Re: How Top Spies in Ukraine Changed the Nation's Path – Part 2
«Pas de deux»
> Published: January 17, 2005
> James Hill for The New York Times
> Ukraine's Inner Battle
> C.J. Chivers reports on a hidden factor within the Orange Revolution.
part 2
Now he wanted another talk. The group met in a tiny room, behind a drawn
yellow curtain, and ate fruit. Present were General Sarnatskyi, General
Smeshko and General Romanchenko, as well as Mr. Yushchenko, Mr. Ribachuk
and another Yushchenko ally.
Two agreements were struck, both sides say.
Mr. Yushchenko requested more security for his campaign. General Smeshko
agreed to provide him eight specialists from the elite Alpha
counterterrorism unit - a highly unusual step - and to arrange former
S.B.U. members to guard the campaign.
Then the group also agreed that the S.B.U. must publicly show that it
was on the side of the law, not a candidate - an implicit message the
agency was unwilling to abuse power for the premier.
As the meeting ended, Mr. Yushchenko, who is an amateur artist, gave
General Smeshko one of his landscape paintings. The spy chief and the
opposition leader embraced.
Back at the S.B.U. headquarters, General Smeshko and the siloviki
decided that to send a signal to the public they would send officers to
read a statement to the protesters. Mr. Yushchenko appeared the next
night, Nov. 25, with five members of S.B.U.
Their statement was indirectly but clearly pro-opposition. It said
concerns about the election were valid, and addressed the Supreme Court,
which had just announced that it would review complaints of electoral
fraud. The officers urged the judges to work objectively.
Then they addressed police officers and soldiers. "Do not forget that
you are called to serve the people," their statement said. "The S.B.U.
considers its main assignment is to protect the people, no matter the
source of the threat. Be with us!"
It was a rare moment for officers used to anonymity and reflected how
deeply opposition sentiments had reached into Ukrainian society. In
interviews, two officers from the stage, Lt. Gen. Oleksander
Skibinetsky, a reservist, and Lt. Gen. Oleksander Skipalsky, who is
retired, were asked if their families influenced their decisions.
"Both of our wives were in the square," General Skibinetsky said.
General Skipalsky said: "My wife. And my daughter, too."
The signal seemed to have had its desired effect. The next morning,
cadets from the Interior Ministry's academy joined the opposition,
marching to the barricades to try to persuade the officers on duty to
join them. A few carried flowers.
The Battle for Kuchma
The state was leaking power. The next day, Nov. 27, Mr. Kuchma summoned
General Smeshko to a meeting at Koncha Zaspa, a government sanitarium
outside Kiev.
In a conference room were Mr. Yanukovich and politicians from eastern
regions supporting him, with the leader of the Interior Ministry, or
M.V.D., Mykola Bilokon, one of Mr. Kuchma's loyalists, who made no
secret of his support for the premier.
Mr. Yanukovich confronted Mr. Kuchma, asking if he was betraying them,
four people in the meeting said. Then came demands: schedule an
inauguration, declare a state of emergency, unblock government
buildings.
Mr. Kuchma icily addressed his former protégé. "You have become very
brave, Viktor Feyodovich, to speak to me in this manner," he said,
according to Mr. Bilokon and General Smeshko. "It would be best for you
to show this bravery on Independence Square."
General Smeshko intervened to offer the S.B.U.'s assessment of the
situation, warning the premier that few of Ukraine's troops, if ordered,
would fight the people. He also said that even if soldiers followed an
order, a crackdown would not succeed because demonstrators would resist.
Then he challenged Mr. Yanukovich.
"Viktor Feyodovich, if you are ready for a state of emergency, you can
give this order," he said. "Here is Bilokon," he continued. "The head of
the M.V.D. You will be giving him, as chairman of the government, a
written order to unblock the buildings? You will do this?"
Mr. Yanukovich was silent. General Smeshko waited. "You have answered,"
he continued, according to people in the meeting. "You will not do it.
Let us not speak nonsense. There is no sense in using force."
Mr. Kuchma left the room to take a phone call, then returned with a
state television crew. Mr. Yanukovich slammed down his pen and left.
The government's position was set: there would be no martial law. It was
formalized the next day, on Nov. 28, when the National Security and
Defense Council voted to solve the crisis through peaceful means.
"This was the key decision," Mr. Kuchma later said. "I realized what it
meant to de-block government building by force in these conditions. It
could not be done without bloodshed."
Fighting a Crackdown
Although there seemed to be a consensus at the council, a crackdown
remained possible, either as a response to opposition provocation, or by
secret, unexpressed agenda.
Emotions had been rising and falling in Kiev, and within hours of the
council meeting, they surged again when Ms. Tymoshenko, a Yushchenko
ally, warned demonstrators that there would be an effort to unblock the
government buildings. She urged more people to defend them.
General Popkov, the commander of interior troops, said he was notified
of Ms. Tymoshenko's words and the crowd's restlessness, and ordered the
alarm. The mobilization began.
Precisely what followed, and why, remains unclear, as does who gave the
order, and by what means. General Popkov insists that he alone was
engaged in a calculated bluff, and thus made certain his signal would be
instantly seen.
Holding up his mobile phone, he said, "I deliberately gave the order on
this phone, which is bugged."
