The USA has become a refuge
for the widow of journalist Gongadze and enemy of President Kuchma
The United States has granted political asylum to the wife of missing Ukrainian journalist Georgy Gongadze, as well as former state security officer Nikolai Melnichenko. Kyiv regarded this as an accusation of the lack of democracy.

The US State Department announced the decision of the American authorities to the Ukrainian Ambassador in Washington, Konstantin Grishchenko, on April 13. Kyiv's reaction followed immediately. The very next day, the US Ambassador in Kyiv, Carlos Pascuale, was invited to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. He was officially told that the granting of asylum to Nikolai Melnichenko and the wife of journalist Gongadze Miroslava caused Ukraine “deep surprise” and did not correspond to the “spirit of the Ukrainian-American partnership, especially in the context of active cooperation between the two countries in legal sphere that has emerged recently."
According to Kyiv, the American side “could not but know that the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office had opened a criminal case against Melnichenko on charges of illegal wiretapping and disclosure of state secrets - crimes that are severely prosecuted in the United States itself, and the initiation of a criminal case against Melnichenko was based on legal facts and was not politically motivated."
It is curious that in a statement by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Nikolai Melnichenko was compared with FBI agent Richard Hanssen, who was recently arrested in the United States and is accused of spying for Moscow. Kiev appears to believe that a retired state security officer eavesdropped on President Leonid Kuchma and divulged state secrets on instructions from some foreign intelligence agency.
Thus, Ukraine actually accused the United States of providing political asylum to a person “whose illegal actions caused significant damage to national security,” that is, a spy. According to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, the United States, on the contrary, should assist in the investigation into the circumstances of the appearance of the “Melnichenko collection.”
The President of Ukraine indirectly agreed with this assessment of the US actions. “It’s not very pleasant, as you understand. The Foreign Ministry commented for me and for the government. You couldn’t say it better today,” he said. However, according to Mr. Kuchma, there is no need to rush to final conclusions, because “we do not know everything that is behind this.” Perhaps this is why the press service of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry specifically explained to journalists that they should not overdramatize the situation, and the text of the statement transmitted to the US Ambassador is not a note of protest.
The Foreign Ministry statement mentions Miroslav Gongadze only in passing. The wife of the missing journalist, having learned about the positive reaction of the US immigration service to her request for asylum, immediately left Ukraine. At Boryspil airport, while boarding the plane, she told reporters: “I’m taking my children with me and leaving forever.”
As a source in the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry told Kommersant, Kyiv’s harsh tone is easily explained. “Granting political asylum to two citizens of Ukraine means semi-official recognition on the part of the United States of the fact that persecution of citizens for political reasons is practiced in Kyiv and that democracy in Ukrainian is such only in name, but not in essence,” he told a Kommersant correspondent.

GRIGORY Kommersant-RUDENKO, KIRILL Kommersant-RAZUMOVSKY, Kyiv

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 67/P dated April 16, 2001, p. 8