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Leonid Kuchma   Letter 33   13-Jan-2004   Oleh Yeltsov shot with rubber bullets
  Leonid Kuchma Pity Leonid Kuchma, George-Soros-installed President of Ukraine, who has turned his life into a nightmare.
Oleh Yeltsov, editor of the "Ukraina Kriminalnaya" website which reports on crime and corruption in government and the private sector in Ukraine, was attacked in Kyiv on 12 January by an unknown assailant who fired rubber bullets at him. � RFE/RL

          13 January 2004


Leonid Kuchma, President
vul. Bankivska 11
Kyiv, 252005
Ukraine


Leonid Kuchma:

I read of the 12-Jan-2004 attack on Criminal Ukraine editor Oleh Yeltsov:

UKRAINIAN INTERNET JOURNALIST SHOT WITH RUBBER BULLETS

Oleh Yeltsov, editor of the "Ukraina Kriminalnaya" website (http://www.cripo.com.ua), which reports on crime and corruption in government and the private sector in Ukraine, was attacked in Kyiv on 12 January by an unknown assailant who fired rubber bullets at him, Interfax reported.  Yeltsov was slightly injured in the attack, but his injuries did not require hospitalization.  Yeltsov was attacked in July by two unidentified men who ambushed him with a stun gun and a metal pipe.  JM
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Newsline, 13-Jan-2004 www.rferl.org/newsline/3-cee.asp

And on the Criminal Ukraine web site, I read a parallel account in Russian of this same attack:

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Ukraina Kriminalnaya, 13-Jan-2004 www.cripo.com.ua/?sect_id=10&aid=1752

In view of the twenty murders of journalists in Ukraine � not a single one solved � this assault on Ihor Yeltsov can be taken neither as a prank nor as the worst that is in store for him.  It must be taken as a grim warning to stop publishing, or next time the bullets won't be rubber.

However, the effort at suppression backfires.  Courageous journalists like Yeltsov not only continue to write, but spring up in increasing numbers, and it is the gangsters and thugs who tremble.  The gangsters who ordered the Yeltsov assault now have one more reason to fear that the thugs who carried it out might defect to the West, and might win immunity for themselves by testifying against the gangsters; and the thugs who carried out the assault on Yeltsov, in turn, now have one more reason to fear that the gangsters will murder them for the sin of knowing too much.  The only ones more fearful than the tyrannized Ukrainian people, it seems, are the gangsters and the thugs who do the tyrannizing.  Their position deteriorates with each new desperate measure.  Their lives are transformed into living nightmares.  Their minds are gripped with a single preoccupation � the trials!  When will the trials begin?  How much evidence have the prosecutors been able to gather?  Which of my friends will turn against me in order to save himself?  Will I be jailed for life?  Is there any possibility of a death sentence?  What heavy punishment awaits my heavy sins?

If these gangsters and thugs did not have the minds of children, they would have foreseen that bad choices lead to bad ends, and would have followed more virtuous paths.  Their falling into the classic trap of trying to wash away old blood with new is a living testament to the adage that A tyrant is but a child grown strong.




Lubomyr Prytulak

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