Cherkasy-based journalist Vadym Komarov died on June 20 after being severely beaten on May 4. He had been in a coma since the murder attempt, which happened in Cherkasy, a city of 277,944 people located 188 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.
Journalists believe he was targeted for assassination because of his investigative journalism exposing corruption among local officials and politicians. No suspects have been identified and no arrests reported.
Komarov “was inconvenient for many local politicians and raised inconvenient questions about corruption in Cherkasy,” Serhiy Tomilenko, head of the National Union of Ukrainian Journalists, said on Facebook. “The level of physical aggression against journalists in Ukraine is unacceptably high. Systemwide impunity provokes new attacks.”
The International Federation of Journalists and the European Federation of Journalists also condemned the attack and urged the Ukrainian authorities to ensure a safe working environment for journalists and bring those responsible to justice.
The police say are considering three possible motives: That he was killed because of his journalism, as part of a robbery or simply that he got into a fight with someone, Cherkasy police spokesman Dmytro Gryshchenko said.
Komarov investigated the embezzlement of government funds in Cherkasy, illegal construction projects, corruption at Cherkasy City Council and the circumstances of a riot at a local prison.
This is not the first attack on Komarov.
In 2016 an unknown person shot at Komarov and missed. Komarov said then he attributed the assault to his professional activities, including investigations against judges and law enforcement officials.
The police opened a hooliganism investigation into the 2016 assault.
Komarov, who had a wife and two children, said in 2016 he had also been assaulted in 1994.
More than 50 Ukrainian journalists have been killed or have died under suspicious circumstances since Ukraine became an independent nation in 1991.
One of the most prominent ones, Ukrainska Pravda founder Georgy Gongadze, was kidnapped and decapitated on Sept. 16, 2000. Four top police officials, including Oleksiy Pukach, have since been convicted of the journalist’s murder. However, the investigation has not revealed who ordered the murder, although the trail went to ex-President Leonid Kuchma and his top subordinates. Kuchma denies the accusations of wrongdoing.
Igor Aleksandrov, a journalist based in the Donbas and a critic of then Donetsk Oblast Governor Viktor Yanukovych’s administration, was killed in 2001. The suspected perpetrators of the murder were jailed in 2006, but the organizers have not been identified.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian-Belarusian journalist Pavlo Sheremet was assassinated in 2016 in central Kyiv when a bomb placed under his car exploded while he was driving it. Neither the perpetrators nor the organizers have been found.
