Ukraine’s investigative journalists are facing intimidation

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe. 

KYIV — “I ran investigations for 15 years before the war, and it was always hard and risky. But I think it’s worse for journalists now,” said Ukrainian reporter Yuri Nikolov, editor and co-founder of the anti-corruption investigative project Nashi Groshi (Our Money).

“They use different intimidation tactics to try to deter reporters and then, of course, they can always threaten to ship you off to the front lines,” he added with a rueful guffaw. For a man at the end of death threats, he remains remarkably upbeat.

Last year, Nikolov published several stories alleging graft in the Ukrainian military. The focus of his exposé was on defense procurement and the highly inflated prices of food and catering services for the country’s combat troops — he found suppliers were allowed to charge three times the average retail price for food.

Nikolov’s groundbreaking investigation on the shady procurement contracts prompted public uproar and led to the resignation of the country’s deputy defense minister. It also contributed to the resignation of then-Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov later in the year.

But for all the clear-out, according to Nikolov, intimidatory pressure on Ukraine’s investigative journalists is only mounting — despite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s January statement that “any pressure on journalists is unacceptable.” And while the level of corruption in the country may be on the decline, it’s still far from over.

Since his stories came out, Nikolov’s been the target of harassment and denounced on social media by anonymous government supporters questioning his loyalty. Then, in January, the intimidation went further, when “two guys in camouflage came and banged on my apartment door,” he said. They terrified his ailing mother, who was there alone at the time, and plastered the door with notes accusing him of being a traitor, provocateur and draft dodger.  

A video of the incident was later uploaded to a Telegram channel supportive of Zelenskyy.

In the same month Nikolov’s apartment was targeted, a video was uploaded to YouTube showing camera operators from Bihus.Info, an independent news site that also reports on corruption, partying and taking drugs at a hotel outside Kyiv on New Year. Intercepted phone conversations between the outlet’s staffers discussing buying cannabis were also posted, accompanied by the tag line “Can you trust their investigations if they are doing them under the influence of drugs?”

Denys Bihus, the site’s founder, fired some staff in response, but his biggest worry was how the recordings were obtained, by whom and for what purpose. He later accused the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) of being behind the surveillance operation, which agency boss General Vasyl Malyuk subsequently acknowledged was true. Malyuk said the SBU’s Department for the Protection of National Statehood had engaged in the illegal wiretapping, and he’d already dismissed the head of the department.

“We are aware that we are protecting a democratic Ukraine, in which the strengthening of national statehood is one of the key priorities, the implementation of which should ensure, among other things, the unhindered work of the mass media and guarantee them a sufficient level of security,” he said in a statement.

But according to Nikolov, the media’s still being obstructed, hindered and pressured in different ways. Reporters find themselves quickly dubbed Russian agents, draft dodgers and enemies of Ukraine on pro-government Telegram channels. “These channels are very close to the office of the president,” he claimed.

But there are even bigger risks.

Nikolov’s groundbreaking investigation contributed to the resignation of then-Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov later in the year. | Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images

Nikolov explained that one journalist he knows volunteered early on, securing a job with an information unit as a press coordinator. The post gave him the opportunity to publish his pieces in top-tier Ukrainian publications, but one of his columns “wasn’t liked by the people in power, and he was transferred to a combat unit. He was at risk of being deployed to Avdiivka,” he said. “We didn’t make any noise about it because if we had, he certainly would have been sent there.”

Nikolov’s also worried that some reporters and outlets are censoring themselves, seeing patriotism as trumping journalism — something he struggled with himself before publishing his first piece on the food contracts.

“Look, you can be a patriot. You can want Ukraine to win this war and still be a journalist,” he told POLITICO. Sat in a café in downtown Kyiv, discussing what it’s like to be an honest reporter during wartime, he said: “Journalists should also understand they’ve got a job to do. It’s not bad for Ukraine to be transparent and to have proper journalism happening. I want us to have more air defenses and more weapons for our troops — that’s what the money should be spent on, not lining peoples’ pockets.”

In some ways, corruption has been hard-boiled into Ukraine, with graft blighting the country since it secured independence in 1991. It reached a crescendo during the tenure of Viktor Yanukovych, president from 2010 until his ouster in 2014, with theft, bribery, corruption in public procurement and rigged energy prices on an industrial scale. They’re estimated to have embezzled as much as $37 billion — although the first post-Maidan revolution government claimed it could have been as much as $100 billion. The proceeds were stashed in bank accounts and companies in Austria, Latvia, Cyprus, Italy, the Netherlands and Britain via a complex money-laundering machine.

Graft is no longer on that scale now, Nikolov reckoned. But like others, he thinks the intimidatory tactics being employed against journalists are reminiscent of the Yanukovych era.

In some ways, however, the direction of travel with anti-corruption efforts is heartening. “When it comes to state spending, things have got better. But there are still problems with procurement contracts, and we have a problem with bribery and kickbacks and, for example, with the police, state security service, custom officers, tax inspectors demanding money for problems to go away and facilitation,” he said.  

Take the defense ministry — prices for food supplies have dramatically decreased, but Nikolov argued those responsible are still entrenched within the ministry’s bureaucracy. “The prices may have been pushed down but the mafia hasn’t been pushed out, and they’re biding their time,” he said.

Others who closely monitor anti-corruption efforts agree that things have improved since Yanukovych’s ouster, with progress made during the presidency of Petro Poroshenko and since Zelenskyy took office. A 2018 report by the Kyiv-based Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting said reforms — including more transparent government procurement and the energy sector’s deregulation — had reduced grand corruption by approximately $6 billion, about 6 percent of Ukraine’s GDP. According to the report, the shadow economy also dropped from an estimated 43 percent of GDP in 2014 to 33 percent in late 2017.

The introduction of ProZorro, a transparent electronic system for public procurement has helped overall. A new High Anti-Corruption Court has been working smoothly as well, convicting 157 government officials since 2019, according to court records. Zelenskyy has also cut the country’s oligarchs down to size, with Ukrainian authorities indicting Ihor Kolomoisky — one of the country’s most prominent oligarchs — on a number of corruption charges last year. “There’s no question Ukraine has made great strides combating corruption,” argued Adrian Karatnycky, the author of “Battleground Ukraine: From Independence to the War with Russia.”

So far so good, agreed Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center NGO. “We’re on the right track,” she said. Even defense ministry procurement has been cleaned up — though it’s hard to tell when it comes to the prices paid for lethal weapons, as they don’t have to be entered on ProZorro for reasons of state security. “Old-school forces will try to prevent change from happening, but it’s our duty to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Kaleniuk said.

And Nikolov is certainly doing his best to make sure such forces don’t win out — but they still have a kick.