Over the past few days, representatives of two Ukrainian investigative projects reported incidents that they perceived as pressure on their professional activities.
Although these cases are formally unrelated, analysts see them as signs of systematic persecution of independent mass media in Ukraine, and some journalists mention practices related to the period of Viktor Yanukovych's presidency.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that any pressure on journalists is unacceptable. However, a large part of the public notes that the possible initiators of this pressure are members of his administration.
The scandal related to the pressure on investigative journalists fighting corruption may affect Kyiv's position in the context of efforts to convince Western partners of the need to continue supporting Ukraine.
On January 16, the little-known YouTube channel "Narodna Pravda" released a video entitled "The reverse side of Bihus.info: the experiment with the "hair dryer", the use of MDMA, smoking weed and the investigation."
In the five-minute clip, to the accompaniment of reggae music, audio recordings of telephone conversations of several members of the editorial staff of Bihus.info - one of the leading investigative projects in Ukraine - were highlighted.
In two conversations, youths discussed their purchases of illegal substances and their prices. Separate footage showed groups of young people using small pipes on the porch of a wooden house, as well as three girls inside the room inhaling the substance from a table through their noses.
Later it became known that the filming took place at the end of last year during a corporate event of the editorial office, and Bihus.info operators were depicted in the video.
The video quickly spread through anonymous Telegram channels, gaining more than a hundred thousand views - several times more than other videos on the same YouTube channel. On the morning of January 19, the Narodna Pravda channel was closed, and the video with Bihus.info employees became unavailable.
The leaked video of hidden filming and wiretapping of Bihus.info employees became known just two days after an event involving another well-known investigative journalist.
In the evening of January 14, several people in military uniform appeared at the door of the apartment of Yuri Nikolov, the editor of the "Our Money" project. According to the video, which quickly appeared on anonymous Telegram channels, they knocked on the door and demanded that the journalist "go to the front".
According to the record, they stuck pieces of paper on the door of the apartment with the inscriptions "Traitor", "Provocateur", "Go and serve in the army" and left, scaring Nikolov's mother. The journalist himself was not at home at that time.
The Bihus.info and Our Money projects are among the main journalistic investigations in Ukraine.
Bihus.info, founded more than ten years ago by a team of journalists under the leadership of Denys Bigus, is distinguished by numerous high-profile investigations. Among them are the study of the business managed by the brother of the deputy head of the Office of the President Rostyslav Shurma in the occupied territories of Ukraine, the disclosure of undeclared assets of several members of the Verkhovna Rada, and the analysis of subjective monitoring of social networks and mass media, prepared with budget funds for Ukrainian authorities. The Bihus.info project received support from Internews, the National Fund for Democracy Support and the EU Anti-Corruption Initiative in Ukraine last year.
The journalistic publication "Our Money", founded with the support of the international foundation "Renaissance", specializes in the analysis of public procurement. In particular, Yuri Nikolov's materials regarding irregularities in the procurement of food products for the Ukrainian army are recognized as one of the key reasons for the resignation of Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov last year.
To date, there are no sufficient grounds for the assertion that the incidents related to Yuri Nikolov and Bihus.info employees are interconnected, the journalists themselves note.
However, both incidents are aimed at discrediting projects that reveal corruption in the upper echelons of the Ukrainian government. In both cases, anonymous Telegram channels "dispersed" these stories, indicating their loyalty to the Office of the President (the agency categorically rejects this).
The editor of Bihus.info Maksym Opanasenko said on the air of Radio NV that it is currently impossible to prove the connection between these incidents, but "chronologically, thematically, instrumentally, it all comes together in a certain line, which begins to resemble a not very good campaign."
The founder of Bihus.info, Denys Bigus, who is currently in the ranks of the Armed Forces, said that a survey of editorial staff showed that the authors of the video used fragments of real telephone conversations that took place at intervals of "months".
"We have reason to say that the team members have been following systematically for a long period of time - stubbornly, systematically and for a long time," he said. "It does not look like a spontaneous act of revenge for some material. This is a systematic long-term follow-up, a persecution to discredit the team's work that it has been doing for years. I don't know how this story can discredit our content. But she is there," Bigus added.
Regarding the attack on Nikolov, the specific reason is also unclear. One of the anonymous Telegram channels associated with the President's Office posted a fragment of Nikolov's speech, where he criticized President Zelenskyi, who recognized him as "evading" his duties.
The reaction of Ukrainian politicians to these events turned out to be diverse.
