Yatseniuk: allegedly fought with Islamic insurgents in Chechnya.

AFP
Moscow
The head of Russia’s powerful investigative body claimed yesterday that Ukraine’s bespectacled technocrat prime minister fought in Chechya with Islamist insurgents against Moscow.
Alexander Bastrykin told Rossiiskaya Gazeta state daily that in the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s, Ukraine’s premier “Arseny Yatseniuk fought against Russian troops”.
The claim was widely ridiculed in Ukraine, where Yatseniuk often is portrayed in cartoons as the bossy but harmless Rabbit from the children’s book Winnie-the-Pooh.
Bastrykin said an “investigation had established” that Yatseniuk, now 41, fought in hit squads called Argo and Viking.
The chief investigator said the units were led by Oleksandr Muzytchko – better known as Sashko Bilyi – the late co-ordinator of Right Sector far-right nationalist group in western Ukraine, who was shot dead by police last year.
Yatseniuk dismissed the claim with his press secretary Olga Lappo writing on Facebook: “We advise the Russian regime to carry out a psychiatric assessment of the Investigative Committee chief Bastrykin.”
The allegations caused a storm of sarcastic comments on Ukrainian social networks, with photoshopped images featuring Yatseniuk.
Images show him sporting a long beard in full Rambo-style gear, surrounded by Islamists. One shows a rabbit with a grenade launcher with the caption: “He killed his first Russian at 16.”
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov also mocked the claim that Yatseniuk, a balding pro-Western former foreign minister, used to fight alongside Islamist militants in Chechnya.
“We have very good doctors in the interior ministry’s clinic. We’ll get you better. Paranoiacs are our specialty,” Avakov wrote on Facebook in a message to Bastrykin.
According to Yatseniuk’s official biography, in 1994 and 1995 he was working on privatisations as the head of a law firm.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov backed the claim, telling Russian news agencies: “The Investigative Committee is working on it and such statements can never be groundless.”