Ukraine

New York, September 16, 2010--On Tuesday, Ukrainian prosecutors announced that the late Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko had ordered the 2000 murder of muckraking Internet journalist Georgy Gongadze, left, whose decapitated body was found 10 years ago today in a forest outside Ukraine's capital, Kyiv.

Ukraine's prosecutor-general's office said in a statement that investigators have finished their probe. The investigation identified General Aleksei Pukach, who was arrested in July 2009, as the gunman, and Kravchenko, as the mastermind of the journalist's murder. Pukach is in custody and currently studying the case file against him, local reports said.

Key Statistic
5: Years since the Orange Revolution. Optimism has since dimmed.

A deep recession, tensions with neighboring Russia, and a coming presidential election placed greater stress on the country’s already weak and fractured political leadership. While the media remained freer and more pluralistic than in most post-Soviet countries, journalists struggled to report on widespread government corruption and other abuses. A chaotic and sometimes dangerous environment for journalists increased the prevalence of self-censorship.