Over 50 journalists have been killed in Ukraine since the country gained independence in 1991, despite the country being considered less bound by media restrictions than its other former Soviet neighbors.
Editor’s note: On Sept. 16, 2000, journalist Georgiy Gongadze was kidnapped and later murdered. In 2013, a Ukrainian court sentenced a former police general, Oleksiy Pukach, to life in prison for the murder of Gongadze. But eighteen years later others implicated in the murder, including former President Leonid Kuchma, have never gone on trial. It wasn’t the only time when violence against journalists went unpunished.
The vast majority of the murders occurred during the early years of independence, under Presidents Leonid Kravchuk (1991-1994) and Leonid Kuchma (1994-2004).
Under Viktor Yushchenko (2005-2010), only two murders took place, while there were three under Ukraine’s fourth president, Viktor Yanukovych (2010-2014.)
The murder of Pavel Sheremet on July 20 is the second murder of a journalist under President Petro Poroshenko’s term outside of the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine. But so far five Ukrainian journalists and five foreign journalists have lost their lives as a result of the war.
Ukraine is one of the most dangerous places in the world to operate as a journalist, according to Freedom House.
Below are details of some of the most notable murders of journalists:
1995: Viktor Frelikh was a freelancer journalist at Molody Bukovynets newspaper who died from poisoning by an unknown substance in Chernivsti in 1995. He was investigating a rocket fuel leak that supposedly caused an epidemic of alopecia. He had received death threats before his death.
1997: Borys Derevianko was the editor in chief of the Verchirnya Odesa newspaper. He was fatally shot at point-blank range on his way to work near the newspaper’s offices in 1997. The chief regional prosecutor declared the murder a contract killing. Local authorities announced that they had arrested a suspect, who confessed to killing Derevianko. However, no details about this confession were released.
1997: Petro Shevchenko, a reporter for Kyivskiye Vedomosti newspaper, was found hanged in an abandoned building in 1997. Kyiv police labeled Shevchenko’s death a suicide, but his colleagues at the newspaper believe he was murdered because he had co-authored a series of articles, published weeks before his death, about disputes between the mayor of Luhansk and the local branch of Ukraine’s Security Service.
2000: Georgiy Gongadze was the editor of the Ukrainska Pravda news website. He was kidnapped on Sept. 16, 2000, and his headless corpse found in a forest near the town of Tarashcha in Kyiv Oblast in November of that year. In 2013, a Ukrainian court sentenced a former police general, Oleksiy Pukach, to life in prison for the murder of Gongadze. But others implicated in the murder, including former President Leonid Kuchma, have never gone on trial.
2010: Vasyl Klymentiev, the chief editor and investigative journalist of Noviy Styl, was abducted and is presumed dead by police. His mobile phone was found in a boat floating on the Pechenizky reservoir in Kharkiv.
2014: Vyacheslav Veremiy, a journalist for Vesti newspaper in Kyiv, was killed in Kyiv early on Feb. 18, 2014 on his way home at night in a taxi after one of the deadliest days of the Euromaidan Revolution. A group of unknown men in balaclavas shot him at the intersection of Volodymyrska and Velyka Zhytomyrska streets. He died later in hospital from his injuries.
