Today Ukraine Commemorates Georgiy Gongadze - Journalist Killed in 2000

Ukrainians traditionally mark the disappearance of a journalist whose beheaded corpse was found 120 kilometers southwest of Kyiv months after he disappeared ten years ago. The circumstances of his death became a national scandal and a focus for protests against the government of then President Leonid Kuchma. During the Cassette Scandal, audiotapes were released on which Kuchma, Volodymyr Lytvyn 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 Kravchenko 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 superior of the four policemen who were charged with Gongadze's murder soon after Kravchenko's death.The official ruling of suicide was doubted by media reports. No one has been yet convicted of ordering Gongadze's murder.