The poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko with dioxin
Kyiv, Ukraine, 2004
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
On September 5, 2004, in the middle of the presidential campaign, Viktor Yushchenko, the main opposition candidate in Ukraine, had dinner at the home of Volodymyr Satsyuk, deputy head of the country's security service (SBU); the head of the service, Ihor Smeshko, was also at the table. In the early hours of the next morning, Yushchenko fell ill, with severe pain in his back and abdomen. Ukrainian doctors first spoke of food poisoning, and on September 10 he was admitted to the Rudolfinerhaus clinic in Vienna.
Within weeks the candidate's face swelled and became covered in chloracne lesions, the typical mark of dioxin poisoning. In December 2004, the Vienna clinic confirmed the poisoning, and a toxicologist at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam identified the compound as TCDD, the most toxic form of dioxin. A study published in The Lancet in 2009 recorded a level in his blood about 50,000 times above the population average and, since only pure TCDD was present, concluded that the dioxin was synthetic, made in a laboratory.
Sources
In the game
September Soup
Country house on the outskirts of Kyiv, December. On September 5, Bohdan Kravets, 50, the opposition candidate for president, had dinner here with three people and went home at midnight, walking straight.
Disfigured, Yushchenko stayed in the campaign and won the election repeated in December 2004, after the protests of the Orange Revolution. Ukrainian prosecutors named the host of the dinner as a possible participant; he denied any involvement, received Russian citizenship and went to live in Moscow. Yushchenko accused Russia of obstructing the investigation by refusing to provide dioxin samples, and to this day no one has been convicted of the poisoning.
