Journalist and blogger Olena Bilozerska has managed to recover some of the equipment and material which was illegally seized from her home in Kiev on 12 January. The police interrogation on 8 February included questions about her sources. The police returned some items but have kept 162 CDs and DVDs which contain material needed for her work. She regained her camera and video camera, neither of which was working. The authorities also returned her computer, which had been dismantled.
Kyiv’s city general architect has been officially reprimanded for locking a journalist in a room during a council meeting. The incident took place at a meeting of Kyiv’s planning council on the 2 February. Serhiy Tselovalnyk walked past a group of journalists, ignoring their requests for comment. Olha Koshelenko, a journalist for the 1+1 television company, pursued him, and he forced her into a utility room and locked the door. Koshelenko was eventually released. City chairman Oleksandr Popov condemned Tselovalnyk’s actions.
The prosecutor general’s office has completed its investigation into the role that Oleksiy Pukach, a former intelligence office played in the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze and has announced is unable to lay any further charges despite evidence linking politicians to the murder. Pukach who at the time of the killing was the chief of the external surveillance department at the Ukrainian Interior Ministry will be put on trial in January. Gongadze was a Ukrainian journalist of Georgian descent killed in 2000. He was investigating high-level corruption allegedly involving senior officials, including president Leonid Kuchma. In March 2008, three former police officers were convicted for their role in Gongadze’s murder.
A witness in the case of missing journalist Vasyl Klymentyev has also gone missing. According to deputy editor Petro Matvienko, the key witness disappeared last week. He refused to reveal the person’s name for fear of jeopardising the investigation, but said he had verified the information with law enforcement agencies. The police department in Kharkiv claimed no knowledge of the witness’s disappearance. In a further development, Klymentyev’s lawyer was locked in his appartment by police. Officers forced their way into Vyacheslav Ismaylov’s home on 2 September, and barricaded him inside, saying they were investigating a case involving him. The newspaper lawyer fears that police could plant something in the appartment that would be compromising to him.
Police in eastern Ukraine have reclassified the case of a missing journalist as ”premeditated murder“. Vasyl Klymentyev, chief editor and reporter for newspaper Novyi Stil, was last seen on 11 August getting into a BMW with an unknown man. The Kharkiv-based weekly newspaper is well known for reporting on corruption in local government and law enforcement. Klymentyev’s most recent articles criticised a local prosecutor and head of the regional fiscal police, and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has urged investigators to focus on his journalism as a motive. Klymentyev’s deputy said that the editor had been threatened several times before and had been offered bribes to keep damaging information quiet.
The broadcast licences of TV5 Kanal and TVi have been cancelled by the courts. The two stations are regarded as being critical of President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration. The day before this decision was taken, journalists at TV5 Kanal released an open letter claiming they were being harassed by the SBU, Ukraine’s main security agency. The wife of SBU director, Valeriy Khoroshkovskiy, runs one of TV5 and TVi’s competitors.
On Monday, government officials attempted to prevent publication of an embarrassing video of President Viktor Yanukovych. The video shows a burst of wind flinging a wreath at the President during an official ceremony with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev. Despite the government’s best efforts, it was obtained by the website Ukrayinska Pravda from an undisclosed television crew, and posted on YouTube. Yanukovych and Medvedev were attending a ceremony to commemorate World War II veterans.
The unsolved case of Ukrainian journalist Georgiy Gongadze highlights concerns for press freedom in post-Soviet states