Ukraine’s SBU security service on Aug. 8 searched the office of popular Ukrainian news site Strana.ua and the apartments of two of the site’s employees.
The searches started around 9 a.m. and lasted more than four hours, according to Strana.ua. Along with the newsroom, SBU officers searched the apartments of two Strana’s employees, Veronika Kifichak and Kirill Malyshev.
Lawyer and former- justice Minister Olena Lukash wrote on her Facebook at 1:30 p.m. that the searches in the office had ended.
SBU spokesperson Olena Hitlyanska confirmed the searches had taken place in a statement issued on Aug. 8. She said that law enforcement had searched computers for materials that contained state secrets.
She said that the searches were being conducted under a criminal case opened against website’s chief editor, Ihor Huzhva, who faces charges of extortion and the disclosure of state secrets.
Huzhva was arrested June 23 after an overnight search of his office on charges of demanding $10,000 not to publish a story about an unnamed Ukrainian lawmaker’s private life and professional activities. He was bailed out for Hr 544,000 on June 28 by Strana’s deputy chief editor, Svetlana Kryukova.
During the June search, law enforcement found $10,000 in marked banknotes that they say Huzhva received as payment to kill a story.
According to a Pechersk District Court ruling published on July 31, SBU officers found during the search on June 22 a flash drive that contained secret information from the Defense Ministry.
Huzhva denied all of the allegations and said that the case against him had been fabricated. He said it was retaliation for his publication’s criticism of the authorities.
Huzhva founded Strana.ua in February 2016. Previously he served for two-and-a-half years as the editor-in-chief of the Vesti daily newspaper, which he also founded. Before that, he ran Segodnya, a popular daily newspaper owned by Ukraine’s richest person, Rinat Akhmetov.
Both Strana.ua and Vesti have often been criticized in Ukraine for their allegedly “anti-Ukrainian” editorial policies and shady sources of funding. Both publications have criticized the Ukrainian government, republished false statements by Russian-occupying forces in Donetsk and Luhansk oblast, and used slanted tabloid headlines.
