The Ukrainian journalist who pioneered reporting of Ukraine’s integration with Europe, Sergei Voropayev, died in Kyiv on Aug. 16, his friends and family have announced.
Voropayev
died as the result of a serious illness, Ukrainian news website Podrbnosti
reported. He was 40.
News of the
journalist’s death was posted on Facebook by the press secretary of the
Security Service of Ukraine, Olena Hytlianska, who was a personal friend of Voropayev.
“Sergei
Voropayev is gone. He’s gone to God so early!” Hytlianska wrote.
Voropayev lived
and worked in Brussels, where he was the correspondent for the Interfax-Ukraine
news agency for the last two years. Earlier, he worked in the same role for
Ukrainian news agency UNIAN. He was particularly interested in topics
concerning Ukraine’s integration into Europe, working with officials from the
European Union and NATO.
He also worked
with Interfax-Ukraine on the Euplus project, through which he provided on a
voluntary basis information on EU matters to journalists in Ukraine who had no
access to expensive, subscription-based news services.
“He put his
energy into Ukraine and its potential,” said his friend Olena Vashchenko, who works as a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.
Voropayev,
a graduate of Kyiv National Linguistics University, worked with a number of
other media over his 20-year career, including Ukrainian News and the First
National TV channel. He was a major source of news on EU integration for the
Ukrainian media.
“It hard to
believe that Sergei is gone… We were not
only colleagues, but also good friends,” Tetyana Vysotska, the chief editor of
the Independent News Bureau, told the Kyiv Post.
A requiem
service for the journalist was scheduled to be held on Aug. 18 at 11 a.m at the National Radio
Company of Ukraine.
