Georgiy Ruslanovich Gongadze was a
UkrainianUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
journalist of
GeorgianThe Georgians are a South Caucasian people and nation mainly centered in Georgia. They also live in Turkey, Russia, the United States, Iran, and other countries....
origin who was kidnapped and murdered in 2000.
The circumstances of his death became a national scandal and a focus for protests against the government of the then President,
Leonid KuchmaLeonid Danylovych Kuchma was the second President of independent Ukraine from July 19, 1994, to January 23, 2005. Kuchma took office after winning the 1994 presidential election against his rival then-President Leonid Kravchuk...
. During the
Cassette ScandalThe Cassette Scandal , also known as "Tapegate", erupting in 2000, was one of the main political events in Ukraine's post-independence history...
, audiotapes were released on which Kuchma,
Volodymyr LytvynVolodymyr Mykhailovych Lytvyn is a Ukrainian politician and the current Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament. Having previously served in that position from 2002 until 2006, he was re-elected in December 2008 after his party agreed to join the former coalition of Yulia...
and other top-level administration officials are allegedly heard discussing the need to silence Gongadze for his online news reports about high-level corruption. Former Interior Minister
Yuriy KravchenkoYuriy Fedorovych Kravchenko , was a Ukrainian police officer and statesman. In 2000, while a Minister of Internal Affairs, Kravchenko became directly involved in the murder case of Georgiy Gongadze and subsequent Cassette Scandal...
died of two gunshots to the head on March 4, 2005, just hours before he was to begin providing testimony as a witness in the case. Kravchenko was the
superiorIn a hierarchy or tree structure of any kind, a superior is an individual or position at a higher level in the hierarchy than another , and thus closer to the apex. It is often used in business terminology to refer to people who are supervisors and in the military to people who are higher in the...
of the four policeman who were charged with Gongadze's murder soon after Kravchenko's
suicideSuicide is the intentional killing of one's self. Many dictionaries also note the metaphorical sense of "willful destruction of one's self-interest"...
. The official ruling of suicide was doubted by media reports.
Three former officials of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's foreign surveillance department and criminal intelligence unit (Valeriy Kostenko, Mykola Protasov and Oleksandr Popovych) accused of his murder were arrested in March 2005 and a fourth one (Oleksiy Pukach, the former chief of the unit) in July 2009. A court in Ukraine sentenced Protasov to a sentence of 13 years and Kostenko and Popovych to 12-year terms March 2008 (the trial had begun January 2006) for the murder. Gongadze's family believe the trial had failed to bring the masterminds behind the killing to justice. No one has yet been charged with giving the order for Gongadze's murder.
Gongadze's widow
Myroslava GongadzeMyroslava Gongadze is a Ukrainian journalist and political activist now living in the United States. Her husband, journalist Georgiy Gongadze, was abducted and murdered in 2000...
and their two children received political asylum in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and have lived there since 2001.
Career
Born in
TbilisiTbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form Tp'ilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
, Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, Gongadze was the son of a Georgian politician father and a Ukrainian
nurseA nurse is a healthcare professional who, in collaboration with other members of a health care team, is responsible for: treatment, safety, and recovery of acutely or chronically ill individuals; health promotion and maintenance within families, communities and populations; and, treatment of...
mother. He was educated at the
Ivan Franko National UniversityThe Lviv University or officially the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv was founded in 1661 and is the oldest continuously operating university in Ukraine...
of
LvivLviv is a major city in western Ukraine.It is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically also for Ukraine’s neighbour Poland. The historic centre of Lviv with its old buildings and cobblestone roads has survived the Second World War and the Soviet presence...
in western Ukraine. His mother Lesya was born there and lives in Lviv now. He became a successful journalist, first in Georgia (where he reported on the conflict in
AbkhaziaAbkhazia is a disputed region on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. Since its declaration of independence from Georgia in 1991 during the Georgian–Abkhaz conflict, it is governed as the partially-recognized Republic of Abkhazia.Georgia considers Abkhazia part of its territory and has designated...
) and then in
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
. He worked for the
KievKiev or Kyiv , is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300...
