Behold as Fyodor neatly ties the last few posts together.

From the Hamilton Spectator:

Gadhafi’s voluptuous Ukrianian ‘nurse’ bails out

As Libya’s popular uprising closes in on Moammar Gadhafi, he has been abandoned by top military officers, diplomats and even entire military bases, which have flipped to the opposition.

Now he may have lost someone even more important: his Ukrainian nurse.

According to leaked American diplomatic cables, Gadhafi has rarely gone without the companionship of his personal nurse. The cables hinted at something more than a medical relationship with the woman, described by the State Department as a “voluptuous blonde.”

A Ukrainian newspaper reported Sunday that the nurse, Galyna Kolotnytskaya, was on an evacuation flight home over the weekend.

Kolotnytskaya’s relationship to the eccentric 68-year-old leader remains unclear, though she was certainly among the inner circle of female figures whom Gadhafi at times trusted more than men. He also often travelled with a posse of female bodyguards.

The report in the newspaper Segodnya, based on an interview with Kolotnytskaya’s daughter, could not be independently confirmed.

The report, like the diplomatic cables, raised but did not answer lingering questions about Kolotnytskaya’s role in the pre-uprising leadership structure in Tripoli. It noted speculation in Ukraine on whether she had a romantic relationship with Gadhafi, who is married to two other women, one of whom is also a nurse, and what influence she might have had with him.

The American diplomatic memorandums released by the anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks said Kolotnytskaya was constantly by Gadhafi’s side when he visited New York in 2009 for a UN General Assembly meeting. The cables, though, also described Gadhafi as a hypochondriac, lending support to those who argue that her primary duties were medical.

Kolotnytskaya’s flight arrived in Kiev early Sunday morning, the newspaper reported. The Ukrainian Ministry of Emergency Situations has been staging a major airlift of medical personnel out of Libya. Before the uprising began two weeks ago, an estimated 3,000 Ukrainian doctors and nurses worked in hospitals throughout Libya.

In the interview, Kolotnytskaya’s daughter, Tetiana Kolotnytskaya, played down any special relationship between her mother and the Libyan leader. She said that her mother went to Libya nine years ago, initially to work in a hospital in Tripoli, and that she was later on Gadhafi’s personal nursing staff.

“Other Ukrainian women are also working as his nurses,” she said. “Mom is one of them. For some reason, he does not trust these matters to the Libyans.”