Ukrainian first lady visits native Chicago

CHICAGO -- 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.

Chumachenko and her husband, President Viktor Yushchenko, were to arrive today 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.

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 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 Ukrainian flags flutter in the streets.

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

Within months of the Soviet Union's 1991 unraveling, Chumachenko was living in Kiev.

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

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.

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."