My first & only invitation to Ukrainian president's Independence Day reception

Ukrainian presidents hated the tough Kyiv Post that I led. While hopes were high in 2019 that Volodymyr Zelensky would be better, his ex-prosecutor pressured Adnan Kivan into firing the staff in 2021.

By BRIAN BONNER

Five years ago, Mariinsky Palace hosted a fun event to celebrate Ukraine’s Independence Day. I, then chief editor of the Kyiv Post, entered the courtyard and snapped the top image of four of Ukraine’s five ex-presidents—Petro Poroshenko, Viktor Yushchenko, Leonid Kuchma, and the late Leonid Kravchuk—toasting each other with champagne.

I still remember the pleasant surprise of being invited to the annual reception hosted by Ukrainian presidents. It turned out to be my first and last invitation.

There was no chance that the independent Kyiv Post, relentlessly covering corruption during my tenure from 2008 to 2021, would get an invitation to the event from any of Volodymyr Zelensky’s predecessors, who either hated or ignored the newspaper I led.

But it was Zelensky who proved fatal to the newspaper when his disgraced, incompetent, and reputedly corrupt ex-prosecutor general, Iryna Venedyktova, prevailed upon owner Adnan Kivan to fire me and the entire staff because of our critical coverage of her and her unwillingness to fight corruption. She left for a soft landing as ambassador to Switzerland.

The full explanation for Venedytkova's sacking in 2022 never came out. Still, parts did go public, including her alleged failure to detect and punish Russian agents among the prosecutorial ranks.

I wrote an analytical piece about the situation on August 1, 2022, for my then-employer, Geopolitical Intelligence Services, owned by Prince Michael of Liechtenstein, who did not give his editors bylines:

Ukraine’s war effort is hobbled by spies, traitors – and corruption.

A veteran journalist, Bernhard Odehnal, did a brilliant take-down of her (with my help) in the Zurich-based Tages Anzeiger newspaper. The Swiss publication is in German, but a quick Google translation will help English readers get the main idea of the 2023 story headlined: “At home, her reputation is ruined.”

Here’s the quick back story.

Zelensky sacked Venedyktova’s predecessor, Rouslan Riaboshapka, a respected reformer, only six months into his tenure in March 2020, allegedly for not showing results in cleaning up the notoriously corrupt prosecutor’s office or in fighting corruption. It later emerged that the real reason was that Riaboshapka refused to support a set of dubious criminal charges against ex-President Petro Poroshenko.

Prosecutors in Ukraine wield outsized power that has been abused historically. While covering up corruption for the powerful, reputedly for heavy fees, prosecutors are famous for taking bribes to open and close criminal cases against political foes or the less well-connected. It is a leading exhibit of Ukraine’s lack of rule of law.

Enter Venedyktova in March 2020. Six months into her tenure, I commissioned a story about her on the premise that — since Riaboshapka was fired after only six months — Venedyktova’s record should also be assessed by the same measure.

Here is the story that set everything in motion for the demise of the independent Kyiv Post. We published on November 6, 2020: “Top prosecutor blocks big cases, has no achievements to show.” It was hard-hitting, as Oleg Sukhov's stories tended to be.

Venedyktova hauled me into her office, angrily reading the story out loud and threatening to sue me (she did serve notice on the newspaper, but it was later rescinded). She ranted in English but primarily in Russian for over an hour in her office before I pushed back. I was alone (a big mistake), but she had two advisers with her. I tried to mollify her by offering to publish op-eds by her regularly to give her point of view.

She ended up publishing several of them, a decision that did not go over well with the staff, who saw them as PR pieces not worthy of the space or prominence in print we were giving. They certainly had a point. On the other hand, if we were going to be hard on Venedyktova on the news and editorial pages (and we were), I felt I should, in fairness, let her have her say in clearly marked opinions. Plus, she was the first prosecutor general interested in the English-speaking audience we could deliver, so I saw reputational value in having a voice of the establishment in print.

She was overbearing, trying to dictate which page her op-ed would appear on and which photo of her would be used. I accommodated when I could, and Kivan encouraged me to find a way to work with her. My decision worked, at least to the extent that she left the newspaper alone for about a year. You can find an archive of her columns here.

But then it came time to re-evaluate her performance. On September 3, 2021, the Kyiv Post published a double-bylined story by Oleg Sukhov and Oleksiy Sorokin, headlined: “Top prosecutor’s priority appears to be image over achievement.”

Instead of bothering to discuss it with the chief editor, this time, Venedyktova took out her ire on Kivan, the newspaper’s owner, opening 42 criminal cases against the owner of the KADORR Group. After two months of intense efforts, prosecutors eventually closed the cases.

Her demands, however, also included firing me (and Sukhov), which Kivan complied with on November 8, 2021, when he axed the entire team. The story is longer and more complicated than I have outlined, but these are the essential points. In any case, the neutered Kyiv Post lives on while the Kyiv Independent was born.

As for the annual president’s Independence Day reception at Mariinsky Park in Kyiv, I assume the event continues. But I have long been removed from the invitation list.