Viktor Yushchenko almost gave his life for a free Ukraine.
At a dinner in Vienna in September 2004 - a few months before the Orange Revolution swept him to power - somebody fed him a near-lethal dose of dioxin.
He no longer has visible scars.
But the 59-year-old politician told EUobserver in Brussels on Wednesday (5 June) that the toxin still causes painful skin inflammations and that it has permanently damaged nerves in his legs.
He linked his would-be assassins to R...
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.