Starting Oct. 4, Ukrainian journalist Myroslava Gongadze will be the new chief of Voice Of America's Ukrainian Service, the U.S. federal broadcaster has announced.
A law graduate and award-winning broadcast journalist, Gongadze joined the Ukrainian Service in 2004. She is the main anchor of Chas-Time, a daily 15-minute news program covering world events and U.S.-Ukraine relations.
Her coverage of the EuroMaidan Revolution raised her international profile, as did her role as moderator of Ukraine’s 2014 parliamentary election debates. Since Sept 10, 2015, Gongadze has hosted a weekly interview program on First National TV, entitled Prime Time with Myroslava Gongadze. Her first guest was Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, with other interviewees including Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko and U.S. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, the co-chair of the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus bi-partisan support group for Ukraine.
Born in Berezhany, Ternopil Oblast, Gongadze was granted political asylum in the United States in 2001 following the murder of her husband, the high-profile investigative journalist Georgiy Gongadze. The organizers of the crime have never been brought to justice, but ex-President Leonid Kuchma has long been suspected of ordering the murder.
In 2005, Gongadze won a landmark case against the Ukrainian government in the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled that Ukrainian authorities had conducted an inadequate investigation into her husband’s death.
In 2010, she was ranked at number 52 on Focus Magazine’s list of the 100 Most Powerful Ukrainian Women.
Kyiv Post staff writer Sandra MacKenzie can be reached at [email protected]
