A SHIFT AT THE TOP OF UKRAINE’S SECURITY ESTABLISHMENT.

President Leonid Kuchma yesterday released General Volodymyr Radchenko from the post of chairman of Ukraine’s Security Service and appointed Leonid Derkach in his place. Derkach has a long record of close association with Kuchma. Born in 1939 in Dnipropetrovsk, Derkach graduated from that city’s university in engineering (1970) and from the KGB Higher School (1973). He worked, successively, as an engineer at the Pivdenmash missile plant in the city of Dnipropetrovsk and as deputy head of the Ukrainian KGB’s Dnipropetrovsk Region Department. Kuchma was the general director of Pivdenmash for part of that time. During Kuchma’s presidential tenure, Derkach became deputy chairman of Ukraine’s Security Service (1994-95) and chief of the country’s Customs Service (1995-98).

Radchenko, also a former Ukrainian KGB career officer, headed independent Ukraine’s Security Service from 1995 to 1998. Kuchma appointed him yesterday to the post of first deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council–a body nominally chaired by Kuchma and operationally run by its First Secretary Volodymyr Horbulin. There was no immediate word concerning the status of Aleksandr Razumkov, who has served since last year as the first deputy secretary of that Council. Razumkov was identified as a prime mover behind the rapprochement with Russia as a means of securing the Kremlin’s endorsement for the presidential camp in Ukraine’s recent elections.

CENTER-RIGHT COALITION TO GOVERN MOLDOVA.