UKRAINE: SEPTEMBER ELECTIONS IN THE WIND? HAYDUK

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 KYIV 001133

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E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/14/2017
TAGS: PGOV PHUM UP
SUBJECT: UKRAINE: SEPTEMBER ELECTIONS IN THE WIND? HAYDUK
OUT, PLYUSHCH IN AT NSDC

REF: KYIV 282

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Classified By: Ambassador, reason 1.4 (b,d)


1. (C) Summary: President Yushchenko and PM Yanukovych
resumed meetings to resolve the political impasse May 12
after Yanukovych returned to Ukraine from his Spanish knee
surgery; Yushchenko said afterwards that the two would meet
again May 16 to agree on the date for early elections.
Presidential deputy head Chaliy and PM adviser Hryshchenko
told Ambassador May 16 that elections would likely occur in
September. Comments from the May 14 resumption of the wider
working group seemed to support the sense that the two sides
might reach agreement by May 16. Several odd developments
occurred over the weekend: the unexpected May 12 resignation
of National Security and Defense Council Secretary Hayduk,
who only days earlier seemed to be playing a key constructive
role in talks aimed at defusing the crisis, and strange
rumors/commentary late May 11 about alleged assassination
plots.


2. (C) Comment: Nothing ever seems truly over in Ukrainian
politics, but for once the working group rhetoric May 14
seems to be reinforcing, rather than negating, optimistic
signals coming out of an earlier Yushchenko-Yanukovych
meeting. Chaliy's comments suggest that Yushchenko has
agreed to a key Regions' demand: that elections happen in the
fall rather than summer. Chaliy, a long-time close associate
of Hayduk from their years together at the Industrial Union
of the Donbas (IUD),told Ambassador May 12 that Hayduk had
resigned after being asked to convene an NSDC meeting to
consider dismissing the government, but he said May 14 that
Hayduk's resignation may have helped lower tensions, the
President seeming to have recognized the seriousness of the
step. The reports of alleged documents revealing unnamed
elements tracking Yushchenko's movements and targeting
Secretariat Head Baloha and opposition leaders Tymoshenko and

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Lutsenko strike us as odd. Then again, Ukraine is a country
with a sitting President who was poisoned in September 2004,
and no serious progress has been made, or investigation even
evident, in the past two and a half years (reftel). End
Summary and Comment.

Talking again, and coming closer to a deal for September?
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3. (SBU) After a several day hiatus necessitated by PM
Yanukovych's sudden knee surgery in Barcelona, the two
Viktors resumed their meetings Saturday May 12 to seek a way
out of the current political crisis, this time accompanied by
newly appointed NSDC Secretary Ivan Plyushch and First
DPM/Finance Minister Azarov. After the meeting, Plyushch and
Azarov told reporters that Yushchenko and Yanukovych planned
to agree on a date for early elections at a May 16 meeting,
with the normally dour and cautious Azarov suggesting there
was a "100 percent probability" that the date would be set
May 16.


4. (C) Plyushch, in an interview published May 14, suggested
that elections might take place July 15. However, Regions'
financier Akhmetov told Dzerkalo Tyzhnia that July elections
were "impossible" and that they should take place in autumn.
Chaliy told Ambassador May 14 that Yushchenko had privately
informed Polish President Kaczynski while in Warsaw May 11
that elections would occur in September, adding that
Presidential Secretariat Head Baloha, seen as the hard-liner
in Yushchenko's team, was on board with September elections.
Chaliy noted that ongoing disagreement in the working group
involved not only the dates for elections, but how long the
Rada would remain in session to pass needed legislation.
Another factor was Regions' desire to lock in the right of
the party with the highest vote total to attempt to form a
coalition majority first (note: Regions almost certainly will
score another plurality, but it is clearly worried about the
possibility of an OU-BYuT accommodation. As the coalition
flipping in the summer of 2006 demonstrates, nothing can be
taken for granted in Ukrainian politics).


5. (SBU) Working group negotiations resumed May 14 at 1000
at the Presidential Secretariat on Bankova. In contrast to
past working group sessions, at which oral agreements between
the two Viktors often fell apart, comments this time
reinforced the May 12 optimism. Regions faction leader
Bohatyryeva told reporters early in the day that the working
group had almost completed amendments to the law on judicial
administration (intended to deal with confusing court
jurisdictional issues, from our understanding) and on the
status of rada deputies, but that disagreement remained on
proposed amendments to the parliamentary election law. With
negotiations resuming at 1615, OU MP Onischuk suggested

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agreement on all bills might even be reached "late" on May 14.

Unexpected switch at the NSDC, and strange rumors
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6. (C) The seeming surge forward in negotiations was
accompanied by a curious development: the resignation (or
firing) of Vitaliy Hayduk as NSDC Secretary early May 12.
Hayduk had come into the job in late 2006 from his IUD
business intending to focus on energy issues and bring a
low-key, apolitical approach to the job. His connections to
former partner and sometime business rival Rinat Akhmetov
helped accelerate efforts to resolve the crisis via early
elections, and Hayduk appeared much more engaged and in
command in his May 8 meeting with Ambassador than in past
sessions. Hayduk associate Chaliy told Ambassador May 12
that Hayduk, opposed to any discussion of a state of
emergency, had been a man of his word and resigned when the
President's team directed Hayduk to convene an NSDC meeting
to consider dismissing the government. Plyushch is a
two-time former Rada Speaker (1991-93, 2000-2002) who comes
from the nationalist side of the political spectrum (in 2006
he ran with Yuri Kostenko's Ukrainian People's Party). He
was recently named the MCC political point of contact; the
Ukrainian MCC operation is just setting up shop.


7. (SBU) Hayduk's resignation came in the wake of a flurry of
strange statements and rumors late May 11 about supposed
assassination plots. Valeriy Heletei, head of the
Presidential Secretariat service for law enforcement
agencies, alleged at a press conference that the Presidential
Secretariat had documents containing plans to murder

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Secretariat head Baloha and opposition leaders Tymoshenko and

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Lutsenko, as well as detailed information on the movements of
Yushchenko and his family members. Claiming that "today, we
face a real threat" of violence, Heletei stated that criminal
leaders were working on the plans with radical political
forces and those connected with the special services of other
states - the standard way Ukrainian officials refer to Russia
without naming it outright. Adding that there were
compromising documents on several top Interior Ministry
officials, Heletei alleged the schemes aimed at causing
political confrontation and split up Ukraine.


8. (C) Comment: we currently cannot assess the validity of
Heletei's claims. Opposition leader Lutsenko, speaking to
Ambassador March 31 prior to a massive opposition rally on
the Maidan intended to convince Yushchenko to issue a decree
to dismiss the Rada and call elections, shared his concerns
about potential provocations. He focused in particular on a
group of ex-security officers from the SBU and the police
special forces he said were being trained to cause problems;
he fingered recently named deputy Interior Minister
Zemlyansky as the organizer of dirty tricks. As deputy head
of the SBU in 2004, Zemlyansky had masterminded the planting
of weapons and explosives on the civic activists of PORA,
similar to the mid-March actions against his network of civil
society activists, Lutsenko alleged.


9. (U) Visit Embassy KYIV's classified website:
www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/kiev.
Taylor