-based radio station Kontynent, on which he had his own show called
First round with Heorhiy Gongadze. His strongly independent line soon attracted hostility from the increasingly authoritarian government of Leonid Kuchma; during the
October 1999 presidential electionThe Ukrainian presidential election, 1999 was a presidential election held in 1999 in Ukraine.The second round of the elections took place on November 14, 1999, in which the acting President Leonid Kuchma kept the presidential post from the Communist party leader Petro Symonenko.Summary of 1999...
, his commentaries prompted a call from Kuchma's headquarters to say "that he had been blacklisted to be dealt with after the election." Visiting
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
in January 2000 with other Ukrainian journalists, he warned of "the strangulation of the freedom of speech and information in our state."
In April 2000, Gongadze co-founded a news website,
Ukrayinska PravdaUkrayinska Pravda is a popular Ukrainian internet newspaper, founded by Georgiy R. Gongadze in April, 2000...
(
Ukrainian Truth), as a means of sidestepping the government's increasing influence over the mainstream media. He observed that following the muzzling of a prominent pro-opposition newspaper after the election, "today there is practically no objective information available about Ukraine". The website specialized in political news and commentary, focusing particularly on President Kuchma, the country's wealthy "oligarchs" and the official media.
In June 2000, Gongadze wrote an open letter to Ukraine's chief prosecutor about harassment from the
SBUThe Security Service of Ukraine is Ukraine's main government security agency.The SBU is responsible for state security , counterintelligence , fighting terrorism, smuggling, illegal trading of restricted substances and personal security of the President,...
, the Ukrainian secret police, directed towards himself and his
Ukrayinska Pravda colleagues and apparently related to an investigation into a murder case in the southern port of
OdessaOdessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .Odessa was founded by Hacı I Giray, the Khan of Crimea, in 1240...
. He complained that had been forced into hiding because of harassment from the secret police, that he said he and his family were being followed, that his staff were being harassed, and that the SBU were spreading a rumor that he was wanted on a murder charge.
Disappearance and investigations
Gongadze disappeared on 16 September 2000, after failing to return home. Foul play was suspected from the outset. The matter immediately attracted widespread public attention and media interest. 80 journalists signed an open letter to President Kuchma urging an investigation and complaining that "during the years of Ukrainian independence, not a single high-profile crime against journalists has been fully resolved." Kuchma responded by ordering an immediate inquiry. This was, however, viewed with some skepticism. Opposition politician Hryhoriy Omelchenko reported that the disappearance had coincided with Gongadze receiving documents on corruption within the president's own entourage. The Ukrainian Parliament set up a parallel inquiry run by a special commission. Neither investigation produced any results.
Two months later, on 3 November 2000, a body was found in a forest in the Taraschanskyi Raion (
districtA raion is a type of administrative unit of some post-Soviet states. The term, which is from French rayon 'honeycomb, department,' describes both a type of a subnational entity and a division of a city, and is almost always translated as "district"...
) of the
Kiev OblastKiev Oblast, also written as Kyiv Oblast is an oblast in central Ukraine....
(
provinceOblast is a type of administrative division in Slavic countries, including some countries of the former Soviet Union. The word "oblast" is a loanword in English, but it is nevertheless often translated as "area", "zone", "province", or "region"...
), some 70 km (40 miles) outside Kiev. The corpse had been decapitated and doused in dioxine, apparently to make identification more difficult; forensic investigations found that the dioxine bath and decapitation had occurred while the victim was still alive. The Russian-edited Ukrainian newspaper
SegodnyaSegodnya founded in 1997, is a Russian language Kiev-based tabloid newspaper, second only to Fakty i Kommentarii in circulation, with over 700,000 subscribers. While run from Kiev, it is linked to Donbas political and business groups, supporting former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych for the...
