Ukraine's First Lady Heading to Chicago

CHICAGO, IL -- When Kathy Chumachenko left for Europe 14 years ago, she was a young American pursuing a career and adventure overseas. The Chicago native is returning as the first lady of Europe's sixth most populous country, the wife of Ukraine's new president, who survived an apparent assassination attempt by poisoning.


The First Lady Listening To A Toast From The President
Chumachenko and her husband, President Viktor Yushchenko, were to arrive Sunday in Washington to start a four-day tour of the United States with stops in Chicago and Boston. She said the trip is a celebration of Yushchenko's dramatic election victory following a popular uprising last year.

"I will be coming back after a very moving period in our lives," Chumachenko told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Friday from Ukraine. "We went through very, very difficult times. But this will be a time to enjoy the outcome."

Members of the Chicago area's 100,000-strong Ukrainian-American community see the visit as a homecoming for Chumachenko, who was raised here by parents who emigrated from Ukraine after World War II and who became a Ukrainian citizen only last month.

Shops in Chicago's Ukrainian Village have taped photos of Yushchenko, 51, and Chumachenko, 43, to their storefronts, and yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flags flutter in the streets.

"It's not every day you have a Chicagoan who's the wife of a president of such a large country," said John Oharenko, a community leader.

Chumachenko's life has unfolded like the plot of a mystery thriller, from high-stakes geopolitics to attempted murder.

Her husband's scarred face is a remnant of the dioxin poisoning that nearly killed him during the presidential campaign. Chumachenko became a target herself, denounced in opposition leaflets as a U.S. spy.

After graduating from Georgetown University and earning an MBA at the University of Chicago, she got a job in the public liaison office of the Reagan White House. There, she delved into Ukrainian affairs, recalled Bruce Bartlett, who worked in the office of policy development.

"She was dedicated in one way or another to seeing Ukraine free one day," he said.

Independence came in 1991 when the Soviet Union unraveled.

Within months, Chumachenko was living in Kiev, where she was immediately struck by the stark reality of life in the former communist country.

"I was impressed with so many people," she said. "But I was also disappointed with the poverty and the lack of hope in people."

Chumachenko, who was working for the accounting firm KPMG, met Yushchenko in 1993 when he was head of Ukraine's Central Bank.

"I think we were immediately impressed with each other, with our mutual love for Ukraine and with our many common interests in art, culture and history," she said. They married in 1998.

Yushchenko became prime minister in 1999, but was ousted by pro-Communist parliamentary groups two years later. At about the same time, political attacks on his American-born wife intensified and continued through the recent campaign.

Chumachenko said nothing prepared her for her husband's dioxin poisoning. On the night he fell ill in September, she had kissed him and detected a strange taste on his lips. Within weeks, his face had become badly disfigured.

"I knew the stakes were very high for our country and that if they could not hurt my husband politically they might try to do it physically," she said. "But the way this happened to my husband wasn't expected, it was so unusual -- like out of an old Soviet novel."

Despite the near-fatal illness and several contested runoffs with former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, Yushchenko won the presidency on a wave of popular support.

His campaign also received support from Ukrainians in the United States. Chicago was among four U.S. cities where Ukrainians could vote in the election; Yushchenko won 4,417 votes cast there to Yanukovych's 14.

Chumachenko, who goes by Kateryna Chumachenko-Yushchenko in Ukraine, still regularly fields questions about her identity. Her answer, in her American-accented Ukrainian, has been unequivocal: She is first and foremost Ukrainian.

But she also acknowledges a debt to the land of her birth.

"It gave haven to my parents after the war. And I have the democratic values of America because I grew up and was educated there," she said. "But I was also very much raised Ukrainian. I think I have a good blend of the two worlds."