Leonid Kuchma

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Leonid Kuchma

Leonid Danylowytsch Kuchma (born August 9, 1938 in Tschajkyne , Chernihiv Oblast , Ukrainian SSR ) is a non-party Ukrainian politician . He was Prime Minister of Ukraine from October 1992 to September 1993 and President of Ukraine from July 1994 to January 2005 .

Cyrillic ( Ukrainian )
Леонід Данилович Кучма
Transl. : Leonid Danylovyč Kučma
Transcr. : Leonid Danylowytsch Kuchma
Cyrillic ( Russian )
Леонид Данилович Кучма
Transl .: Leonid Danilovič Kučma
Transcr .: Leonid Danilowitsch Kuchma

Life

Donald Rumsfeld and Leonid Kuchma (right) in the garden of the presidential dacha in Partenit , Ukraine on August 13, 2004

Kuchma graduated from Dnepropetrovsk University and graduated in missile engineering . He was a leading engineer in Baikonur and got into management positions as well as the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine , from which he resigned in 1991. After that he remained non-party.

From 1990 to 1992 he was a member of the Ukrainian Parliament and became Prime Minister on October 13, 1992. He resigned from this position on September 21, 1993 to run for the 1994 presidential election. On July 19, 1994 he became President of Ukraine. He was re-elected in 1999, with his election campaign being supported and co-financed by influential networks of Ukrainian industrialists . His term of office as president ended in 2004, a third term of office was not legally possible.

Some of his political opponents accused him of being responsible for the 2000 murder of Georgian- Ukrainian journalist Heorhiy Gongadze , which Kuchma always denied. The chairman of the Socialist Party of Ukraine Oleksandr Moroz released sound recordings in 2001, which reportedly include a conversation between Kuchma, the parliamentary leader Volodymyr Lyytvyn and Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko about the disappearance of Heorhiy Gongadse. The authenticity of this recording has not been confirmed.

With the publication of the recording, the so-called cassette scandal , the opposition initiated the Ukraine without Kuchma (Ukrainian Ukrajina bes Kutschmy ), which demanded Kuchma's resignation during mass protests. Several votes of no confidence in Kuchma in the Verkhovna Rada failed. In addition to being involved in the Gongadze murder, Kuchma was also accused of significant restrictions on the freedom of the press .

Before the 2004 presidential elections , Kuchma initially supported the then incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych , but distanced himself from him in view of the mass protests of the democracy movement in the “ Orange Revolution ”, which demanded a repetition of the falsified elections in favor of Yanukovych. In the repeat of the runoff election on December 26, 2004, Viktor Yushchenko won . Before the end of his term in office, Kuchma called on the two camps for reconciliation and congratulated his successor.

A few days before the new President Viktor Yushchenko was sworn in in January 2005, the old government granted Kuchma numerous retirement privileges. The new government took away some of these privileges from the ex-president.

In 2007 Kuchma published a book about the time after the "Orange Revolution" called After the Maidan. Presidential Records. 2005-2006. In 2008, he publicly complained about what he saw as the unstable political situation in Ukraine, which would continue for a long time. He envied Russia's stability under President Vladimir Putin .

In March 2011, the Kyiv Prosecutor General announced that it was investigating Kuchma for the 2000 murder of journalist Gongadze; he denied all allegations. On December 14, 2011, the proceedings against him were discontinued on the grounds that they were based on inadmissible evidence.

In June 2014, together with his predecessor Leonid Kravchuk and his successor Yushchenko, in a joint “declaration by the three presidents” , Kuchma called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the “aggressive foreign policy” towards Ukraine. At the request of the new President Petro Poroshenko , Kuchma represented Ukraine in the tri-material contact group, which negotiated a ceasefire for the Donbass war zone in Minsk in September 2014, which was subsequently ignored by the conflicting parties .

Kuchma's writings

  • Leonid Kučma: Posle majdana. Zapiski prezidenta. 2005-2006. Dovira, Kiev 2007. ISBN 978-5-9691-0094-7 .
  • Leonid Kučma: Svoïm šljachom: rozdumy pro ekonomični reformy v Ukraïni. In Jure, Kiev 2004. ISBN 966-313-198-5 .
  • Leonid Kučma: Ukraina - ne Rossija. Vremja, Moscow 2003. ISBN 5-94117-075-0 .
  • Leonid Kučma: Naciju zveličujut 'veliki cili i dila. Presa Ukraïny, Kiev 2000.
  • Leonid Kučma: ljudyna i prezydent - personality and president. Mystectvo, Kiev 1998.
  • Leonid Kučma: Ekonomičnyj i social'nyj rozvytok Ukraïny u 1995 roci: ščorična dopovid 'Prezidenta Ukraïny pro vnutrišnju ta zovnišnju polityku Ukraïny. Kiev 1996. ISBN 966-524-001-3 .
  • Leonid Kučma: Ekonomična dopovidʹ prezydenta Ukraïny: 1994 rik. Ukraïna, Kiev 1995. ISBN 5-319-01357-4 .

Literature on Kuchma

  • Taras Kuzio : Ukraine under Kuchma: political reform, economic transformation and security policy in independent Ukraine. Macmillan, Basingstoke 1997. ISBN 0-333-65414-5 , ISBN 0-312-17625-2 .
  • Kuzio, Taras (ed.), Democratic revolution in Ukraine: from Kuchmagate to Orange Revolution (The journal of communist studies and transition politics, Vol. 23, No. 1), pp. 30–56.

Web links

Commons : Leonid Kuchma  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kiev's kicker oligarch. ( Memento from September 5, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) {In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , August 28, 2001.
  2. ↑ Thomas Urban : The ex-president, a decapitation and a false woodcutter. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , April 26, 2011, p. 7.
  3. ↑ Reinhard Veser : Man of the East. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 12, 2015, p. 8.
  4. ↑ Konrad Schuller : Investigations for the image. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , March 23, 2011.
  5. ^ Gerhard Lechner: Kiev settles the Kuchma affair. In: Wiener Zeitung , last updated on January 30, 2013.
  6. ^ Kremlin rejects criticism of troop deployment. In: Welt Online , June 20, 2014.
  7. ↑ Ukraine Contact Group is on the spot. In: n-tv .de , December 25, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Kuchma, Leonid
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kuchma, Leonid Danylowytsch; Кучма, Леонід Данилович (Ukrainian); Kučma, Leonid Danylovyč (scientific transliteration)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ukrainian politician
DATE OF BIRTH August 9, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Tschajkyne (Novhorod-Siwerskyj) , Chernihiv Oblast , Ukrainian SSR