You're reading: Investigative journalists in Donetsk face threats, break-in attempts and spying

Oleksiy Matsuka, chief editor of Donetsk independent online newspaper Novosti Donbassa, was inside his office with a colleague at 9:50 a.m. on Sept. 24 when three unknown men attempted to break down the door.The men, who Matsuka saw through a peephole in the door, were dressed in black and wearing bomber jackets. For five minutes they pounded and kicked at the door in an attempt to knock it down, Matsuka said. He immediately called the police, but the men fled before their arrival at 10:30 a.m.

Igor Demin, head of Donetsk regional police press service, said that police are conducting a preliminary investigation into the matter.

Matsuka believes the attempted break-in is related to recent surveillance of them being carried out by people connected to Donetsk Regional State Administration officials, specifically its head Andriy Schyschatskyi. In a statement posted to the Donetsk Regional State Administration website on Sept. 26, Schyschatskyi said that he considers any pressure on media, by anyone, unacceptable.

“For me, freedom of speech are not just empty words. I am always ready to defend journalists,” he said.

His comments followed a formal request from Matsuka on the same day for protection from persecution.

Matsuka and his colleague Vitaliy Sizov allege that Schyschatskyi is behind a number of tenders awarded from municipal water company Voda Donbassa to companies whose owners are closely connected to Schyschatskyi.

“The hypothesis of our investigations is that the utility companies are in the ‘pockets’ of regional governors,” Sizov said. Voda Donbassa also did not respond immediately to the Kyiv Post’s request for comments.

In one scheme, two tenders totaling Hr 11.4 million were awarded to Donenergoprommontazh for the reconstruction of a pumping station in Makiyivka and services for installation, maintenance and repair of water testing equipment, Sizov reported.

The head of Donenergoprommontazh is a man named Evgeniy Aleksandrovich Morozov. The only competitor for this tender was a company called Meotida-C, which is headed by Morozov or someone with the same name.

The man responsible for awarding the tenders, Vadim Kotov, head of municipal water service Voda Donbassa, is “the governor’s (Andriy Schyschatskyi) man,” said Sizov.

“When Shyshatsky was a CEO of Khartsyzsk pipe plant, Kotov was a procurement director of this plant. When Shyshatsky was head of regional council, Kotov headed the council’s commission on land. In less than a month after Shyshatsky was appointed as governor, Kotov became head of Voda Donbassa,” he said.

The series of investigative reports were published between late August and mid-September on the website of Donetsk Pravda, a platform for Novosti Donbassa’s investigative and analytical articles. The alleged surveillance began immediately following the publication of those reports, Matsuka said.

Fearing retribution for their journalistic work, Sizov filed a report with the Donetsk Oblast prosecutor’s office. In it he outlines the extent of the spying, describing a time in which he deliberately rode a Donetsk trolley bus past his usual stop and to the end of the line to check whether he was being tailed.

Responding to Sizov’s report, Alla Kunik, a spokeswoman for the Donetsk Oblast prosecutor, told the Kyiv Post that her office had sent a response to Sizov on Sept. 20. “We have granted his request,” she said, without giving any details.

Sizov said that the prosecutor’s office had sent him a response ensuring him that a criminal case had been opened and that the matter would be investigated.

But he and Matsuka fear the surveillance will continue and escalate.

On Sept. 26, Matsuka awoke to find the message “Lyosha Matsuka, I love you,” scrawled in running red paint across his Donetsk apartment door.

“I think they are following us to know where we live and work,” Matuska said. “Now it is time to strike.”

Not the first threat

Matsuka has been the target of threats before. On the morning of July 31, 2011, unknown assailants barricaded his Donetsk apartment door with bags of cement, affixed a funeral wreath to them with the message “To Oleksiy Vitaliyovych, from grieving friends” and set the front door on fire.

Matsuka was not home at the time. A neighbor discovered the fire after smelling smoke and tried to extinguish it with water. When that didn’t work, the neighbor called the fire department, which put out the blaze.

“They wanted to burn me alive,” Matsuka said at the time.

Donetsk Mayor Oleksandr Lukyanchenko, under pressure from media rights groups in the days following, condemned the act and ordered a thorough investigation. Police in turn opened a criminal probe into the matter. However, more than two years later, the police have turned out no leads and have no further information about the event, Matsuka said.

Demin of the Donetsk regional police press service did not immediately comment on Matsuka’s case, saying that he would need more time to look into it.

The number of assaults on journalists has increased five-fold over the past five years, according to a joint report published in September by six Ukrainian media watchdog organizations. In the first six months of 2013, 117 cases of “obstructions to journalists’ work” were recorded. Just three of those cases have been brought to court, the report notes.

One such case is that of Irta TV journalist Oleg Ostapenko, who regularly reported on allegations of corruption within the Luhansk regional police force and suffered a broken jaw after being beaten near his eastern Ukrainian home on July 29.

A week earlier, Dorozhny Kontrol journalist Oleg Bogdanov was hospitalized with a broken nose and jaw after two unknown men assaulted him near his home in Donetsk. Bogdanov said that the attack was directly related to his reports on abuses committed by traffic police and other law enforcement agencies.

Drew Sullivan, editor and co-founder of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a not-for-profit investigative journalism organization that covers Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said that simply following journalists is a “very aggressive act.” OCCRP is a Kyiv Post partner.

“If a reporter is being followed, they must assume the worst. Assassins follow their targets to determine routines so they can plan an ambush. Others follow journalists to identify sources so they can threaten or intimidate them,” Sullivan said. “We assume anyone following a reporter is intent on doing them harm and we would remove that reporter from the country. We would then investigate to the full extent of our ability the person or organization following them.”

Kyiv Post editor Christopher J. Miller and staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected] respectively.