Whether General Popkov's phone was bugged is not publicly known. But
General Romanchenko said his agents in the interior units watched the
preparations; simultaneously, S.B.U officers said, their agents in the
Interior Ministry's communications center heard radio traffic about
preparations to march. Bedlam, and battles of nerves, ensued.
Reports of the alarm were relayed to the S.B.U. command, which notified
the opposition, its officers on Independence Square, and then the
American Embassy.
The opposition called the American ambassador John E. Herbst, who called
Viktor Pinchuk, Mr. Kuchma's son-in-law, to find out what was happening,
Mr. Pinchuk said.
Mr. Pinchuk said he called Viktor Medvedchuk, chief of Mr. Kuchma's
administration, who called the interior minister at home. Mr. Bilokon
said he did not know what was happening. "I was really worried," Mr.
Bilokon said, in an interview. "How, without my knowledge, was this
order given?"
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell soon telephoned Mr. Kuchma, who did
not take the call.
Outside, the S.B.U. was mobilizing. Several hundred intelligence
officers were already among the protesters, S.B.U officials say. Some
were pretending to be demonstrators themselves. Concealed surveillance
teams were videotaping the crowd. Snipers peered down from roofs.
Counterterrorism teams huddled in nearby apartments and unmarked trucks.
Groups in vehicles roamed the roads to Kiev, trying to determine the
direction of the troops' advance.
Among the protesters' tents, an S.B.U. colonel who had spent the week as
a liaison to the demonstration organizers alerted the organizers that
troops were on their way.
His next mission was to meet the troops as they drew near, he said, to
warn their officers that a crackdown without written orders was illegal.
He said he also planned to warn them that the S.B.U. had surveillance
units watching Kiev, and all actions would be videotaped for use as
evidence later.
The fear, he said, was intense. Some intelligence officers thought of
China's crushing of the pro-democracy protesters in 1989 in Beijing.
Others thought of the Romanian revolution in 1989, when, after troops
fired on demonstrators, the people fought back, eventually capturing and
killing President Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife.
"We could not believe it could occur to somebody to draw the first drop
of blood, which would have been the detonator of a big explosion," said
the colonel, a deputy chief of Ukraine's counterterrorism forces, who by
Ukrainian law is forbidden to have his name published. "It could unleash
a civil war in our country. Absolutely, sincerely, we were prepared to
do everything in our power to stop it."
While all sides pressed for information and advantage, a group of the
siloviki and Ms. Tymoshenko met at the headquarters of the military
intelligence service, the G.U.R.
Among them were Mr. Galaka, the G.U.R. chief, General Drizhchany,
Colonel Kondratyuk and General Romanchenko, who said he called the
S.B.U. headquarters for instructions. "Chairman Smeshko told me to call
General Popkov, and find out why the alert had been called," he said.
An extraordinary exchange followed. The counterintelligence chief called
the troop commander, whom he had known for years, and asked what were
the grounds for the alert. "He said it was his decision," General
Romanchenko said. "I said to General Popkov that he had to have a
written order to raise troops on full alert, and since he did not have
this order he would have to call back the troops."
Simultaneously, from his office at S.B.U. headquarters, General Smeshko
called Mr. Bilokon, who sought assurances the opposition would not seize
buildings, both men said. General Smeshko called him back and gave that
assurance, shifting responsibility to himself if buildings were overrun.
Other officers said that after about an hour, Col. Gen. Oleksander
Petruk, the army chief of staff, arrived at the military intelligence
service's office. The intelligence officer pressed him for help. He said
the army would not deploy inside Ukraine. "He said it would not be
done," Colonel Kondratyuk said. General Petruk's staff did not return
phone messages seeking an interview.
Ms. Tymoshenko said she watched with amazement as the siloviki and then
General Petruk made calls and warned the Interior Ministry "that they
are on the side of the people, and will defend the people, and that the
M.V.D. will have to deal not only with unarmed people and youth if it
comes to Kiev, but with the army" and the special forces inside the
intelligence agencies.
Eventually, General Popkov folded. "He said he was carrying out orders
and he was not a key figure," Ms. Tymoshenko said. First the trucks
stopped on the shoulder of the road. Then the alarm was called off.
General Drizhchany, and others, said that because so many calls were
made that night by and to so many people, it was impossible to tell
which calls were decisive. More likely, he said, was that the calls had
a cumulative effect.
While different accounts of the mobilization agree on many points, they
clash on critical questions. Who ordered the alarm? Who called the
troops back?
General Popkov said both decisions were solely his. This is the official
version, which the siloviki, the opposition and the Western diplomat
dismiss as absurd. "What he did was not a drill," said Mr. Galaka.
Only three people, they say, had authority to give such an order: Mr.
Kuchma, Mr. Yanukovich and Mr. Medvedchuk. Mr. Kuchma denies a role. Mr.
Yanukovich and Mr. Medvedchuk did not reply to requests for interviews.
Ms. Tymoshenko said she witnessed a turning point. Once the siloviki
thwarted the alarm, the administration learned that it did not have sole
influence over the last guarantor of power: the men with the guns.
After a peaceful uprising in Georgia in 2003 deposed President Eduard
Shevardnadze, in part with help from the authorities, she said she was
envious of a country with officers willing to resist corrupt power.
"I had always thought that all of our generals were very loyal to Kuchma
and were pragmatic," she said. "All of a sudden I made this discovery.
We had generals on the side of the people."