An original representative of the domestic political and media space, Dmytro Korchynskyi, visited Lutsk on March 17.
Who is Dmytro Korchynskyi? Currently a host at the 1+1 studio, in the past — a leader of UNA-UNSO, founder of a number of public organizations of a militant nature.
The main purpose of the visit, according to Korchynskyi himself, is preparation for the implementation of a new TV project of the 1+1 studio, which will take the form of a documentary series titled "Alternative History of Ukraine" and will appear on screens this autumn. And Mr. Dmytro also reported that the regional organization of the Union of Journalists of Ukraine proposed that he hold a public debate with Volyn students titled "Fear the one who will come in my name!".
The main purpose of the visit, in my opinion, is the testing of pre-election technologies, probing the consciousness of young people for the perception of crude radical personalities, and preparation for the 2004 presidential elections.
Mr. Korchynskyi refused to talk about the authorities, motivating this by saying that our authorities are bad and there is nothing to talk about them. He focused on criticism of the opposition, and on the persons who can be called its leaders. Korchynskyi devoted quite a lot of attention to the financial aspects of the opposition's activity, the American origin of its funding sources, etc. V. Yushchenko got the most. At the end of his speech he drew a conclusion: "We need a different opposition! The leader of the opposition must be strong." Then Mr. Korchynskyi answered the young people's questions.
It should be noted that the ideas proposed by Dmytro Korchynskyi and his colleague Viktor Tsyhanov turned out to be unacceptable to Volyn youth, and they were not shy about expressing this.
Having carefully listened to and analyzed Mr. Korchynskyi's speech, I dare to draw my own conclusion from this visit — the authorities are working on, as one of the possible scenarios, the promotion of the radical "oppositionist" D. Korchynskyi, as a counterweight to the "indecisive" opposition leader V. Yushchenko in the 2004 presidential race. We have already been through all this in 1999, when N. Vitrenko "pinched off" O. Moroz, or when in 2002 B. Boiko with his "People's Movement of Ukraine" tried to take votes away from Yushchenko's bloc in the parliamentary elections.
As for the fact that Mr. Korchynskyi is a "conditional oppositionist," one can judge at least from the fact that administrative resources were used to ensure the presence of young people in the hall. In particular, this was noticeable with regard to students of the Lutsk Humanitarian University and the Commercial Technical College, in whose premises this event took place.