In my naivete, five years ago I implored incoming President Petro Poroshenko to solve the Sept. 16, 2000, murder of Ukrainian-Georgian journalist Georgiy Gongadze, one of the biggest stains on independent Ukrainian history.
No such luck. Like his predecessors Viktor Yanukovych and Viktor Yushchenko before him, Poroshenko did not have the moral courage to appoint a prosecutor who would put an end to a national nightmare that will turn 19 years old this autumn.
And so, besides congratulating President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, I also lay down the same challenge: Solve the Gongadze murder.
Ukraine will never move ahead as a democracy unless we know whether ex-President Leonid Kuchma and other top officials, such as former Kuchma chief of staff Volodymyr Lytvyn, ordered his murder. We need to achieve some national reconciliation over this dark chapter, and this would most certainly involve his widow, Myroslava Gongadze, and Georgiy’s now two adult twin daughters, Salome and Nana.
Righting historical wrongs
As ex-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John F. Tefft told me in a 2010 interview: “Those historical wrongs don’t go away. They need to be righted for every society.”
Only four Interior Ministry police officers went to prison for the Gongadze murder, including a high-ranking general, Oleksiy Pukach, who has said he was acting on the orders of Kuchma, Lytvyn and ex-Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko, who died from two gunshot wounds to the head on March 5, 2005, the day he was supposed to give testimony in the case.
The impunity in the Gongadze case helps fuel the lawless environment which gave Ukraine also the unsolved murders of journalist Pavel Sheremet on July 20, 2016, and of activist Kateryna Gandziuk on Nov. 4, 2018.
Yovanovitch’s warning
And the problems remain today with freedom of speech and security of journalists, as U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie L. Yovanovitch, who leaves her post today, noted in a landmark March 5 speech:
Ukraine’s democratic goals cannot be achieved “without a robust, independent media informing the public and policymakers. That’s why we have been concerned by reports of pressure on independent journalists. Intimidation and harassment have no place in a modern democracy. Threats to independent journalism undermine the Ukrainian people’s fight against corruption. And they undermine Ukraine’s security – because the more vulnerable an individual or institution is to corruption, the weaker that society, the weaker that democracy. So, those who support a stable, economically strong, democratic and inclusive Ukraine must be the independent media’s strongest supporters.”
So it’s not good enough to wait until Sept. 16, light our candles on Independence Square, relieve our guilt by saying a prayer for justice and be done with it.
Gongadze Award on May 21
This is why we have new hope with the May 20 inauguration of Zelenskiy and also another big event on May 21. That is the date of the launch of the Georgiy Gongadze Award. It comes on what would be his 50th birthday.
The long-overdue award is founded by PEN Ukraine in partnership with the Alumni Association of the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School and Ukrainska Pravda, the online news site that Georgiy, or Giya, started with Olena Prytula in 2000 and that still runs strong today as one of the best sources of news in Ukraine.
The Ukraine Crisis Media Center is an official information partner of the award. And I, thanks to my friend Myroslava, get the honor of making opening remarks on May 21.
The award ceremony is open to the public and will take place at 7 p.m. in Taras Shevchenko National Museum, 12 Shevchenko Boulevard, in the Atrium Hall. The opening words will come from PEN Ukraine executive director Tetyana Teren. Then I will speak, followed by Myroslava, the presentation of the nominees and a buffet afterwards.
3 finalists
One of these three deserving journalists will win: Vakhtang Kipiani, Taras Prokopyshyn and Serhiy Rakhmanin.
Kipiani is editor-in-chief of the online media Historic Truth and the TV show by the same name on ZIK TV channel.
Prokopyshyn is the chief executive director and co-founder of The Ukrainians media project and founder of the Creatives project, an online magazine about the leaders of creative industries.
Rakhmanin is the first deputy editor of Mirror of the Week (Dzerkalo Tyzhnya) newspaper.
A total of 21 people were nominated for the prize which carries a cash award of $3,000.
Award for courage
Most importantly, however, the award is meant to honor journalists “who are not discouraged by challenges, are able to find innovative ways to represent information, encourage the implementation of liberal reforms in Ukraine, open new possibilities for the media community, are able to be consistent in their activities and stay true to the professional principles and values.”
The jury for the award includes: Myroslava, who heads the Voice of America’s Ukrainian Service; PEN Ukraine’s president Andriy Kurkov; Ukrainska Pravda co-founder Olena Prytula; head of the Alumni Association of the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School Mykola Demchenko; member of the supervisory board of Ukraine’s National Public Broadcasting Company Yevhen Hlibovytskyi; Ukrainian Week journalist Alla Lazareva; dean of the Kyiv Mohyla Business School Oleksandr Savruk; journalist Larysa Denysenko and history professor and author Serhii Plokhii.
Poroshenko’s failures
This is what I wrote on May 27, 2014, just before Poroshenko was inaugurated as president:
“All evidence in the last nearly 14 years points to Kuchma as having ordered the crime. Prosecutors have said as much. He claims he is innocent. There is only one fair way to find out: Put him on trial and let the evidence come out publicly in a fair, judicial hearing. The charges have been blocked for political reasons. And, for political reasons, the trial must go ahead if Ukraine is to ever start coming to grips with a sorry past so it can move forward to a brighter future. The mere act of putting Kuchma on trial will signal to everyone in Ukraine that business as usual is over and that no one is above the law, especially when it comes to murder.
“Poroshenko needs to go a step further and become the first president to end political control of the nation’s judges, prosecutors and police and to install a true citizen-jury system. Jurors may get the verdicts wrong from time to time, but, as the axiom goes, it is better to let a guilty person go free than to imprison an innocent person. And there’s no better judge, in the final analysis, than your fellow citizens.”
And then I closed with: “So until I see Kuchma stand trial, I will remain skeptical about whether the new president is willing to be Ukraine’s first chief executive to put national interests above his own.”
Poroshenko failed the acid test and many more, which is why Ukrainians voted him out of office.
Will the same be true of Zelenskiy in five years time?
