Georgiy Gongadze facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Georgiy Gongadze
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| Born | 21 May 1969 Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union
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| Disappeared | 16 September 2000 Kyiv, Ukraine |
| Died | 17 September 2000 (aged 31) Tarashcha Woods, Tarashcha Raion, Ukraine
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| Body discovered | 3 November 2000 |
| Burial place | St. Nicholas the Embankment Church, Kyiv |
| Other names | Giya |
| Citizenship | Ukraine |
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| Occupation | Political activist, journalist |
| Years active | 1989–2000 |
| Known for | Founder of Ukrainska Pravda |
| Spouse(s) |
Mariana Stetsko
(m. 1990; div. 1992)Myroslava Gongadze
(m. 1996–2000) |
| Children | 2 daughters |
| Parents |
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| Family | 1 stepbrother |
| Awards |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | |
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Georgiy Ruslanovych Gongadze (21 May 1969 – 17 September 2000) was a Georgian-Ukrainian journalist and film director who was kidnapped and murdered in 2000 near Kyiv. He founded the online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda along with Olena Prytula in 2000.
The circumstances of his death became a national scandal and a focus for protests against then-President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma. During the Cassette Scandal, audiotapes were released on which Kuchma, Volodymyr Lytvyn and other top-level administration officials are heard discussing the need to silence Gongadze for his online news reports about high-level corruption. Former Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko died on 4 March 2005, just hours before he was to begin providing testimony as a witness in the case. Kravchenko was the superior of the four policemen who were charged with Gongadze's murder soon after Kravchenko's death.
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.
Contents
Early life and career
Born in Tbilisi, at the time the capital of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union, Gongadze was the son of Ruslan Gongadze, a Georgian architect, and Olesya Korchak, a Ukrainian dentist and a native of Lviv. His parents met in Lviv, where they studied in university and eventually married. In 1967, the Gongadze family moved to Tbilisi. Georgiy was born as a twin, but his brother was kidnapped from the hospital soon after their birth. When Gongadze was six years old, his parents divorced. His father later remarried and had another son with his second wife. His mother did not remarry, and continued to live and work in Tbilisi until 1994.
During his school years, Gongadze was an outstanding athlete, and was part of the Soviet reserve Olympic team for the 100 and 200 metres. In addition to his native Ukrainian, he learned to speak Russian, Georgian, and English. In 1986 he enrolled in the Foreign Languages Institute in Tbilisi with a specialisation in English, but in 1987 he was drafted into the Soviet Border Troops, serving in Turkmenistan on the border with Iran. His mother said that she had to pay to avoid him being sent to Afghanistan to fight in the Soviet–Afghan War.
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
Around that time, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev started his reforms of perestroika and glasnost. The reforms sped up the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Trying to preserve the Soviet state, several armed and civil conflicts arose in the Soviet Union, among them the [Soviet troops killed 21 unarmed civilians. This radicalised many Georgians, including Gongadze.
In May 1989, Gongadze was discharged from the Border Troops. He and his father both joined the national movement "For Free Georgia"; Georgiy became its spokesperson, while Ruslan became the leader. In 1989 and 1990, Georgiy travelled to the Baltic states and Ukraine in an attempt to drum up foreign support for Georgia's independence from the Soviet Union. As part of his tour, in September 1989 he attended the first congress of the People's Movement of Ukraine in Kyiv, where he represented For Free Georgia.
Gongadze also attended Chervona Ruta, the first non-communist music and youth festival, held in September 1989 in Chernivtsi. At the festival, he met Mariana Stetsko, whom he married in 1990, and settled in Lviv, where he found a job as a teacher of English and physical education. While working, Gongadze also studied at the Romano-Germanic Languages Faculty of the University of Lviv. On 24 August 1991, following the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada announced that all residents of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic were considered to be citizens of Ukraine.
Fighting in Georgia (1991–1992)
In 1991, the first president of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, declared several of his former allies as "enemies of the people", among them Ruslan Gongadze. Ruslan was forced to hide in the basement of a building next to the parliament in Tbilisi. In December 1991, a civil war ensued when government forces opened fire upon anti-Gamsakhurdia protestors in Tbilisi, while a militia armed by the oppositional parties counter-attacked. At the end of 1991 during the ongoing war, Georgiy Gongadze returned to his mother in Tbilisi. He led a team of medical emergency services transferring wounded to a hospital until snipers opened fire on them. On 14 January 1992, Gamsakhurdia fled Tbilisi and the conflict ended. The opposition took power, and Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister and communist leader of Soviet Georgia, was elected president. On 15 January 1992, Gongadze returned to Lviv, only to discover that his wife had left him.
