| Yushchenko Jr. is suspected of haste A scandal has erupted in Ukraine around 20-year-old Andrei Yushchenko, the son of President Viktor Yushchenko. Some publications consider the young man to be involved in a brawl with shooting that took place on May 19 in the center of Kyiv, criminal complicity in which carries a sentence of 5 to 12 years. The victim was the prosecutor of the Boryspil interdistrict prosecutor's office of the Kyiv region, Alexander Kuzovkin, who was hospitalized with a wound in the thigh. A criminal case has been opened. The press service of the presidential administration called on the media, without making hasty conclusions, to wait for the official conclusion of law enforcement agencies.
Yesterday, two Ukrainian publications reported different versions of the incident - the opposition newspaper Segodnya and the online publication Obkom. According to the Regional Committee, the BMV, in which Andrei Yushchenko and his security guard were, violated traffic rules and overtook the prosecutor's car. Kuzovkin signaled with displeasure, after which the BMV stopped and two people got out. The prosecutor, recognizing Andrei Yushchenko, told him his position and made a remark. He rudely promised Kuzovkin a meeting in a pre-trial detention center with the deputy prosecutor general and slapped the prosecutor in the face, and the guard shot Kuzovkin in the thigh with a combat pistol. Then both got into the car and drove away, leaving the victim lying on the road.
The Segodnya newspaper presented a slightly different version. Andrei Yushchenko was not personally involved in the incident. A security guard got out of a BMV that was breaking traffic rules and shot the prosecutor in the leg with a rubber bullet. The police officers who drew up the report changed their faces when Kuzovkin named the BMV license plate. Allegedly, law enforcement officers knew that this car was registered to Andrei Yushchenko’s mother, Svetlana, the first ex-wife of Viktor Yushchenko.
Let us recall that in 2005, Ukrayinska Pravda (its founder was the tragically deceased journalist Georgy Gongadze) reported that Yushchenko Jr. lives in apartments worth several million dollars, drives a BMV worth more than 100 thousand euros, uses an elite mobile phone and pays in expensive restaurants for champagne at a thousand dollars a bottle.
The Prosecutor General’s Office calls the emergency an “ordinary domestic incident” that “has nothing to do with the president or other officials.” The Public Relations Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported yesterday that the license plates installed on the BMV belong to a car that is in no way connected with the presidential family. According to the police, there was only a Caucasian driver in the car, about 40-50 years old, who shot at Kuzovkin and then disappeared from the scene.
However, the online publication "Ukrainian Pravda" in the prosecutor's office of the Shevchenko district, on the territory of which the emergency occurred, found out that two people still participated in the "showdown" with the prosecutor - the driver and the passenger. Kuzovkin himself told Ukrainskaya Pravda that he did not know Andrei Yushchenko by sight and did not remember the car number. The online publication ProUA.com placed responsibility on the victim himself. Kuzovkin was allegedly drunk at the time of the accident and rushed to sort things out due to insufficient respect for him. The prosecutor is under 30 years old and allegedly received his post through family connections. In particular, Kuzovkin’s grandfather was the deputy chairman of the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR. Svetlana STEPANENKO, Kyiv |
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