'We're not surprised' say Yushchenko supporters

Supporters of Ukraine’s opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko expressed little surprise today over revelations from a hospital in Austria that he was poisoned.

Yushchenko’s backers, who were still camped out in Kiev’s Independence Square - epicentre of protest over the disputed presidential election run-off – milled around and passed the news by word of mouth. Many shook their heads sadly.

“Everybody knew he was poisoned so we didn’t really need official tests,” said Anatoly Klotchyk, 19, who stood in the sleet outside his tent near the square.

Another activist in the tent camp, Yuriy Krynychenko, 22, said Yushchenko’s symptoms – including a swollen, discoloured face – left no doubt.

“His face spoke for itself,” Krynychenko said. “We knew he was poisoned. The intelligent people will now understand ... what criminals our authorities are.”

MPs such as Ihor Ostash, from Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party, said the results from the hospital in Austria confirmed what Yushchenko’s backers already believed – that Yushchenko’s opponents wanted to assassinate him rather than take the risk he would beat Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych in the presidential election.

“Politicians don’t have simple human sympathy,” he said.

Yanukovych’s former representative on the Central Election Commission, Stepan Havrysh, questioned the statement from Austria, saying that while he felt sorry for Yushchenko, “I’m afraid, two weeks before the vote, it’s all political”.

Havrysh called the issue “a painful theme for Ukrainian democracy”.

A pro-Yanukovych parliamentary commission, led by Volodymyr Sivkovych, investigated the case in October, and concluded that the opposition leader suffered a combination of a viral infection and several other diseases.

Yanukovych’s parliamentary allies have derided Yushchenko, suggesting his illness was caused by bad sushi.

Prosecutors closed the investigation before the second round of voting, saying that they could not determine whether he was poisoned or not.

The doctors’ finding raises the question of whether there will be further criminal investigation.

Markian Bilinskyi, an analyst with the Kiev-based US-Ukraine foundation, said that the opposition camp “will probably wait for the investigation until after elections, until Yushchenko has all the people in right places, provided he wins the re-run”.

Yushchenko, whose face has been left discoloured and swollen by the illness, travelled to the Austrian hospital twice in September for treatment after complaining of excruciating back pain.

Ostash said: “He suffered from such severe pain. He was taking an enormous quantity of pain killers.”

He was released in time to finish campaigning for the October 31 vote. The Supreme Court annulled the results of a November 21 run-off that Yanukovych appeared to have won, saying it was invalidated by vote fraud. The re-run is due to be held on December 26.