Editor's Note: Ukraine in the 1990s was rife with gangster-style murders. Those who spoke out against the criminal gangland and the official corruption behind the lawlessness simply risked their lives. Murder silenced Vecharnyaya Odessa founder and editor Boris Derevyanko. Here is the Aug. 14, 1997, story, another of the Kyiv Post classic.
ODESA — The outspoken editor of the city’s leading daily was gunned down on his way to work Monday Aug. 11, police said. Vecharnyaya Odessa founder and editor Boris Derevyanko, who frequently accused local officials of corruption in the pages of his newspaper and from his seat on the Odessa City Council, died after he was shot several times at close range less than a block from the newsroom.
A suspect in the killing was detained Tuesday. Police have provided little information about the arrest, but Odessas ART Television reported Wednesday that the man is a foreign citizen and probably a hired assassin.
At a press conference Tuesday, acting Prosecutor General Oleh Lytvak said the editors critical statements in the paper about the situation in Odessa and the Odessa region may have prompted the killing. The killing of Derevyanko has shaken Ukrainian society, and we will do all we can to solve this case, Lytvak said
The slaying was the latest in a string of crimes against journalists in Ukraine. Lytvak said 42 crimes involving journalists have been committed in 1996 and 1997, resulting in three deaths.
In Odessa alone, Vechernyaya Odessa reporter Sergei Lebedev survived a murder attempt in 1995, and his colleague Vitaly Chechik was severly beaten earlier this year.
Odessa Region Chief Prosecutor Viktor Ivanov called Derevyankos murder a contract killing Monday, and offered a Hr 5, 000 ($2, 700) reward for information leading to the killers arrest.
Odessa Region Governor Ruslan Bodelan condemned the murder as “an act of political terror … by evil forces for whom human life is nothing in comparison to personal interests, ambitions, and greed for capital.”
The office of Odessa Mayor Eduard Hurvits also condemned the slaying.
The 57-year-old Derevyanko had been beaten twice since 1995, and received numerous threats that he attributed in an April interview with the Post to our newspapers commitment to constant opposition to all those in positions of power in the city.
The attack took place at 8:10 a.m. in front of the apartment building at 51 Filatova St. in Odessas Cheremushki district, less than half a block from the office building in which Vechernyaya Odessa occupies the seventh floor.
“I let him off a block from the newspaper so he could walk to the rest of the way to work … and when he didn’t show up after what should have been a 10-minute walk we here at the newspaper began to get worried,” Derevyankos driver Antatoly Konorchenko told the Post. A Primorsky District traffic police foot patrol discovered and reported Derevyankos body at 8:20 a.m.
Police were circulating an artists sketch of the gunman based on descriptions of several witnesses to the killing. It was not clear Tuesday whether the suspect in police custody had been identified by eyewitnesses. Authorities differed in their accounts of Derevenkos wounds. Local police said he was struck once in the heart and once in the stomach. But Lytvak Thursday said the editor was shot four times: twice in the chest, once in the stomach and once in the back. Lytvak also said that police would analyze bullets recovered from the crime scene, while local investigators said they found no bullets, shell casings or weapons.
Lytvak said employees at the Vechernyaya Odessa reported that several men came by two or three days before the murder to ask about the location of Derevyankos office and his daily routine. Lytvak said police already had sketches of the visitors and were searching for them as well.
Reporters covering Lytvaks press conference said they hoped Derevyankos killing would revive police probes into the deaths of other colleagues. A Kievskie Vedomosti correspondent was found dead in Kyiv in March. Police ruled his death a suicide, but colleagues said they believed it was a murder.
Also this year, the culture editor of the Kyiv daily Den died of burns he and colleagues said were inflicted by assailants who poured gasoline on him and lit it afire. Police said he electrocuted himself while walking along a railway. (Staff writer Katya Gorchinskaya, Associated Press and Interfax news agencies contributed to this story.)
