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General Background | | Guardian
Special Report: Ukraine
The Guardian (U.K.) has compiled a hub page for news coming
out of Ukraine and provides links to current and past articles. Also featured is an interactive
history of Ukraine and a special report filed at the peak of the Orange Revolution. |
| UNICEF:
Ukraine
The United Nations Children's Fund tracks the latest issues facing children in
Ukraine and provides statistics on the situation there. Current areas of concern include babies
abandoned because of poverty and a rising HIV infection rate. |
| Global Security: Ukraine
GlobalSecurity.org features a series of articles
explaining Ukrainian politics, economy, history and geography. The organization seeks to reduce
reliance on nuclear weapons and raise awareness of the risk of using nuclear weapons. It directs
its efforts both toward existing nuclear weapons states and toward states seeking to acquire such
capability. |
| Timeline: Ukraine
BBC News provides a chronology of key events in Ukrainian
history, including the formation of the Ukrainian People's Republic in 1918, the Chernobyl
explosion in 1986 and the Orange Revolution in 2004. |
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Policy Centers |
| United States Institute of Peace
The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan federal institution created by
Congress to promote the prevention, management and peaceful resolution of international conflicts.
The political climate in Ukraine is among the issues the Institute addresses. |
| Center for Peace, Conversion
and Foreign Policy of Ukraine
The Center for Peace, Conversion and Foreign Policy of
Ukraine (CPCFPU) is a research center based in Kyiv. The site's primary sponsors are the Friedrich
Ebert Stiftung Foundation, a private foundation set up to promote the principles of social
democracy; Freedom House; and the NATO Information and Documentation Center in Ukraine. The CPCFPU
is primarily concerned with the foreign and security policies of Ukraine and has published
analytical reports on a wide range of issues. The CPCFPU's Ukrainian Monitor tracks headlines and
comments related to Ukraine's development. |
| International Centre
for Policy Studies
The International Centre for Policy Studies is an independent research
organization whose mandate is to promote the concept of public policy and related processes as a
guarantee of effective democracy in Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries. The organization was
established in 1994 as the result of an initiative of the Open Society Institute. |
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Media |
| Institute of Mass Information
The Institute of Mass Information (IMI), a nongovernmental Ukrainian organization established in
1995 by journalists from around the world, researches mass information in today's world. The IMI
focuses on defending freedom of speech, supporting Ukrainian mass media, researching public
opinion and engaging in other activities to raise public awareness. In addition, the IMI works in
conjunction with the Center for Journalism Development to provide training for Ukrainian
journalists. The site provides news, updates and commentary on a regular basis. The IMI is
particularly critical of what it feels has been an inadequate investigation into the murder of
journalist Georgy Gongadze. Sergy Taran is the organization's vice president. |
| Ukrainskaya Pravda
The
Internet newspaper Ukrainskaya Pravda ("the Ukrainian truth") was launched in 2000 by Olena
Prytula and Georgy Gongadze. The online newspaper was at the vanguard of political reform during
the Orange Revolution in the fall of 2004, when people took to the streets to protest the official
count indicating an election victory for Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich. Ukraine's most
prominent Internet newspaper, partially funded by a grant from the National Endowment for
Democracy, a U.S. nonprofit organization, provides extensive coverage of political issues in Kyiv
and the region. The online paper is available each day in English, Ukrainian and Russian.
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| Ukrainian
Newspapers
The Online Newspapers site provides links to more than 60 publications from
Ukraine published in various languages, including Ukrainian, Russian, French and English.
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Blogs |
| Orange
Ukraine
Blogging Ukraine during and after the revolution, Dan and Lesya McMinn keep tabs
on the Yushchenko government in an effort to understand where Ukraine is going. The site uses
current news items as a basis for comments on current politics. |
| International
Support for Ukrainian Democracy
Updated frequently in the days leading up to Yushchenko's
election, this blog contains a posting from May 2005 commenting on the "denouement of the Orange
Revolution" as well as links to many related blogs. |
| Orange Revolution
This
blog is regularly updated with photos, news clippings and links to Ukrainian news and politics.
The site also includes links to pages of famous Ukrainians. |
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The Murder of Georgy Gongadze Follow key developments in the murder
investigation from 2000 to 2005.
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Georgy Gongadze, the crusading journalist who was murdered in 2000. |
On September 16, 2000, Georgy Gongadze, journalist and director of the online opposition daily
paper Ukrainskaya Pravda, disappeared. Prior to his disappearance Gongadze had reported that he
was being followed by police. Two months later, a decapitated body thought to be that of Gongadze
was found in a wooded area outside Kyiv.
In November 2000, President Leonid Kuchma was accused of giving an order to kidnap Gongadze.
Socialist Party chief Olexander Moroz presented members of parliament with an audiotape that
allegedly had the president telling Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko to have the journalist
"taken care of." Kuchma denied that it was his voice on the tape. In the next few months,
thousands of protestors marched in the capital demanding the president's resignation.
Kuchma refused to resign and, in March 2001, fired Kravchenko. That same month, DNA tests
conducted in Germany showed that the headless body did not belong to Gongadze. However, American
experts carried out tests two months later, and they concluded that the DNA of the body did in
fact match that of Gongadze.
During this time, the Ministry of the Interior continued to deny any political link to the
case, even as a parliamentary commission investigating the murder accused the prosecution's office
of thwarting the investigation.
In August 2003, Igor Goncharov, a former police officer suspected of involvement in the
Gongadze murder, died in prison under unclear circumstances. A month later, a letter was made
public in which Goncharov implicated Kuchma in the murder.
In June 2004, prosecutors announced that a Ukrainian man had confessed to killing Gongadze. The
government continued to deny that the voice on the notorious audiotape was that of Kuchma.
In September 2004, the European Union complained about lack of progress in the
investigation.
In the fall of 2004, after the Orange Revolution and the election of Viktor Yushchenko,
Ukraine's chief prosecutor ordered a new investigation into the identity of the headless body.
Meanwhile, Yushchenko said that two of the four key witnesses in the murder had been killed.
Then in March 2005, the prosecutor announced that the case had been solved, and the two killers
had been arrested. Prosecutors then claimed that they knew who had ordered the murder. The office
said that all those involved in executing the plot were members of the intelligence services of
the Ministry of the Interior.
A few days after this announcement, former Interior Minister Kravchenko was found dead of an
apparent suicide, mere hours before he was due to be questioned about his connection to Gongadze's
murder.
Later in the spring of 2005, the prosecutor released more details about the ongoing
investigation. He told the press that after Gongadze was murdered, a second group disinterred him
and buried him where he was eventually found. The second group was allegedly part of or connected
to the United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine and was trying to discredit President Kuchma and
force early elections.
In September 2005, a government commission lead by Grygoriy Omelchenko unanimously recommended
that Kuchma and two senior officials serving in his government at the time should face criminal
charges in connection with the kidnapping of Gongadze.
The investigation surrounding Georgy Gongadze's murder has not yet been closed.
SOURCES: Agence France Presse; BBC News; The New York
Times.
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