Mrs. Yuschenko

Peter Robinson at The Corner:
"Do you know who Yushchenko's wife is?" John Podhoretz just asked in an email. "Turns out he's married to Kathy Chumachenko, who worked in public liaison when we were at the White House!" Kathy Chumachenko, now Kathy Yushchenko, was one of the most completely delightful people in the Reagan White House, a Reaganite's Reaganite.

From Reagan staffer to first lady of Ukraine. How the Gipper would have loved it.

Bruce Bartlett:

As it happens, I know Yushchenko’s wife, Katherine Chumachenko, an American of Ukrainian descent. She and I met in the late 1980s when she was working in the human rights bureau at the State Department. Later, we worked together at the White House, where she was in the Office of Public Liaison, and the Treasury Department, where she was in the executive secretary’s office.

Kathy — she is now known as Kateryna — is one of the brightest, most dedicated conservatives I have ever known. She has a MBA from the University of Chicago and is well versed in that school’s free-market economics tradition. The first time we ever met was at a Heritage Foundation event.

Anyone who met Kathy quickly discovered that the liberation of the Ukraine from communist tyranny was her primary mission in life, to the exclusion of almost everything else. So it was no surprise to me when she moved to Kiev soon after it broke free of Moscow’s control in 1991.