Deputy Mykola Tyshchenko, who was formally expelled from the "Servant of the People" party, but he remains a close employee of it, testified to his negative attitude towards the investigators in a short video clip. "Shame! And these are journalists who claim the conscience of the nation! We do not need such a conscience of the nation! Into the dustbin of history! You are a stain on the heart of all Ukrainian journalism!" - expressed his condemnation. However, it should be noted that his position may not reflect the general attitude of the "Servant of the People" group to these events, especially considering that Tyshchenko himself was the subject of research by Bihus.info, and was also subject to monitoring of his lifestyle as a result of the project's publications.
Mayor of Dnipro Borys Filatov expressed support for journalists in his Facebook message: "Whether we like journalists or not, we must understand that this is the so-called fourth government. Therefore, using a state surveillance system (or something else) against them is completely unacceptable. Therefore, in the situation with Bigus or Nikolov (despite, apparently, mutual dislike), I am 100% on their side.”
Parliamentary committees on freedom of speech and humanitarian policy condemned the pressure on independent journalists and called on law enforcement agencies to conduct a comprehensive investigation of these incidents.
Ukrainian journalists actively expressed their reaction to recent events. The influential journalistic association "Mediarukh" expressed serious concern about the systematic persecution of independent mass media and investigative journalists, stressing the impunity of previous cases of pressure on the media.
Some media representatives expressed solidarity with Yuriy Nikolov and the Bihus.info team, seeing parallels between current events and the pressure investigative journalists experienced during Viktor Yanukovych's presidency.
"All this has already happened. Let's go in a circle. There was surveillance, eavesdropping, pressure, censorship, rudeness, ignoring and, unfortunately, even murders... But what never happened was that Ukrainian journalists swallowed and shut up... We always won such wars. And this time it will be like that," Yuliya Bankova, editor-in-chief of the "Liga" portal, shared her impressions in her Facebook message.
Myroslava Gongadze, the head of the Voice of America office in Eastern Europe and the widow of the murdered journalist Heorhiy Gongadze, said on the air of Radio NV: "This happens cyclically in Ukraine. Every ten years, the authorities begin to be dissatisfied with what journalists do. This can lead to very bad consequences.”
Whether the authorities have anything to do with the recent incidents of pressure on investigators remains a hotly contested issue among members of the journalistic community.
Most Ukrainian commentators believe that the direct participation of law enforcement agencies in monitoring Bihus.info employees, especially through interference in private life, could only be implemented with the active support of the authorities.
For example, Yevgenia Kravchuk, deputy head of the parliamentary committee on humanitarian policy, expressed the possibility that the equipment for listening to Bihus.info employees may belong to "private structures." Yuriy Nikolov himself shares a different view, pointing out that the services have been monitoring Bihus.info for at least a year and all of them are under the control of Tatarov, the deputy head of the Office of the President, who is responsible for law enforcement agencies.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyi has already expressed his reaction to this situation, stating that the Security Service of Ukraine has started an investigation and promising to study all the circumstances. Noting that any pressure on journalists is unacceptable.
At the same time, Bihus.info journalist Maksym Opanasenko noted that, although they applied to the police with a statement about the incident near their apartment, as of January 18, the proceedings had not been opened. In the case of Bihus.info, the SBU reported that searches were conducted in the place where the corporate publication was held, which also adds additional aspects to this situation. Denys Bigus reported that their editorial office was conducting its own investigation, based on "some clues", and promised to report the results in the near future.
Coming under pressure from the authorities and attacks on independent anti-corruption journalists, regardless of time, is always a problem. However, now, given the foreign policy context, it would be difficult to find a worse moment for such incidents.
The government of Kyiv is now actively working to maintain the support of the West in the context of the great war waged by Russia against Ukraine. Criticism of Ukraine's dissatisfaction with Western democratic standards is one of the main arguments of opponents of the country's support by the West, and it becomes a factor that can worsen Ukraine's image. Otherwise, any scandal that provides evidence to Kyiv's critics about pressure on the free press and journalists engaged in the fight against corruption can be used by Moscow for its own purposes.
Incidents related to attacks on journalists erupted during the World Economic Forum in Davos, where Volodymyr Zelensky personally spoke. These events significantly complicate his attempts to convince the world that Ukraine is a free and democratic country, different from authoritarian Russia. Circumstances related to this can play into the hands of the Russian side.
Returning to Kyiv, Zelensky may or may not take personal control of the investigation into pressure on the media, and even if he takes control, the effectiveness may be in question.
Such incidents also affect the operation of anonymous pro-presidential telegram channels, which are used to harass independent media. It is difficult to make judgments about their further functioning, but they have already announced the continuation of attacks on Zelensky's critics.
The most important thing, as Bihus.info journalist Maksym Opanasenko noted, is that in the face of such pressure and scandal, journalists intend to continue their work in the future. Denys Bigus also announced tough personnel decisions in his editorial office and pointed to increased interest in recruiting new personnel.