("Today") reported that Gongadze had been abducted by policemen and accidentally shot in the head while seated in a vehicle, necessitating his decapitation (to avoid the bullet being recovered and matched to a police weapon). His body had been doused in petrol which had failed to burn properly, and had then been dumped. A group of journalists first identified it as being that of Gongadze, a finding confirmed a few weeks later by his wife Myroslava. In a bizarre twist, the corpse was then confiscated by the
policeMilitsiya or Militia was used as a short official name of the civilian police in several former communist states, despite its original military connotation ....
and resurfaced in a morgue in Kiev. The authorities did not officially acknowledge that the body was that of Gongadze until the following February and did not definitively confirm it until as late as March 2003. The body was eventually identified and was to be returned to Gongadze's family to be buried two years after his disappearance. However, the funeral never took place. As of 23 June 2006 Gongadze's mother refused to accept the remains offered as it was not the body of her son. While visiting Kiev in July 2006, Gongadze's widow Myroslava emphasized that the funeral had become now a solemnly family issue, and the date of the funeral would soon be appointed.
On 28 November 2000, opposition politician
Oleksandr MorozOleksandr Oleksandrovych Moroz is a Ukrainian statesman and politician. He was the Speaker of Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine two times: 2006 through 2007, and previously in 1994 through 1998...
publicized secret tape recordings which he claimed implicated President Kuchma in Gongadze's murder. The recordings were said to be of discussions between Kuchma, presidential chief of staff
Volodymyr LytvynVolodymyr Mykhailovych Lytvyn is a Ukrainian politician and the current Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament. Having previously served in that position from 2002 until 2006, he was re-elected in December 2008 after his party agreed to join the former coalition of Yulia...
, and Interior Minister
Yuriy KravchenkoYuriy Fedorovych Kravchenko , was a Ukrainian police officer and statesman. In 2000, while a Minister of Internal Affairs, Kravchenko became directly involved in the murder case of Georgiy Gongadze and subsequent Cassette Scandal...
, and were claimed to have been provided by an unnamed
SBUThe Security Service of Ukraine is Ukraine's main government security agency.The SBU is responsible for state security , counterintelligence , fighting terrorism, smuggling, illegal trading of restricted substances and personal security of the President,...
officer (later named as Major Mykola Mel'nychenko, Kuchma's bodyguard). The conversations included comments expressing annoyance at Gongadze's writings as well as discussions of ways to shut him up, such as deporting him and arranging from him to be kidnapped and taken to
ChechnyaThe Chechen Republic , or, informally, Chechnya , sometimes referred to as Ichkeria, Chechnia, Chechenia or Noxçiyn, is a federal subject of Russia...
. Killing him was, however, not mentioned and doubt was cast on the tapes' authenticity, as the quality of the recordings was poor. Moroz told the Ukrainian
Verkhovna RadaThe Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is Ukraine's parliament. The Verkhovna Rada is a unicameral parliament composed of 450 deputies, which is presided over by a chairman...
(parliament) that "the professionally organized disappearance, a slow-moving investigation, disregard for the most essential elements of investigation and incoherent comments by police officials suggest that the case was put together."
The affair became a major political scandal (referred to in Ukraine as the "
Cassette ScandalThe Cassette Scandal , also known as "Tapegate", erupting in 2000, was one of the main political events in Ukraine's post-independence history...
" or "Tapegate"). Kuchma strongly denied Moroz's accusations and threatened a libel suit, blaming the tapes on foreign agents. He later acknowledged that his voice was indeed one of those on the tapes, but claimed that they had been selectively edited to distort his meaning.
Crises and controversy
The affair became an international crisis for the Ukrainian government during 2001, with the
European UnionThe European Union is an economic and political union of 27 Member States, located primarily in Europe. Committed to regional integration, the EU was established by the Treaty of Maastricht on 1 November 1993 upon the foundations of the pre-existing European Economic Community...
expressing dissatisfaction at the official investigation, rumors of Ukrainian suspension from the
Council of EuropeThe Council of Europe is the oldest international organisation working towards European integration, having been founded in 1949. It has a particular emphasis on legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation...
, and censure from the
OSCEThe Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe is the world's largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, human rights, freedom of the press and fair elections...
