime figure offering to help a member of the Kuchma administration. "He more than once offered his services in poisoning, or removal," he said.
When pressed for a copy of the audiotape, he declined. "After the election," he said.
Russia's special services scoff at suggestions of their involvement. "I consider it below my dignity to comment on," said Boris N. Labusov, the senior spokesman of the S.V.R., Russia's foreign intelligence service.
Mr. Kuchma's family, which also has said it was not involved, said the dacha theory was foolish. Any government wanting to kill an opponent, the family's line of thinking goes, would not try it at a meeting with government officials. "I think they are not kamikazes," said Viktor M. Pinchuk, Mr. Kuchma's son-in-law and a member of Parliament.
Elements of the popular dacha theory are also inconclusive or wrong.
Among them are suggestions that Mr. Yushchenko was vulnerable because it was the only time his guards did not check his food - a function of questionable value for a poison that is said to be odorless and tasteless, and takes days to manifest itself. The news media have also written, based on a comment by one of Mr. Yushchenko's doctors, that dioxin might have been slipped into his soup. No soup was served at the dacha that night, the three men who dined with Mr. Yushchenko said.
Mr. Zhvaniya also dismissed statements by Mr. Yushchenko's wife, Kateryna Chumechenko, who is an American citizen, that she tasted something medicinal on his lips after he returned from the dacha. "She is a normal woman, and to her with the words K.G.B. and S.B.U. comes an unreasonable reaction, the more so because she was brought up in the United States," he said. (Toxicologists say dioxins are tasteless, although Dr. Schecter pointed out the provenance of this assertion is uncertain; he knew of no one who had ever tried tasting them.)
Still, public attention remains focused on the late-night meal, frustrating investigators who say a larger window of time needs to be examined, and infuriating Mr. Satsyuk, the host, who challenged the opposition leader to accuse him to his face.
"I am ready to meet live on the air with Mr. Yushchenko," he said. "I would like him, looking into my eyes, to say that he was poisoned at my dacha. I can do this at any press conference at any time."
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