The Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office has granted permission to Ukrainian ex-president Leonid Kuchma to attend Moscow festivities on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Yury Gagarin's space flight, First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin said on Monday.
Earlier in the day Kuchma said that he would not be able to visit Moscow because the Prosecutor General's Office had called him in for questioning on Tuesday.
Kuchma, who is suspected of being involved in journalist Georgy Gongadze's murder, was to travel to Moscow to attend the events dedicated to the 50th anniversary of Yury Gagarin's space flight on April 12.
Earlier in April, Kuchma, who is under a travel ban because of current investigations over the murder of the journalist, asked the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office for permission to go to Moscow.
"Leonid Kuchma has received permission to leave Ukraine," said Kuzmin.
Ukrainian prosecutors in March opened a criminal case against Kuchma on suspicion of his involvement in the journalist's murder.
Shortly after the journalist's decapitated body was found in a forest near Kiev in November 2000, Kuchma's former bodyguard released a tape, which he had allegedly recorded in the ex-president's office.
The tape allegedly features a conversation, in which a voice that sounds like Kuchma's speaks of a plan to kill the journalist.
Kuchma has denied any involvement.
In June 2008, three former employees of the Interior Ministry's criminal investigations department were found guilty of murdering Gongadze. The officers said they killed the journalist on orders from the former head of the ministry's criminal investigations department, Lt. Gen. Oleksiy Pukach.
Pukach was arrested in the summer of 2009 and is now awaiting trial.
In September, prosecutors said Yuriy Kravchenko, interior minister in 2000, was also responsible for ordering the murder. Kravchenko purportedly committed suicide in 2005.
KIEV, April 11 (RIA Novosti)
