Dmytro Lytvyn with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Photo: Office of the President of Ukraine
Dmytro Lytvyn, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has denied allegations that the Office of the President of Ukraine exerted pressure on Ukrainian journalists in an interview he gave to Ukrainian independent news website Liga.net on Tuesday.
The denial came a full week after Ukrainska Pravda, one of Ukraine’s leading independent newspapers, published an editorial in which it complained of “prolonged and systematic pressure” being placed on the editorial team and certain journalists at the paper by the Office of the President of Ukraine.
Most notably, Ukrainska Pravda claimed that its journalists had been refused access to senior administration officials and that businesses advertising with the outlet had been encouraged to stop doing so.
In a follow-up article on 10 October, the paper accused Lytvyn personally of preventing administration officials and members of the security forces from speaking to or sharing information with Ukrainska Pravda, or allowing its journalists to attend events normally open to journalists, including meetings with Zelensky himself. It also alleged that Lytvyn “called to shout at people who ignored these rules”.
Lytvyn called the allegations “fairly serious”, but also “very vague. They say something abstract, and you have to refute it as if it were something concrete.” He challenged Ukrainska Pravda to provide evidence that he had ever discouraged Ukrainian officials or advertisers from doing anything.
Two journalists from Ukrainska Pravda — co-founder Georgiy Gongadze, and editor Pavel Sheremet — have been killed since the paper was founded in 2000.
Gongadze, an outspoken critic of Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine’s president between 1994 and 2005, was kidnapped in September 2000, and his headless body was found in a forest 70 km outside Kyiv two months later.
Belarusian-born Sheremet was killed in a car bomb in central Kyiv in July 2016.
Gongadze founded the paper on the same day a controversial referendum on the constitution was being held, aiming to bring in amendments that would have increased presidential powers. The referendum was eventually deemed unconstitutional.
Ukrainska Pravda, which was sold in 2021 by former owner Olena Prytula to a Ukrainian investment and financial services conglomerate, has pioneered investigative techniques it says are aimed at advancing freedom of information in Ukraine. The paper also has a number of sister websites, including European Pravda.
