On the facade of the small, ornate Stalinist building that houses the National Union of Journalists in central Kyiv, there is a brass plaque commemorating the life of Georgiy Gongadze, the founder of the country’s paper of record, Ukrainiska Pravda. He was murdered, his beheaded body discovered in a forest in 2000, less than a decade after the country gained independence from the Soviet Union.

The person who ordered Gongadze’s murder is still at large; Gongadze’s death gave rise to a protest movement against Leonid Kuchma, the autocrat who served as Ukraine’s president until 2005. In the decade that followed, the country went through two revolutions and established a democracy; its independent press targeted government corruption.

More journalists lost their lives during that period; the memorial lists some twenty other names below Gongadze’s. Yet since February 2022, when Russia’s deadly invasion began, the dangers facing Ukrainian reporters have been worse than ever before.

…MORE