Following Ukraine's independence in 1991, the country did not adopt an official constitution until 1996. Despite this constitutions alleged protection of free speech, that has often not been the case in Ukraine.

According to the organization Freedom House, the Ukraine was considered to be a free country in regards to media in 2007, yet came in ranked as only the 113th freest country out of 195.

This low ranking in the freedom of their news media is due Ukraine's presidential administration subsequent to the nations independence. According to this BBC country profile of Ukraine, "Under former President Leonid Kuchma, a number of opposition papers were closed and several journalists investigating high-profile crimes died in mysterious circumstances."

The first two presidential administration after the nations independence faced charges such as these. However, these charges seem to be substantiated by the specific incidents of journalists being attacked or threatened for their coverage and.or criticism of Ukrainian politicians.

One such example is that of Irina Ovsy, editor of the newspaper Sotsialisticheskaya Kharkovshchina, who was attacked by unidentified men who told her to stop publishing her stories. Three other journalists also were physically attacked including one who was kidnapped and then taken to a forest where he was beaten.

Also, according to Freedom house, a fire attack was used to intimidate a correspondent for the newspaper Kievskiye Vedomosti named Sergei Yanovsky, after he had reported on local politicians and corruption within the local government.

However, the most notorious story of a journalist being intimidates is that of Gregory Gongadze. Gongadze developed a website entitled, Ukrayinska Pravda, which is translated as Ukrainian Truth. The site was a way of getting around the government's control on the media.

Gongadze's site focused primarily on political news about former president Kuchma. Gongadze wrote letters to the top prosecutor in Ukraine about being harassed by the Ukrainian special police. He mysteriously disappeared and his body was found two months later, decapitated and doused in acid, in a forest some 75 miles outside of the nation's capital of Kiev.

Gongadze

According to Reporters Without Borders, Kuchma's former body guard secretly taped the former president in recordings dubbed the "Melnichenko tapes." The Ukranian parliament's investigation of the murder showed that the decision to have Gongadze murdered came from the “highest levels of government.”

These types of intimidation towards journalists have recently become less prominent in the Ukrainian media as a new presidential administration came into power in 2004. However, the governments control of the media has not. According to the same Freedom House profile, in 2006, the administration was capable of monitoring all e-mails and websites visited by the 11.5% of the population that was online.

Hopefully as this recently independent nation's age increases, so will its politician's attitudes towards the freedom of media.

Leonid Kuchma