Life in Ukraine (1992–1993)
In 1992, Gongadze founded a Georgian Culture Association in Lviv, named after the Bagrationi dynasty, which served as an informational centre. During the registration of the organisation in government offices, Gongadze met Myroslava Petryshyn, his future second wife. The two of them wrote an article titled "Tragedy of Leaders" (Ukrainian: Трагедія лідерів) about the Georgian Civil War, which was published in the Lviv newspaper Post-Postup in 1992. Later in 1992, Gongadze returned to Tbilisi again to visit his mother, who continued to work in a hospital as a nurse. At the time, he planned to leave political activism and start a business. However, after speaking with several people, he changed his mind, while his mother encouraged him to write about the victims of the Georgian Civil War. Gongadze received a camera from his mother, and filmed a documentary about the Georgian Civil War, entitled The Pain of My Land (Ukrainian: Біль моєї землі). In February 1993, the film was shown on the Ukrainian channel UT-3.
In 1992, Abkhazia and South Ossetia proclaimed their independence from Georgia, and Georgia accused Russia of instigating conflicts in those regions. Soon new conflicts started. Gongadze volunteered to fight in Abkhazia, but was refused admission to military service by government authorities for being the son of Ruslan Gongadze and his role in promoting Georgian causes in Ukraine.
Gongadze returned to Lviv to perform his "diplomatic mission" in active support of Georgia in inter-ethnic conflicts. However, he was only able to find a marginal group of supporters willing to fight in Georgia, from the far-right Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian People's Self-Defence. Gongadze repeatedly visited UNA-UNSO gatherings in an attempt to find Ukrainians willing to fight. The UNA-UNSO, with its self-stated goal of "exiling communists and criminals from Ukraine and overpowering Russian expansionism," coincided with those of Georgian nationalists fighting Russian-backed separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In July 1993, the UNA-UNSO battalion "Argo", led by Dmytro Korchynsky arrived to Tbilisi and was ready for fight in Abkhazia.
Return to Georgia (1993)
Gongadze, however, did not return to Georgia with the UNA-UNSO, but remained in Ukraine, where his father was undergoing cancer treatment in Kyiv. He did not survive treatment, and died on 5 August 1993, at the age of 49. Following his father's death, Gongadze returned to Tbilisi to bury him. Afterwards, he began filming a new documentary, this one about Ukrainian fighters in Abkhazia. He obtained funds for the documentary by selling his military-issued AK-47.
By the time filming began, Russian-backed Abkhazian separatists had taken much of the lands they sought to control, and had encircled the region's administrative centre, Sukhumi. In September 1993, in exchange for a ceasefire, the government of Georgia agreed to pull its troops and heavy armament from Sukhumi. However, Abkhazian forces soon broke the ceasefire and launched an assault on the city, which was protected only by an army of irregular detachments. President of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze, who also was present during the siege, appealed to the president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, to stop the attack, but Yeltsin chose to ignore it.
On 17 September 1993, Gongadze left Tbilisi for Sukhumi to film the events. Upon arrival, he was mobilised for service in the Defense Forces of Georgia, and the following morning was at the frontlines along the Gumista River, where Abkhazian troops were conducting an assault. Gongadze was fighting in a trench when an artillery shell exploded above him, and shrapnel hit him in 26 places, including his right hand. The only thing preventing Gongadze's death was his helmet, and two soldiers that had been next to him were killed in the explosion.
Gongadze was quickly taken to a field hospital, where he brought attention to himself by requesting that someone return to the field, so that his bag of video cassettes would not be lost. In the field hospital, Gongadze also met Konstantin Alania, a local resident fighting among Georgian troops. That night, Gongadze and several other seriously wounded fighters were sent to Tbilisi on a plane shortly before the city fell to Abkhazian troops. Alania was left behind to continue fighting, and later managed to escape with some other militants, withdrawing through mountain corridors. In 1995, Alania left Georgia for Lviv, and coincidentally met Gongadze again. The two remained close friends for the remainder of Gongadze's life.
In Tbilisi, Gongadze's treatment continued, and he was tended to by his mother, still working in the military hospital. However, the situation remained tense due to food insecurity throughout Georgia. His mother tried to send him away from Georgia, but did not have enough money, as the government had not had enough money to pay hospital staff since December 1991. Gongadze's mother managed to raise enough funds through friends and relatives and, after two weeks in Tbilisi, Gongadze returned to Lviv in October 1993, with his mother staying behind. In Ukraine, Gongadze finished production of his new documentary, and it was shown on Ukrainian television under the name Shadows of War.
