It’s been a long year.
A global pandemic has struck the planet, killing over 1.8 million people and sickening over 80 million more. Political unrest shook multiple countries. The U.S. elected a new president and voted new lawmakers into office.
The year was no less eventful for Ukraine, keeping the Kyiv Post on its toes.
Iran shot down a Ukrainian airliner. There were multiple scandals and even a constitutional crisis, several government shakeups, and local elections. And, of course, there was the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown, and quarantine.
As you bid 2020 farewell and hope for brighter horizons in 2021, have a look at some of the Kyiv Post’s top stories of the year (in no particular order) according to our journalists and editors. It isn’t an exhaustive list, but it includes some of the most important, most shocking and most memorable stories of the year.
Looking for love in Ukraine, foreigners become victims
By Anna Myroniuk
Like it or not, Ukraine is a common destination for Western men looking to date or seeking wives. Sometimes those relationships work out. Sometimes they don’t. Other times, the men become the victims of relationship scams, spending thousands of dollars on women they love, only to discover that those women — or the dating sites where the men found them — are just taking them for a ride. The Kyiv Post’s Anna Myroniuk spoke with three victims of such scams about their experiences for this story.
White chopper over rainforest: Ukraine’s Congo peacekeepers
By Illia Ponomarenko, Volodymyr Petrov
Despite fighting a protracted war on its own territory, Ukraine sends its top helicopter pilots and technicians to take part in a United Nations peacekeeping mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country tortured by endemic poverty, protracted armed conflicts, and deadly epidemics. Their mission is to evacuate the sick and wounded, transport UN personnel, and even go into action. The Kyiv Post spent two weeks in central Africa with the Ukrainian aviators to tell their story.
The 1996 Murder That Changed The Donbas
By Olga Rudenko
For many in today’s Ukraine, the name of Yevhen Shcherban is a distant memory. But his life and, even more so, his death shaped the country as we know it. In the 1990s, Shcherban was the almighty business mogul of eastern Ukraine — “the master of the Donbas” and Ukraine’s first oligarch. Years before the “richest Ukrainians” rankings, he was most likely the richest man in the country. Several gunshots at the Donetsk airport in November 1996 starkly altered Ukraine’s future.
By the Kyiv Post video team
This 10-part video series examines some of Ukraine’s most pressing ecological issues and tells the story of the people fighting to protect the country’s environment. The project was a massive endeavor that took multiple months. It also represents the Kyiv Post’s most exhaustive coverage of the country’s environment yet.
Rape case exposing systemic police brutality goes to trial
By Bermet Talant
Six months ago, Nelya Pogrebytska, a 26-year-old woman from a small village in Kyiv Oblast, was raped and tortured at a police station in Kaharlyk, a town of over 13,000 people located 80 kilometers south of Kyiv. The brutal crime shocked not only the town, but the entire nation and provoked an outburst of anger over Ukraine’s failed police reform. Now, Ukrainian prosecutors are about to bring the case to trial, a source of hope in a country where rape often goes unpunished.
Young, popular, pro-Russian: Blogger Anatoly Shariy dives into Ukrainian politics
By Oleksiy Sorokin
Ukraine’s pro-Russian elites are making a comeback. And the new ace in their hand is Anatoly Shariy, a young, pro-Russian blogger. Despite living in the European Union since 2012, Shariy has amassed a huge following online and he is working to discredit Ukraine in the eyes of Western politicians. Though he lacks a concrete political platform, Shariy has managed to become the new face of Russia’s political agenda in Ukraine.
Love finds a way: Weddings continue in Kyiv despite quarantine
By Toma Istomina, Volodymyr Petrov
COVID-19 has changed many aspects of life around the globe. But it hasn’t affected couples’ desire to tie the knot. Despite a restrictive nationwide quarantine earlier this year, only about 10% of the couples that planned to get married during that time in Kyiv canceled or rescheduled their ceremony. The majority decided to go ahead. The Kyiv Post went to the central registry office to meet the couples marrying under quarantine.
Crowded Ukrainian hospitals short on beds, oxygen, staff
By Bermet Talant
In November, Ukraine’s hospitals saw some of the greatest strain that they have faced since the start of the pandemic. As the government continued to add new hospital beds, they faced critical shortages of other important resources: medical workers and oxygen.
75 years after defeating Nazis, elderly veterans recall their days at war
By Illia Ponomarenko, Kostyantyn Chernichkin and Volodymyr Petrov
It has been 75 years since the day Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered to the victorious Allies after six years of the most brutal war in human history. As Ukraine marked its Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation on May 8 and Victory Day on May 9, the Kyiv Post met with several elderly war veterans living in Kyiv and asked them to share the stories of their youth, their days in arms and their destiny after World War II.
Mystery investor buys historic Dnipro Hotel for $41 million
By Natalia Datskevych
In 2020, Ukraine’s long-awaited large-scale privatization officially began. On July 15, the state-owned four-star Dnipro Hotel, located in the Kyiv city center, was sold for $41 million to a private investor through the ProZorro.Sale online platform. The Kyiv Post looked at the mystery surrounding the investor and spoke to the hotel’s staff about what they expected from the sale.
Forest fires destroy villages in Zhytomyr Oblast (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
By Kostyantyn Chernichkin and Ruslan Batytskyi
For two weeks in April, forest fires raged through Zhytomyr Oblast and wiped out several small villages, leaving dozens of people homeless at a time when most Ukrainians had to stay home due to the nationwide quarantine. The Kyiv Post traveled to the region to bear witness to the destruction.
How a fake site leaked real documents in major Ukrainian court case
By Matthew Kupfer and Anna Myroniuk
It was a huge scoop by a Western media outlet. An American news site had published excerpts from a report by corporate investigations firm Kroll implicating Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky and two of his business associates in withdrawing money from PrivatBank during its 2016 nationalization — claims that were the subject of important litigation in Ukraine. The excerpts from the report were real, but the site was a fake Chicago newspaper with journalists who didn’t really exist. How’s how the Kyiv Post found that out.
How Ukrainian plane crash went from ‘engine failure’ to ‘Iranian attack’
By Matthew Kupfer, Illia Ponomarenko and Vyacheslav Hnatyuk
Early on Jan. 8, a Ukraine International Airlines passenger plane crashed shortly after takeoff from the airport in Tehran, Iran. In the wake of the catastrophe, Iran blamed engine issues. But that version didn’t hold long. As investigators worked on the ground, the consensus began to shift. Soon, it became clear: Iran had shot down the plane. The Kyiv Post examined how that change took place.
Hiding behind his wife? Ex-MP Georgii Logvynsky married well, escapes prosecution
By Oleksiy Sorokin
Ukrainian lawmakers have used all manner of creative means to elude law enforcement once their parliamentary immunity expires or is revoked. One former member of the Verkhovna Rada is alleged to have found a novel means to steer clear of criminal charges: Investigators say he is dodging legal action by trying to extend his wife’s tenure as a judge at the European Court of Human Rights that grants her and, by extension, him, immunity from prosecution.
