One stunning mystery in the battle over Ukraine’s future is whether pro-Western reform leader Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned in September – and, if not, what horrible illness ravaged his face overnight.
Yushchenko, 50, had the chiseled good looks of a movie star until the illness hit, but he was nearly unrecognizable – with a puffy, pockmarked and partially paralyzed face – when he left an Austrian hospital afterward.
Yushchenko charges that Ukrainian government officials poisoned him, possibly with a toxin like those used in biological weapons. His political foes suggest he ate bad sushi.