Cassette Scandal Rocks Ukraine: Protests Ignite

Politician Oleksander Moroz played secret recordings in the Ukrainian parliament on November 28, 2000, that allegedly captured President Leonid Kuchma ordering the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze. Gongadze, the founder of the online news outlet Ukrainska Pravda, had been missing since September. His decapitated body was found in a forest outside Kyiv in early November, and the recordings, made by a former presidential bodyguard named Mykola Melnychenko who had hidden a digital recorder under a couch in Kuchma's office, appeared to contain the president's voice discussing how to "deal with" the troublesome journalist. The authenticity of the recordings was disputed, but their content was explosive. Moroz, a Socialist Party leader and parliamentary speaker, played the tapes during a session, and the scandal erupted immediately. The "Ukraine without Kuchma" protest movement brought tens of thousands of demonstrators into the streets of Kyiv, demanding the president's resignation. Kuchma denied the recordings were genuine and weathered the crisis, but his authority was permanently damaged. The protest movement failed to topple him in 2000, but it built the organizational networks and the political vocabulary that made the Orange Revolution possible four years later. When Kuchma's chosen successor, Viktor Yanukovych, attempted to steal the 2004 presidential election, the infrastructure of resistance was already in place. The Cassette Scandal also established Ukrainska Pravda as the most important independent news outlet in the country. Gongadze's murder remains officially unsolved at the highest level, though a former police general was convicted of organizing the killing.