55 Facts About Georgiy Gongadze

Georgiy Ruslanovych Gongadze was a Ukrainian journalist who was kidnapped and murdered in 2000 near Kyiv.

Georgiy Gongadze founded the online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda along with Olena Prytula in 2000.

Georgiy Gongadze was born in Tbilisi to a Ukrainian mother and a Georgian father.

Georgiy Gongadze's family believe the trial had failed to bring the masterminds behind the killing to justice.

Georgiy Gongadze's parents met in Lviv, where they studied in university and eventually married.

Georgiy Gongadze was born as a twin, but his brother was kidnapped from the hospital soon after their birth.

Georgiy Gongadze's mother did not remarry, and continued to live and work in Tbilisi until 1994.

In May 1989, Georgiy Gongadze was discharged from the Border Troops.

In 1989 and 1990, Georgiy Gongadze travelled to the Baltic states and Ukraine in an attempt to drum up foreign support for Georgia's independence from the Soviet Union.

Georgiy Gongadze attended Chervona Ruta, the first non-communist music and youth festival, held in September 1989 in Chernivtsi.

Georgiy Gongadze led a team of medical emergency services transferring wounded to a hospital until snipers opened fire on them.

On 15 January 1992, Georgiy Gongadze returned to Lviv, only to discover that his wife had left him.

In 1992, Georgiy Gongadze founded a Georgian Culture Association in Lviv, named after the Bagrationi dynasty, which served as an informational centre.

Later in 1992, Georgiy Gongadze returned to Tbilisi again to visit his mother, who continued to work in a hospital as a nurse.

Georgiy Gongadze received a camera from his mother, and filmed a documentary about the Georgian Civil War, entitled The Pain of My Land.

Georgiy Gongadze volunteered to fight in Abkhazia, but was refused admission to military service by government authorities for being the son of Ruslan Georgiy Gongadze and his role in promoting Georgian causes in Ukraine.

Georgiy Gongadze returned to Lviv to perform his "diplomatic mission" in active support of Georgia in inter-ethnic conflicts.

Georgiy Gongadze repeatedly visited UNA-UNSO gatherings in an attempt to find Ukrainians willing to fight.

Georgiy Gongadze did not return to Georgia with the UNA-UNSO, but remained in Ukraine, where his father was undergoing cancer treatment in Kyiv.

Georgiy Gongadze did not survive treatment, and died on 5 August 1993, at the age of 49.

Georgiy Gongadze obtained funds for the documentary by selling his military-issued AK-47.

On 17 September 1993, Georgiy Gongadze left Tbilisi for Sukhumi to film the events.

Georgiy Gongadze was fighting in a trench when an artillery shell exploded above him, and shrapnel hit him in 26 places, including his right hand.

The only thing preventing Georgiy Gongadze's death was his helmet, and two soldiers that had been next to him were killed in the explosion.

Georgiy Gongadze was quickly taken to a field hospital, where he brought attention to himself by requesting that someone return to the field, so that his bag of video cassettes would not be lost.

In Tbilisi, Georgiy Gongadze's treatment continued, and he was tended to by his mother, still working in the military hospital.

Georgiy Gongadze's mother tried to send him away from Georgia, but did not have enough money, as the government had not had enough money to pay hospital staff since December 1991.

Georgiy Gongadze's mother managed to raise enough funds through friends and relatives and, after two weeks in Tbilisi, Georgiy Gongadze returned to Lviv in October 1993, with his mother staying behind.

In Ukraine, Georgiy Gongadze finished production of his new documentary, and it was shown on Ukrainian television under the name Shadows of War.

From 1996 to 1997, Georgiy Gongadze worked for the Ukrainian television channel STB.

Georgiy Gongadze worked for the Kyiv-based radio station Kontynent, on which he had his own show called First Round with Georhiy Gongadze.

Georgiy Gongadze observed that following the muzzling of a prominent pro-opposition newspaper after the election, "today there is practically no objective information available about Ukraine".

In June 2000, Georgiy Gongadze wrote an open letter to Ukraine's chief prosecutor about harassment from the Security Service of Ukraine directed towards himself and his Ukrainska Pravda colleagues and apparently related to an investigation into a murder case in the southern port of Odesa.

Georgiy Gongadze complained that he had been forced into hiding because of harassment from the secret police, that he said he and his family were being followed, that his staff were being harassed, and that the SBU were spreading a rumour that he was wanted on a murder charge.

Georgiy Gongadze disappeared on the night of 16 September 2000, after failing to return home.

Opposition politician Hryhoriy Omelchenko stated that the disappearance had coincided with Georgiy Gongadze receiving documents on corruption within the president's own entourage.

Georgiy Gongadze tried to be like a normal reporter, he didn't try to be a hero.

The Russian-edited, Russian-language Ukrainian newspaper Segodnya reported that Georgiy Gongadze had been abducted by policemen and accidentally shot in the head while seated in a vehicle, necessitating his decapitation.

Georgiy Gongadze's body had been doused in petrol which had failed to burn properly, and had then been dumped.

Georgiy Gongadze later acknowledged that his voice was indeed one of those on the tapes, but claimed that they had been selectively edited to distort his meaning.

Georgiy Gongadze did sack the head of the SBU, Leonid Derkach, and the chief of the presidential bodyguard, Volodymyr Shepel, but refused to step down.

The prosecutor of Tarascha Raion, where Georgiy Gongadze's body was found, was convicted in May 2003 for abuse of office and falsification of evidence.

Georgiy Gongadze's death became a major issue in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, in which the opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko pledged to solve the case if he became president.

Prosecutor-General Svyatoslav Piskun announced the following day that the case had been solved, telling Ukrainian television that Georgiy Gongadze had been strangled by employees of the Interior Ministry.

Georgiy Gongadze had died from apparently self-inflicted gunshot wounds, though some speculated that he might have been assassinated to prevent him from testifying as a witness.

Hryhory Omelchenko, who chaired the parliamentary committee that investigated the Georgiy Gongadze case, told the New York Times that Kravchenko had ordered Pukach to abduct Georgiy Gongadze on President Kuchma's orders.

Georgiy Gongadze told the press that after Gongadze was murdered, a second group disinterred him and re-buried him where he was eventually found, in the constituency of Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz.

The trial against three former policemen charged with the killing of Georgiy Gongadze began on 9 January 2006.

On 28 July 2009, Ukrainian media reported that the remains of Georgiy Gongadze's skull were found near Bila Tserkva, in a location specified by Pukach.

On 16 September 2010, Lytvyn asserted that the investigation into the murder of Georgiy Gongadze confirmed his innocence in this crime.

Pukach's trial, on allegations he strangled and beheaded Georgiy Gongadze, began on 7 July 2011.

Georgiy Gongadze was buried in the Mykola Naberezhny Church in Kyiv on 22 March 2016.

In 2009, according to the Prosecutor-General's office, the remains of his skull had been found, but Olesya Georgiy Gongadze refused to acknowledge that the found remains belonged to her son.

Georgiy Gongadze repeated her wish "to remove the monument to Gongadze" after a meeting with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on 22 June 2010, and added her discontent with "political forces holding PR campaigns" regarding the Gongadze murder case.

In Kyiv and Lviv, ceremonies marking the disappearance of Georgiy Gongadze were held on 16 September 2010.