Ukraine

46 million people
3,130 USD GNI (PPP)
Internet:
Free
Press:
Partly Free
Partly Free

News & Updates

Freedom House is alarmed by the violent attack on journalists covering an opposition demonstration in Kyiv, Ukraine on May 18, and calls of the authorities to conduct a full investigation and bring the attackers to justice. Any further delay in investigating the attackers, at least some of whom are apparently known to the authorities, is an abandonment of the authorities’ responsibility to ensure the safe and unhindered work of journalists and contributes to impunity of those who attack them.

Freedom House welcomes the pardon of several former government officials in Ukraine, most prominently Yuriy Lutsenko, a  Minister of Interior under former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and former Minister of Ecology and Environment, Heorhiy Filipchuk.  It calls on President Viktor Yanukovych to take similar action on Tymoshenko.

Freedom House welcomes a bipartisan effort by 62 members of Congress to speak out against two bills proposed by Ukraine’s parliament that would blatantly target LGBT persons and lead to an environment of “state-sponsored” discrimination.

Freedom House President David Kramer met with European Union Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy, Štefan Füle, to discuss policies for encouraging greater respect for human rights in Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia.

Signature Reports

Special Reports

Press Freedom: An Own Goal for Ukraine

Freedom House, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), Article 19, Open Society Foundations (OSF), and the Ukraine Association of Press Publishers compiled a joint report on Ukraine's press freedom situation. The reoprt outlines the findings of a mission conducted in early April that ultimately found serious corruption issues and other problems. The report recommended a number of steps in order to improve freedom of expression in the country.

Promise and Reversal: The Post-Soviet Landscape Twenty Years On

“Promise and Reversal: The Post-Soviet Landscape Twenty Years On,” marks the 20th anniversary of the failed Soviet coup of August 19, 1991. The retrospective essay examines the changes in the political rights and civil liberties in the former Soviet Union over the last two decades, as well as includes graphs and rankings that illustrate the region's performance in the annual Freedom House publications Freedom in the World and Freedom of the Press. The report  concludes that there is a serious and disturbing failure to embrace democratic institutions in most of the post-Soviet region.

Sounding the Alarm: Protecting Democracy in Ukraine

In February 2010, under the auspices of Freedom House, David J. Kramer and two independent analysts, Robert Nurick and Damon Wilson, traveled to Ukraine to assess the state of democracy and human rights one year after the inauguration of Viktor Yanukovych as the country’s fourth president since independence. The team traveled to Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Lviv to meet with a wide range of government officials, political opposition figures, civil society actors, journalists, and students.

 

Programs

Freedom House works with the Institute for Mass Information (IMI) in Ukraine to improve coverage of corruption and to inject a public discussion about corruption and governance into local affairs through citizen journalists.