You're reading: Ukrainska Pravda demands investigation of clone site, paper

 Ukraine's top Internet media resource, Ukrainska Pravda (Ukranian Truth) is preparing an application to the police asking to investigate the appearance of a false printed copy of a namesake newspaper, and a clone site called Ukrainska Kryvda (Ukrainian Lies), according to the statement posted on its website, pravda.com.ua.

Both
the fake site and the newspaper have designs very similar to that of
the original site, which was founded in 2000 by Georgiy Gongadze, who
was brutally murdered months later.

“We
consider these actions, both the production of the false printed
version of Ukrainska Prada, and the online “twin” as aimed at
discrediting our publication,” the editors said in their statement.
“The calculation is that an inattentive or poorly informed reader
will take at face value any nonsense that come out on these
resources, under our brand, or in our design.”

The
false newspaper claims to have a circulation of 1 million, which
Ukrainska Pravda also challenges. The masthead of the newspaper lists
Prytula O.E. as chief editor of the publication, and Leshchenko S.T. as production editor. The surnames used are the same as Pravda’s
chief editor Olena Prytula and its deputy chief editor Serhiy
Leshchenko, but their patronymic initials are different.

Ukrainska
Pravda is one of the few popular independent news sources in Ukraine.
In the past week, it was visited by more than 246,000 people daily,
who hit it more than 1.76 million times, according to LiveInternet
counter
.

The
site is owned by Prytula, who co-founded it with Gongadze in the
early 2000. He disappeared in September of the same year, and in
November his decapitated body was found in a forest some 70
kilometers outside of Kyiv. His skull was only found in 2009 in a
different location.

Despite
the fact that four people have been convicted of his murder, it’s
widely believed that the true mastermind behind this crime is Leonid
Kuchma, who was president of Ukraine at the time of his murder.
Gongadze was his outspoken critic.

His
legacy has lived on in Ukrainska Pravda, which is known for its
investigations into corruption and luxurious lives of Ukraine’s
ruling elite. In their statement, the publication’s editors pointed
out that they suspect pro-presidential forces to be behind the
attack.

“As
elections of the president approach, the pro-presidential powers have
accumulated in their hands practically all of the media market.
Previosly, they had not focused on internet media, but in the last
months we’re seeing a rise in their presence of pro-government media
on the net,” the Pravda statement said.

“We
welcome competition, but at the same time, do not accept the methods
based on dissemination of twisted information, collected through
tapped phone conversations, stolen personal data, creation of clone
sites and production of fakes.”