Eight Journalists Killed in Ukraine in Past Year

In connection to World Press Freedom Day, the Independent Media Trade Union of Ukraine (NMPU) has reported on its website that eight local and foreign journalists were killed in Ukraine in 2014.

“During 2014, eight journalists were killed in Ukraine, both Ukrainian and foreign. Several media workers were killed this year. Most of them died in the territory of the undeclared war in Donbass. During the year of the conflict, more than 40 media people have been held in captivity. Several journalists are in captivity right now,” says the NMPU statement.

On July 8, 2014, the death of journalist Oksana Shkoda was reported amidst fighting between terrorists with ATO forces in Sloviansk.

On November 30, 2014 journalist Alexander Kuchinsky and his wife were killed in Donetsk. Their bodies with were found in a holiday house near Sloviansk with multiple stab wounds. Kuchinsky was the editor-in-chief of Criminal Express and wrote about the connections between business and the criminal world.

On January 28, 2015, it became known that journalist Alexander Chernikov, who had worked in the Dnipropetrovsk media outlet nctv.in.ua, Resonance TV, Privat TV Dnipro, on the channel 9, and in The Kyiv Times before he was enlisted in the army, died in combat near Donetsk airport.

On March 15, 2015, it came to light that the editor-in- chief of the newspaper Netishinsky Vestnik (in Netishyn, Khmelnytskyi region), Olga Moroz, was dead. She was found in her apartment with a fractured occipital bone, although no outward signs of a beating were found. For some time before her death, Moroz and a colleague had began to prepare material on deforestation in the Khmelnytskyi region.

On February 16, 2015, Lieutenant Commander Dmitry Labutkin, who was a journalist with the military television channel Breeze in Sevastopol, disappeared from Debaltseve. Due to the occupation of Crimea by Russians, he had left with his family to Odessa. A video was sent to his wife from an unidentified source which showed his documents. On March 21, Dmitry’s body was found in Dnipropetrovsk morgue.

On April 13, 2015, near the Donetsk airport, a local journalist, whose name was not reported, was killed when his car was shelled by an antitank guided missile.

On the night of April 12-13, 2015, the co-founder of the Internet publications ProUA and Obkom, Sergey Sukhobok, was murdered. Two drunken neighbors beat him severely during an argument and he died as he was given medical aid.

On April 16, 2015, Oles Buzina was killed. He was shot out of Ford Focus with a foreign license plate near his house on Degtyarivska St. in Kyiv.

NMPU notes that virtually all local journalists who supported democratic freedoms were forced to leave the occupied territories because of the threat to their life and health.

“Many publications have ceased to exist because of pressure on their editorial teams, embezzlement, property damage, or the inability to evacuate the media outlet into Ukrainian territory,” stressed NMPU.

The union called on to remember the dead and the dozens of journalists who are imprisoned and to think about how to stop the curtailment of freedom of the press and how to prevent it in the future.  

World Press Freedom Day has been celebrated annually since 1992 on the initiative of representatives of the independent press in Africa. It is approved of by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The date of May 3 was not chosen randomly. On this day in 1991, in the capital of Namibia, representatives of the independent press from African countries adopted the Windhoek Declaration, which called for the governments of the world to ensure freedom of the press and its democratic character. The declaration emphasized that the most important part of any democratic society is a free, pluralistic, and independent press. In 1993, the UN General Assembly declared May 3 to be World Press Freedom Day.