Life in Ukraine (1992–2000)
From 1996 to 1997, Gongadze worked for the Ukrainian television channel STB. He worked for the Kyiv-based radio station Kontynent, on which he had his own show called First Round with Georhiy Gongadze. His strongly independent line soon attracted hostility from the increasingly authoritarian government of President Leonid Kuchma; during the October 1999 presidential election, his commentaries prompted a call from Kuchma's headquarters to say "that he had been blacklisted to be dealt with after the election". In 1999, he was the press secretary for Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine leader Nataliya Vitrenko. Visiting New York City 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, Ukrainska Pravda (lit. 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 specialised 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 Security Service of Ukraine directed towards himself and his Ukrainska Pravda colleagues and apparently related to an investigation into a murder case in the southern port of Odesa. He complained that he 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 rumour that he was wanted on a murder charge.
Murder and initial investigations
Gongadze disappeared on the night of 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. Eighty journalists signed an open letter to 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 inquiry however, was viewed with scepticism. Opposition politician Hryhoriy Omelchenko stated that the disappearance had coincided with Gongadze receiving documents on corruption within the president's own entourage. The Verkhovna Rada set up a parallel inquiry run by a special commission. Neither investigation produced any results.
Two months later, on 3 November 2000, he was found dead.
On 28 November 2000, opposition politician Oleksandr Moroz publicised secret tape recordings which he claimed implicated Kuchma in Gongadze's murder. The recordings were said to be of discussions between Kuchma, presidential chief of staff Volodymyr Lytvyn, and Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko, and were claimed to have been provided by an unnamed SBU 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 Chechnya. 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 Verkhovna Rada that "the professionally organised 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."
In September 2001, the American detective agency Kroll Inc., contracted by the pro-Kuchma political party Labour Ukraine, carried out a six-month investigation and concluded that Kuchma had nothing to do with the murder of Gongadze.
The affair became a major political scandal (referred to in Ukraine as the "Cassette Scandal" 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.
In November 2005, upon complaint of Gongadze's widow, the European Court of Human Rights found Ukraine to violate right to life, right to effective remedy and prohibition of degrading treatment.
Arrests and trials
Arrest and trial of three former policemen and death of Kravchenko
On 1 March 2005, President Viktor Yushchenko announced that the journalist's suspected killers had been arrested. Prosecutor-General Svyatoslav Piskun announced the following day that the case had been solved, telling Ukrainian television that Gongadze had been killed 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 Yuriy Kravchenko, one of those recorded with Leonid Kuchma in the Cassette Scandal, 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, Kravchenko was found dead in a dacha in the elite residential area of Koncha-Zaspa, outside Kyiv. 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.
The trial against three former policemen charged with the killing of Gongadze began on 9 January 2006. The other main suspect, ex-police officer, Oleksiy Pukach was believed to have fled abroad and therefore charged but not on trial. No-one had been charged for ordering the murder. On the day the trial started Gongadze's widow, Myroslava Gongadze commented on the fact that government officials had yet to be punished for organising Gongadze's murder, saying, "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 were sentenced to prison for the murder of Gongadze. Mykola Protasov was 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 and trial of Oleksiy Pukach
On 22 July 2009, Oleksiy Pukach, one of the chief suspects, was arrested in Zhytomyr Oblast. 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. Prosecutor-General Oleksandr Medvedko refused to comment whether Pukach named those who ordered the murder or not, saying a "secret investigation" was underway.
A request by Myroslava Gongadze 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 30 July 2009. Her request to replace Pukach's lawyer was also denied on 28 October 2009.
On 3 December 2009, Pukach's detention was extended by two months. On 6 December 2009, Mykola Melnychenko accused Volodymyr Lytvyn of ordering the murder of Gongadze in 2000, but offered no proof to back up the claim. A spokesperson for Lytvyn dismissed the claims as part of his presidential election campaign.
The Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine plans to complete its investigation into the case of Oleksiy Pukach by the end of the summer of 2010.
On 14 September 2010, Ukraine's Office of the Prosecutor General issued a statement stating that prosecutors had concluded that former Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko had ordered Pukach to carry out the murder, and stating that Pukach had confessed to the murder. According to Gongadze's widow, Myroslava Gongadze, "Kravchenko had had no grounds for such actions"; she believed that several people ordered the killing of the journalist. According to Georgiy Gongadze's mother, Olesya, the statement was an attempt by the Prosecutor-General's office to excuse itself for its inactivity. On 16 September 2010, Lytvyn asserted that the investigation into the murder of Gongadze confirmed his innocence in this crime.
