Translated material
Even Kuchma didn’t do this
This was the reaction of the Minister of Transport and Communications Nikolai Rudkovsky to President Yushchenko’s request addressed to Prime Minister Yanukovych to understand how the leaders of the Turkmen opposition, the leader of the Vatan movement Khudaiberdy Orazov and the chairman of the Republican Party of Turkmenistan Nurmuhamed Khanamov, ended up in Kiev at the end of December last year. These oppositionists, once high-ranking members of the Turkmen leadership, have long lived in Western Europe, where they have been granted the status of political refugees. The day after the death of Turkmen President Niyazov, Orazov and Khanamov, having received visas from the Ukrainian embassy in Vienna, flew to Kyiv and held a press conference.
Public speeches by political opponents of the late Turkmen dictator have attracted increased media attention. In those days, almost the whole world, with bated breath, watched what was happening to one of the most closed countries, which suddenly lost its leader. Turkmen oppositionists would be worthless as politicians if they had not taken advantage of this to at least remind themselves, assess the situation in Turkmenistan and, in this regard, declare their future plans.
Ukraine could not have been more suitable for realizing these goals. Firstly, this is a country whose democratic foundations are quite obvious. There is a popularly elected parliament, a ruling coalition that formed a government led by the leader of the “Regions of Ukraine” Viktor Yanukovych, and an opposition represented by “Our Ukraine”. The role of the Ukrainian opposition in the life of the country is undeniable, if only because its informal leader is President Viktor Yushchenko himself. This happens in democratic societies.
And secondly, Khanamov and Orazov could take advantage of this extremely rare feature of Ukraine in the post-Soviet space quite quickly, since they had been familiar with the current Minister of Transport and Communications Rudkovsky for a long time. Which is what they did, promptly contacting him and asking for assistance in quickly obtaining a Ukrainian visa. The minister did not refuse, having personally contacted the Ambassador of Ukraine to Austria Vladimir Elchenko for this purpose.
Ashgabat responded to this very nervously. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry received an extremely sharp note of protest. “In my more than 30 years of practice, I have rarely received notes of such content and with such wording,” complained Foreign Minister Boris Tarasyuk, who was still “dissatisfied” from his post. The appearance of well-known Turkmen oppositionists was regarded by Niyazov's successors as “disrespect and cynicism towards Turkmenistan and its people.” In addition, the note contained a demand to take the toughest measures against those responsible.
Ashgabat's demarche turned out to be very opportune for President Yushchenko, who is waging a grueling struggle for power with Prime Minister Yanukovych. The minister of the cabinet he heads is almost undermining the energy security of Ukraine, which is completely dependent on the supply of Turkmen gas - oh, well done, Turkmen diplomats, they plucked such thin strings in Kyiv! The head of state sends a lengthy letter to the prime minister (its text is published by the Ukrainian press) asking him to sort it out. Yanukovych puts forward a resolution: “Conduct an internal investigation.”
However, without waiting for its results, on the day the letter was sent to the prime minister, President Yushchenko fired the Ukrainian ambassador in Vienna. A leak to the press is organized. In Ashgabat they will learn that measures have been taken and the perpetrators have been punished in such a way that next time it will be discouraging to show signs of attention to those who seek to repeat the successes of Ukrainian democrats in Turkmenistan. It was then that comparisons between Yushchenko and Turkmenbashi appeared, made by Minister Rudkovsky. The Presidential Secretariat rebuffed him: these are “false statements and inappropriate analogies.”
Turkmen oppositionists were also offended. “If they have any internal problems in Ukraine, then the parties... should solve them among themselves and not drag people who are fighting a terrible dictatorship into this,” Khudaiberdy Orazov said in an interview with the BBC, “ “It’s hard for us even without them.” Nurmukhammed Khanamov, in an interview with Vremya Novostey, was no less emotional: “What kind of democracy can we talk about in Ukraine if the president and recent leader of the Orange Revolution so obsequiously caters to those who are rotting in prisons of their political opponents!” Mr. Khanamov is probably getting excited. Who told him that all revolutionaries are necessarily democrats...