Ukraine's Bane

For five years, the case of the beheaded, muckracking journalist Georgy Gongadze has haunted Ukrainian political life. The former president's bodyguard claimed to have secretly taped the president discussing the murder, recordings that would indict the president. The unsolved murder became a sounding board for the opposition and when the Orange Revolution swept Yushchenko into power, the new government vowed to find the murderers. The body of Gongadze, meanwhile, has never been interred. In the last few days, the prosecutor general announced that there were new discoveries in the case; soon, a verdict would come. Today, the body of one of those involved--who was supposed to appear before the prosecutor general this morning--was found in his ritzy home in a Kyiv suburb. Parliament today was engaged in stormy debate with many calling for the arrest of the former president, Leonid Kuchma, who is currently vacationing in the Czech Republic. I'm wondering if he will return to Ukraine. In the last two months, several high level officials have been found dead in their homes or offices.