The ruling effectively shields the two suspected masterminds – former President Leonid Kuchma and current parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, who served as Kuchma’s chief of staff.

Credible evidence exists implicating Kuchma and Lytvyn, who both deny involvement. That includes testimony by the alleged killer, former Interior Ministry General Oleksiy Pukach, and audio recordings made by a former presidential bodyguard.

Yet the almost 11-year murder investigation seems set to end without going higher up the chain-of-command than late Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko, whose death in 2005 from two gunshot wounds to the head was ruled a suicide.

The authorities under President Viktor Yanukovych are demonstrating the same lack of desire to get to the bottom of who ordered the murder as his predecessors.

If the authorities had shown any of the creative zeal in investigating the case that they have invested in protecting the most senior officials from blame, the case surely would not have dragged on for over a decade.

Dead men can’t talk – either to defend themselves or to point the finger at someone else – which is why Kravchenko is a convenient place to end the investigation. If prosecutors don’t look any further than him, we may never find out who really ordered the murder and how involved officials above him were.

In continuing the cover-up, the current authorities are proving that for all their bombastic defense of their record on democracy, they are failing to pass a crucial test – to protect citizens from wrongdoers by ensuring a thorough investigation into crimes, no matter how highly ranked and well-connected the alleged perpetrators.

Read also ‘Gongadze probe shifts from Kuchma, Lytvyn‘.