, which described Gongadze's death as a case of "censorship by killing" and castigated the "extremely unprofessional" investigation. Mass demonstrations erupted in Kiev in February 2001, calling for the resignation of Kuchma and the dismissal of other key officials. He did sack the head of the SBU, Leonid Derkach, and the chief of the presidential bodyguard, Volodymyr Shepel, but refused to step down. The government invited the US FBI to investigate, though it does not appear that this offer was ever taken up. The protests were eventually forcibly broken up by the police.
In May 2001, interior minister Yuri Smirnov announced that the murder had been solved—it was attributed to a random act of violence committed by two "hooligans" with links to a gangster called "Cyclops". Both of the killers were said to now be dead. The claim was dismissed by the opposition and by the government's own prosecutor-general, whose office issued a statement denying Smirnov's claims.
Mass protests again broke out in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities in September 2002 to mark the second anniversary of Gongadze's death. The demonstrators again called for Kuchma's resignation but the protests again failed to achieve their goal, with police breaking up the protesters' camp.
The prosecutor of the Tarascha district, where Gongadze's body was found, was convicted in May 2003 for abuse of office and falsification of evidence. Serhiy Obozov was found guilty of forging documents and negligence in the investigation and was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. However, he was immediately released due to a provision of Ukraine's amnesty laws.
In June 2004, the government claimed that a convicted gangster identified only as "K" had confessed to Gongadze's murder, although there was no independent confirmation of the claim. The ongoing investigation received a setback when a key witness died of spinal injuries apparently sustained while in police custody.
Gongadze's death became a major issue in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, in which the opposition candidate
Viktor YushchenkoViktor Andriyovych Yushchenko is the third and current President of Ukraine. He took office on January 23, 2005....
pledged to solve the case if he became president. Yushchenko did become president following the subsequent
Orange RevolutionThe Orange Revolution was a series of protests and political events that took place in Ukraine from late November 2004 to January 2005, in the immediate aftermath of the run-off vote of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election which was claimed to be marred by massive corruption, voter...
and immediately launched a new investigation, replacing the country's prosecutor-general.
The
Council of EuropeThe Council of Europe is the oldest international organisation working towards European integration, having been founded in 1949. It has a particular emphasis on legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation...
's
Parliamentary AssemblyA parliamentary assembly is part of many international organizations. Examples include:*the oldest parliamentary assembly being a statutory body of an international organisation is the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe...
adopted on January 27, 2009 Resolution 1645 on the investigation of crimes allegedly committed by high officials during the Kuchma rule in Ukraine – the Gongadze case as an emblematic example. This Resolution calls on the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office to use all possible avenues of investigation to identify those who instigated and organised the murder of Giorgiy Gongadze.
Arrest and trial of three former policemen and death of Kravchenko
On 1 March 2005, Yushchenko announced that the journalist's suspected killers had been arrested. Prosecutor-General
Svyatoslav PiskunSvyatoslav Mykhaylovych Piskun was the 3 times Prosecutor General of Ukraine in 2002-2003, 2005 and 2007 till President Viktor Yuschenko's dismissed Piskun on May 24, 2007. He is an important participant of several scandals, including the cases of Georgiy R...
announced the following day that the case had been solved, telling Ukrainian television that Gongadze had been strangled by employees of the Interior Ministry. Two of the alleged killers were said to be senior policemen working for the Interior Ministry's criminal investigations directorate (CID). Former Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko, one of those recorded with Leonid Kuchma in the
Cassette ScandalThe Cassette Scandal , also known as "Tapegate", erupting in 2000, was one of the main political events in Ukraine's post-independence history...
, was also said to be under investigation. The two police colonels accused of the killing have been detained and a third senior policeman, identified as CID commander Oleksiy Pukach, was being sought on an international arrest warrant.
