What Herbst described as merely supporting free and fair elections, Pavlovsky saw differently: ‘I could see consultants and a large number of NGO activists who were completely pro-American or pro-Atlantic.’ Pavlovsky was also reticent when asked what he had been trying to achieve. He acted as a ‘channel of communication’, he said, but found it hard to influence Kuchma, who insisted on running his candidate’s campaign on his own. ‘We never understood why Kuchma selected him. There were other governors much more acceptable to the electorate. As I understood it, Kuchma was expecting a conflict, and Yanukovych seemed like a tough man who could handle it. It was his mistake. Yanukovych’s rudeness, his coarseness, irritated voters. And of course Putin noticed that, and was unhappy about it.’ By the end of the campaign, Pavlovsky says he was reduced to writing sad reports back to Moscow about how the campaign headquarters had ‘lost command’.3
In an interview, Sergei Markov was more forthcoming about the advice Russian consultants gave to the Kuchma/Yanukovych team – and made some startling claims about the role the Russians believed Western NGOs were playing. Markov openly acknowledged – indeed stressed – that he and his colleagues were commissioned to do this work (to influence the election of a sovereign state) by the Russian presidential administration. Part of their work, according to Markov, consisted in providing Kuchma and Yanukovych with daily expert analyses of the developing situation, to enable them to respond better. Secondly, he said, ‘We saw that experts who were appearing in the mass media were by and large firmly under the influence of Western foundations. And basically these Western foundations forbade them to say anything good about Russia. If they did they were thrown out of the projects they were working on, lost their grants and ended up penniless. So we came and started organising seminars, conferences, joint media projects with them, to try to get around this “ban”.’4
It should be said that this assessment is precisely the opposite of what the opposition themselves (and most Western observers) believed: that the media were totally controlled by the government, and served a consistent diet of pro-Russian views.
Markov gave this outlandish assessment of the opposition candidate. ‘We were firmly of the opinion that Yushchenko was completely controlled by his wife, and she belonged to a circle of radical Ukrainian nationalists connected with the Nazi movement and with, not so much the American special services, rather with circles of various East European diasporas, especially the Poles, who hate Russia as only Polish nationalists can. I was certain that Yushchenko, as a weak person, would totally carry out the programmes of these radical nationalists, whose aim was to create the maximum conflict between Ukraine and Russia – even a small war. In order to cause a quarrel between these fraternal nations, the Russians and Ukrainians, blood had to be spilt. I am convinced that these people were determined that Ukrainians and Russians should start killing each other – and I mean killing each other.’
These are quite astonishing claims, but they are important, for it is highly likely that Markov’s apocalyptic view was shared by his masters in the Kremlin.
At the same time, the Russians were fully aware that Yushchenko had a big chance of winning, and made strange undercover overtures to his team. Oleh Rybachuk was Yushchenko’s campaign chief, and future chief of staff. He says he received a call out of the blue from an old student friend whom he had not seen for 24 years. ‘When he called me I knew he was in the KGB. He suggested that I come to Moscow to meet people who were close to Vladimir Putin.’5
Over the next month and a half Yushchenko’s adviser made weekly visits to Moscow, meeting ‘in dimly lit restaurants and speaking in whispers’. The Russians wanted to know what Yushchenko would do if elected. Rybachuk told them: ‘Our policies are simple. We want to be a democratic country, a European country. We want to be a NATO member for European security. When we come to power we won’t be a problem because you’ll know what to expect from us.’ It was hardly the reassurance the Kremlin was hoping for.
On 5 September, just two months before election day, Yushchenko fell seriously ill after a dinner with the head of the Ukrainian security service. He took painkillers when he got home, but in the morning was feeling worse. Rybachuk recalls: ‘It was around ten in the morning and he said, “Let’s have this meeting fast because I feel really bad. Something’s not right.”’ The cause of the pain could not be found and after three days Yushchenko was flown to a private clinic in Vienna where he was diagnosed with dioxin poisoning. The poison caused stomach ulcers, problems with his spleen and considerable disfigurement to his face.
‘I remember waking up in the clinic at 5.30 in the morning,’ Yushchenko recalled, ‘and half of my face was paralysed, and within three hours I could barely make a sound. I was losing my speech. Every morning I looked in the mirror and my face was getting bigger and bigger.’6
For two weeks, Yulia Tymoshenko stepped into the breach, addressing rallies and blaming Yushchenko’s enemies for ‘cynically poisoning him’. When he finally returned to the campaign trail he was more popular than ever, the scars on his once handsome face visible proof of his enemies’ desperation. Thanks to Channel 5 – a television station owned by a wealthy businessman in Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party – his words were broadcast live to public squares across the country: ‘The last two weeks, dear friends, have been the most tragic in my life.’
Moscow had to step up a gear now to promote its candidate, who was trailing in the opinion polls. On 9 October Putin invited Kuchma and Yanukovych to Moscow at short notice – to celebrate his recent birthday. The television coverage was designed to demonstrate how chummy they all were, in the hope that some of Putin’s stardust would land on Yanukovych’s dowdy shoulders.
‘Thank you for responding to my invitation to come at such short notice,’ Putin gushed. ‘It’s a good pretext.’
‘It’s a wonderful pretext,’ the Ukrainians gushed back. With the cameras still on him, Kuchma took the chance to sound presidentially ‘neutral’ while warning his countrymen back home that, as Eduard Shevardnadze might have said, the sun rises in the north: ‘When I am asked about our two main presidential candidates, I reply that for me it’s not so much a question of who but of what will be after the election. Which path will Ukraine take? The tried and tested one we have today, which has given results – even if our countrymen perhaps do not fully feel those results – or the path that will scupper everything that’s been done these past ten years, and put everything in doubt? I think our meeting [with Putin] will help to push things in the right direction.’
Lest anyone was in any doubt, Putin then travelled to Ukraine for a three-day visit at the end of October – an unprecedented intervention right on the eve of the first round of the election. He did not need to do anything so crude as to publicly praise Yanukovych or disparage Yushchenko. His very presence was a reminder of what was most at stake in this election, and everyone knew who the pro-Russia candidate was. Putin began with a live interview simultaneously broadcast on three Ukrainian state television channels, to which viewers could phone in or email their questions. Over the next two days he held talks with the leadership and stood beside Yanukovych at ceremonies to mark the 60th anniversary of Ukraine’s liberation (by the Russians) from Nazi occupation. The spin doctors were doing a pretty good job. And at this stage the Russians were firmly convinced that Yushchenko stood no chance of being elected.