POLITICS IN UKRAINE


JagBR

New Member
This is awful!!!! The guy's face is ruined!!!

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/12/12/yuschenko/index.html

Rivals dismiss poisoning claims
Unknown 'third party' believed to have administered dioxin
Sunday, December 12, 2004 Posted: 3:45 AM EST (0845 GMT)


Viktor Yushchenko is shown in photos taken in July, left, and in November, after his illness.

VIDEO
Doctors say dioxin is responsible for the illness that has afflicted Viktor Yushchenko

? Yushchenko wife: I tasted medicine




VIENNA, Austria (CNN) -- Political rivals of Ukranian opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko are dismissing doctors' claims that he was poisoned, saying the reports are part of last minute campaigning.

Dioxin poisoning caused the disfiguring illness afflicting Yushchenko, doctors at an Austrian hospital said Saturday.

Doctors said at a news conference that they suspect a "third party" administered the poison in September, possibly by putting it in Yushchenko's soup.

Campaigners for his opponent, Viktor Yanukovych, have rushed to reject suggestions that the prime minister could have been involved in the poisoning.

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."

In Ukraine, the prosecutor-general is reopening a probe into Yushchenko's illness, according to the Interfax news agency. A previous investigation, by another prosecutor who has since been fired, had been looking into the possibility that biological agents were used.

Yushchenko faces Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych on December 26 in a repeat of last month's vote. Yanukovych was declared the official winner, but the Supreme Court threw out the results because of voting irregularities.

The director of the private Rudolphinerhaus clinic in Vienna said there was no doubt that Yushchenko had eaten or drunk dioxin, but could not say whether the poisoning was intentional.

"What we can say at this point is that this concentration constitutes an amount which is 1,000 times above the normal levels that you would find in blood or [skin] tissue," said Dr. Michael Zimpfer, who noted that doctors at his and other European clinics had conducted tests during the past 24 hours.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, dioxin refers to a group of contaminants that are the byproducts of herbicides such as Agent Orange, linked to a variety of diseases that especially affect residents of Vietnam and veterans of the war. Dioxin dissolves in oil and gets into body fat, according to Britannica.

Zimpfer said: "We can state that there has been an oral intake.

"It would be quite easy to administer this amount in a soup that contains cream, and I am saying cream because of the issue of fat solubility."

The dioxin caused bloating and pockmarks to Yushchenko's face, a disease called chloracne, and prompted accusations that opponents of the candidate tried to assassinate him -- an allegation they have denied.

A doctor at Saturday's news conference said the changes in Yushchenko's face will remain for a long time. More treatment will be needed to determine whether his face can be restored to the way it had looked.

Yushchenko had long been known for his good looks.

Saturday, Yushchenko's U.S.-born wife, Kateryna Chumachenko, said she was convinced that her husband was the victim of an assassination attempt.

"I knew from the very beginning he was poisoned," she told The Associated Press when she arrived at the clinic.

"We had received threats before it happened, and we continued to receive threats because I think there are many people who consider my husband and the changes he would bring to Ukraine a threat to them personally." (Wife 'tasted medicine)







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They say it will take time, but that his face should return to almost normal.

That's some foul business right there, though.
 



Correct me if I am wrong. But after the (at least) questionable results in the election, we did not hear the opposition party's leaders say that their democracy worked. It is different from what we heard in another country.
 
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