On 4 March, Yuri Kravchenko was found dead in a
dachaDacha is a Russian word for seasonal or year-round second homes often located in the exurbs of Soviet and Russian cities. In some cases, they are occupied for part of the year by their owners and rented out to urban residents as summer retreats...
in the elite residential area of Koncha-Zaspa, outside Kiev. He had died from apparently self-inflicted gunshot wounds, though some speculated that he might have been assassinated to prevent him from testifying as a witness. Hryhory Omelchenko, who chaired the parliamentary committee that investigated the Gongadze case, told the
New York Times that Kravchenko had ordered Pukach to abduct Gongadze on President Kuchma's orders. Kuchma himself has denied this allegation but has since been interviewed by investigators. Kravchenko left an alleged suicide note: “My dear ones, I am not guilty of anything. Forgive me, for I became a victim of the political intrigues of President Kuchma and his entourage. I am leaving you with a clear conscious, farewell.”
In April/May 2005, Piskun released more details of the ongoing investigation. He told the press that after Gongadze was murdered, a second group disinterred him and re-buried him where he was eventually found, in the constituency of Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz. According to Piskun, the aim was to undermine the government (led by Viktor Yushchenko when he was still Prime Minister). The second group was part of or allied with the
United Social Democratic Party of UkraineThe Social Democratic Party of Ukraine or SDPU or SDPU , is a Ukrainian political party.-History:SDPU was created in 1990. Since 1998 it was led by the head of Leonid Kuchma's presidential administration Viktor Medvedchuk, former Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk and by Ukrainian tycoon...
(SDPUo), a pro-oligarch grouping which had been hit hard by Yushchenko's crackdown on corruption and therefore wanted to see his government toppled. According to the journal
Ukrayina moloda (14 April 2005), the SDPUo moved Gongadze in order to discredit President Leonid Kuchma and force early elections, which could have led to party leader Medvedchuk succeeding Kuchma.
The trial against the three former policemen charged with the killing of Georgiy Gongadze started on January 9, 2006. The other main suspect, ex-
police officerA police officer is a warranted employee of a police force. Police officers are generally responsible for apprehending criminals, maintaining public order, and preventing and detecting crimes...
, Oleksiy Pukach was believed to have fled abroad and therefore charged but not on trial. No-one had been
chargedIn the common law legal system, an indictment is a formal accusation that a person has committed a criminal offence. In those jurisdictions which retain the concept of a felony, the serious criminal offence would be a felony; those jurisdictions which have abolished the concept of a felony often...
for ordering the murder. On the day the trial started Gongadze's
widowA widow is a woman whose spouse has died. A man whose spouse has died is a widower. The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed widowhood or viduity. The adjective is widowed.-Economic position of widows:...
Myroslava GongadzeMyroslava Gongadze is a Ukrainian journalist and political activist now living in the United States. Her husband, journalist Georgiy Gongadze, was abducted and murdered in 2000...
commented on the fact that no-one has been charged for the killing: "They are known and they should be punished just the same as those who will be sitting in the dock today".
In mid March 2008, the three former police officers where sentenced to prison for the actual act of murder of Gongadze. Mykola Protasovwas given a sentence of 13 years, while Valeriy Kostenko and Oleksandr Popovych were each handed 12-year terms. But so far the investigations have failed to show who ordered the murder.
Arrest of Oleksiy Pukach
On July 22, 2009 Oleksiy Pukach, one of the chief suspects, was arrested in Ukraine's
Zhytomyr OblastZhytomyr Oblast is an oblast of northern Ukraine...
. The former chief of the main criminal investigation department at the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's foreign surveillance unit had lived in the house of Lidia Zagorulko who had told her neighbours that Pukach was the brother of her dead husband and that he was a former sea captain. Pukach had lived there with his real second name and original documents. At first it was reported and that he had implicated senior political figures in the murder and was ready to show the place where the journalist's head was hidden, but this was denied two days after his arrest by his lawyer. According to the lawyer "for the time being" Pukach was not intended to provide this information to the investigators. Prosecutor General
Oleksandr MedvedkoOleksandr Medvedko is the current Prosecutor General of Ukraine.-External links:*...
refused to comment whether Pukach named those who ordered the murder or not, saying a "secret investigation" was underway.
On July 28, 2009 Ukrainian media reported that the remains of Gongadze's skull were found near
Bila TserkvaBila Tserkva is a city located on the Ros' River in the Kiev Oblast in central Ukraine, approximately south of the capital, Kiev...