Pukach's trial, on allegations he killed Gongadze, began on 7 July 2011. It was closed to the public. On 30 August 2011, Pukach claimed that Kuchma was the one who ordered the murder. During the trial he also alleged that Lytvyn ordered the murder of Gongadze.
In December 2011, the Pechersk District Court refused to accept witness testimony of Mykola Melnychenko as he had not been authorised to gather evidence of a crime, while conducting recordings in a cabinet of the President of Ukraine.
On 29 January 2013, Pukach was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv. Oleksiy Pukach also was stripped of his rank "General of Militsiya". The court ruled Pukach had murdered the journalist on orders from Kravchenko, who was seeking a career promotion.
On 9 July 2014, Myroslava Gongadze withdrew her appeal against the sentence of Pukach, as, according to her lawyer Valentyna Telychenko, "If the Court of Appeals will meet our appeal, it will be forced to simultaneously release Pukach from custody. We believe that Pukach is a killer and should serve his sentence". Telychenko blamed former First Deputy Prosecutor-General Renat Kuzmin for "speculating with the Gongadze case" that according to her led to "exhausting Pukach's length of stay in detention during the preliminary investigation".
Charges against Leonid Kuchma
The Prosecutor-General's Office cancelled its resolution to deny opening of criminal cases against former President Leonid Kuchma and other politicians within the Gongadze case on 9 October 2010.
On 24 March 2011 Ukrainian prosecutors charged Kuchma with involvement in the murder. The decision prompted mixed reaction among the public. Former Prime Minister and the opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko argued that Kuchma's arrest was no more than a PR stunt designed to distract people from their economic woes and prop up President Viktor Yanukovych's sagging popularity. Another theory was that Yanukovych was driven by the desire for revenge on Kuchma, who often humiliated Yanukovych and refused to use force to stop the Orange Revolution in 2004. Political analysts suggested that Yanukovych's "display of justice" could also be aimed at winning credit from the West, which had criticised him for authoritarian measures.
A Ukrainian district court ordered prosecutors to drop criminal charges against Kuchma on 14 December 2011 on grounds that evidence linking him to the murder of Gongadze was insufficient. The court rejected Melnychenko's recordings as evidence. Myroslava Gongadze appealed against this decision one week later.
First Deputy Prosecutor-General Renat Kuzmin claimed 20 February 2013 that his office had collected enough evidence confirming Kuchma's responsibility for ordering Gongadze's assassination. Kuchma's reply the next day was, "This is another banal example of a provocation, which I've heard more than enough in the past 12 years".
2014 proposal to revisit
On 9 July 2014, Prosecutor-General Vitaliy Yarema stated that his office would revisit investigations into high-profile cases "that were dropped unlawfully", including the cases dealing with the murder of Gongadze.
Legacy
Gongadze was buried in the Mykola Naberezhny Church in Kyiv on 22 March 2016.
Viktor Yushchenko posthumously awarded Gongadze the title Hero of Ukraine on 23 August 2005. Gongadze's widow Myroslava Gongadze was given the 'Star of the Hero' decoration by President Petro Poroshenko on 21 March 2014.
In June 2005, Kyiv's Industrialnaya Street was renamed Georgiy Gongadze Street. Prospekt Radianska Ukrainii in Kyiv's Vynohradar neighbourhood was renamed Prospekt Georgiy Gongadze in 2007. A monument to Gongadze and all journalists killed for their professional activities was opened in Kyiv park at Chervonoarmiyska Street in August 2008, though Gongadze's mother was against erecting a monument until the investigation is completed. She repeated her wish "to remove the monument to Gongadze" after a meeting with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on 22 June 2010, and also added her discontent with "political forces holding PR campaigns" regarding the Gongadze murder case.
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, 2008, ISBN: 1-897312-72-5) by James Watson. The book is dedicated to Giya Gongadze, and the theme of a persecuted journalist and the impact of his revelations about government corruption on his children has strong similarities to Gongadze's own fate.
In Kyiv and Lviv, ceremonies marking the disappearance of Gongadze were held on 16 September 2010 (ten years after his disappearance).
Filmography
As film director
- 1992 – The Pain of my Land (Ukrainian: Біль моєї землі)
- 1993 – Shadows of War (Ukrainian: Тіні війни) by the Center of Georgian Culture
See also
- Freedom of the press in Ukraine
- List of solved missing person cases
- Orange Revolution
- Vasyl Klymentyev, journalist who disappeared in 2010
