Saturday beating of ‘Bukvy’ reporter drew concern from a senior OSCE official Monday.

In her Twitter account, OSCE media freedom Teresa Ribeiro condemned the attack on Kuzhelnyi and stressed the safety of journalists as a democracy key point.

The OSCE senior also demanded from Ukraine’s authorities to protect the press.

A rally against attacks on journalists is scheduled for August 17 in Kyiv near the Internal Ministry building.

Learn more details about the attack on Kuzhelnyi in ‘Bukvy’ article.

• Kyiv police started a criminal investigation into the attack and beating of Kuzhelnyi.
• On August 15, Kyiv police investigators reported the suspicion of two people involved in the attack.
• The attackers were found by the ‘National Corps’, whose leader Andriy Biletsky persuaded them to come to the police. They did so after a public apology to Kuzhelnyi.
• According to ‘Bukvy’ information, at the time when the attackers came to the police station on August 15, they were not even declared wanted.
• ‘Bukvy’ managed to identify the person who initiated the attack.

Threats to ‘Bukvy’ reporters

This is not the first case of threats against ‘Bukvy’ journalists.

In the autumn of 2019, during a sitting of the Verkhovna Rada, ‘Bukvy’ reporter filmed Bohdan Yaremenko, the then chairperson of the Verkhovna Rada’s foreign policy committee. The MP was allegedly texting a prostitute on a dating website. Yaremenko first declared provocation, and then threatened ‘Bukvy’ with a criminal case.

In September 2020, Yevhen Shevchenko, a former ‘Servant of the People’ representative, threatened ‘Bukvy’ reporter due to revealed  photo taken at a parliamentary session.

Viktor Medvedchuk, a leader of ‘Opposition Plaftorm for Life’ party, is also suing ‘Bukvy’ publishers – Kateryna Roshuk and Petro Terentyev. The defimation lawsuit was filed in May 2019 over scenes in a Vasyl Stus biopic.

‘Bukvy’ is an independent media outlet that belongs to the list of online media with the highest level of adherence to professional journalistic standards. In addition, ‘Bukvy’ is among the top media that do not place paid publications.

‘Bukvy’ study in detail the activities of the Ukrainian authorities, record every violation of the laws of Ukraine by the current President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky in a separate section and focus their activities on the fight against fakes.

In particular, ‘Bukvy’ published an investigation in which they analyzed the activities of bots on Facebook, working in the interests of former Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman.

Following the publication, the Facebook administration exposed a network of bots linked to MP Andriy Derkach and ex-PM Volodymyr Groysman.

In addition, ‘Bukvy’ told how the authorities’ bot farms support President Volodymyr Zelensky and destroy his opponents. This material became the basis for the investigation of Facebook administrators. They later discovered a network of bots (105 Facebook accounts, 24 pages and 5 Instagram accounts).

‘Bukvy’ covers Russian aggression in Ukraine, which has repeatedly led to threats of blocking by Russia’s authorities. Eventually the outlet was added to a list of ‘information resources prohibited in the Russian Federation’.