Police found journalist Oleksandr Kuchynsky and his wife dead in a village of Bogorodychne near Slovyansk in war-torn Donetsk Oblast in the evening on Nov. 29.
Interior Ministry doesn’t think the murder, conducted with a knife, is somehow related to Kuchynsky’s journalistic investigations. Robbery seems to be more likely, according to the police report.
Denys Kazansky, a blogger from Donetsk, posted a comment on Facebook saying that Kuchynsky hasn’t been in a focus of the public attention recently.
Kuchynsky, 57, was a chief editor of Criminal Express, a newspaper in Donetsk covering the crime news. He was close to Volodymyr Malyshev, a police general and former chief security officer at System Capital Management, a holding belonging to Ukraine’s richest man and Donbas’s major figure Rinat Akhmetov.
A journalist wrote extensively on the criminal gangs of the Donbas, gaining popularity with his book “Chronicle of Donetsk Mafia”.
Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts have been known for the widespread organized criminal activity that reached its peak in the 1990s. Shakhtar Donetsk football club president Ahatiy Bragin was killed through the bomb explosion in 1995 during Shakhtar’s home game amid local clans’ fight for the business property. Afterwards, Akhmetov inherited presidency at Shakhtar from Bragin.
Another local businessman Evgen Shcherban, owner of the Industrial Union of Donbas, a steel-making holding, was murdered in 1996. Sergiy Taruta, Donetsk Governor until Oct. 10, holds a minority stake in the IUD.
Givi Nemsadze, an alleged leader of the criminal gang in Donetsk, was arrested and accused of having a relation to murdering as many as 57 people, but was released by a court decision in September of 2010, during the rule of Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s president in 2010-2014 who was overthrown by the EuroMaidan Revolution in February.
A native of Yenakiyeve in Donetsk Oblast, Yanukovych spent two terms in prison for robbery and physical violence in the 1960s and 1970s.
Kyiv Post associate business editor Ivan Verstyuk can be reached at [email protected].
