Leonid Kuchma won’t be put to prison over Gongadze’s killing

Ukrainian prosecutors have said that a former minister, now dead, had ordered the murder of investigative journalist Georgiy Gongadze in 2000, and thus they brought to a close the 10-year murder case against ex-president Leonid Kuchma and Speaker of the Upper Rada Vladimir Litvin. 

Georgiy Gongadze had exposed high-level corruption and was an outspoken critic of the then President, Leonid Kuchma. The reporter was abducted and his headless body was found months later in a forest near the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.

Prosecutors named Yuri Kravchenko, who was then interior minister, as a person who "instigated and ordered" the murder. Kravchenko committed suicide in 2005, his body was found with two gunshot wounds to the head.

General Oleksiy Pukach, a former police officer, was accused of committing the murder on Kravchenko's orders, and was arrested last year. During the hearings he named all the persons who were involved in Gongadze’s killing.

Gongadze's widow, Myroslava, and their two children received political asylum in the United States and have lived there since 2001.