I must admit when Kate McMillan posted on the Shotgun group blog that Viktor Yushchenko had been poisoned I thought it was some kind of joke; I guess that is my North American bias leaking through. Similar to Meatriarchy, I am having a hard time following this story so I watched an expert (I assume he is an expert, otherwise why would he be interviewed) on Ukraine on C-Span to try to get more informed. The experts names is Anders Aslund of the Carnegie Endowment and this his input on the topic:
Interviewer: With regards to Yushchenko, I wanted to point this out, I read something where he had been poisoned. You can see the results there on his face. What happened and was
that a political attack.
Anders Aslund: On the 6th of September Viktor Yushchenko had a dinner with the chairman of the security police in Ukraine. After this he was severally poisoned and it took a couple of days before they realized what had happened and they took him them to Austria. The Austrian medical staff told him that if had come 24 hours later he would have been permanently paralyzed for life [sic] and he had after this five different viruses and some chemical poison in his body.
I: Did they ever discover what it was? Who did it?
AA: It was, he was treated to late, so that they could not see fully where it came from but of course the full suspicion is on this dinner with the chairmen of the security police but it can’t be proven.
I: Why was he having that dinner?
AA: That we don’t know.