, in a location specified by Pukach. According to the Prosecutor's General Office they did found fragments of a skull there which may belong to Gongadze.
A request by Gongadze's widow,
Myroslava GongadzeMyroslava Gongadze is a Ukrainian journalist and political activist now living in the United States. Her husband, journalist Georgiy Gongadze, was abducted and murdered in 2000...
, to replace deputy prosecutor general Mykola Holomsha and investigator Oleksandr Kharchenko, because of their insufficient professionalism and because they were unable to withstand political pressure and speculation surrounding the case, was rejected on July 30, 2009..
Remembrance
In June 2005
KievKiev or Kyiv , is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300...
's
Industrialnaya Street was renamed
Georgy Gongadze Street. August 2008 a monument to journalist Gongadze and all journalists killed for their professional activities was opened in Kiev in a park in
Chervonoarmiyska street, but Gongadze's mother, Lesya Gongadzr, was against erecting a monument until the investigation is completed.
A literary token of respect for the work and courage of Gongadze is to be found in the novel for Young Adults, Fair Game: The Steps of Odessa (Spire Publishing, ISBN 1-897312-72-5) by James Watson. The book is dedicated to Giya Gongadze, but the theme, of a persecuted journalist and the impact of his revelations about government corruption on his footballing daughter, Natasha, and his son Lonya, has strong similarities to Gongadze's own fate.
Timeline of reporters killed in Ukraine
Under former
PresidentThe President of Ukraine is the head of state of Ukraine, representing the state in international relations, administers the foreign political activity of the State, conducts negotiations and concludes international treaties of Ukraine....
Leonid KuchmaLeonid Danylovych Kuchma was the second President of independent Ukraine from July 19, 1994, to January 23, 2005. Kuchma took office after winning the 1994 presidential election against his rival then-President Leonid Kravchuk...
opposition papers were closed and several journalists died in mysterious circumstances.
Name spelling disambiguation
Note that the
pronunciation"Pronunciation" refers to the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If someone is said to have "correct pronunciation," then it refers to both within a particular dialect....
and sometimes
spellingSpelling is the writing of a word or words with the necessary letters and diacritics present in an accepted standard order. It is one of the elements of orthography and a prescriptive element of alphabetic languages...
of Gongadze's name may differ following the
phoneticsPhonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds , and their physiological production, auditory perception, and neurophysiological status.Phonetics was studied as early as 2500 years ago in...
of different languages. The proper
GeorgianGeorgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 3.9 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
name
Georgi Gongadze became Георгий Гонгадзе in
RussianRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
and Георгій Гонгадзе in
UkrainianUkrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses the Cyrillic alphabet....
. Ukrainian officials refer to him as
Heorhiy Honhadze, as in the common dialect of southern Russian and still common among the Ukrainian officials. After recent linguistic reform, Ukrainians use the modified letter Ґ (Ghe) for a G, which has been used in spelling Gongadze's last name (Ґонґадзе), but not his first name (Георгій). Although, some sources also refer to him as
Georgy Gongadze. The modified letter Ґ (Ghe) was re-introduced back after the Soviet linguistic reform of 1933 when the letter was disbanded as being considered non-Ukrainian by Soviets and, improper.
See also
- Myroslava Gongadze
Myroslava Gongadze is a Ukrainian journalist and political activist now living in the United States. Her husband, journalist Georgiy Gongadze, was abducted and murdered in 2000...
, widow of Georgiy Gongadze.
- Orange Revolution
The Orange Revolution was a series of protests and political events that took place in Ukraine from late November 2004 to January 2005, in the immediate aftermath of the run-off vote of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election which was claimed to be marred by massive corruption, voter...
- Ukrayinska Pravda
Ukrayinska Pravda is a popular Ukrainian internet newspaper, founded by Georgiy R. Gongadze in April, 2000...
- Olena Prytula
Olena Prytula is a Ukrainian journalist, the editor-in-chief of the Ukrayinska Pravda, a web site that focuses on news and political coverage in Ukraine.-Early life:...
, co-founder of Ukrayinska Pravda
External links