Who murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky?
July 7-8, 1997
As the first two of the above attacks occurred prior to your 23Oct94 broadcast, then
your fault is that you neglected to report them. And as the second two attacks occurred
after your 23Oct94 broadcast, then your fault is that you may have helped cause them.
That is, your 23Oct94 broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom, served to demonstrate to
Ukraine's assassins not only that violence against Ukrainians would go unreported in the
world press, but also that even as Ukrainians continued to be butchered, the world press
would portray them - the victim Ukrainians - as themselves butchers. You did not
yourself wield any knife or pull any trigger or tighten any garotte, but you informed
those that were predisposed to do so that they might expect impunity if they did. For
this reason, I consider you to have blood on your hands, some of it Maksym Tsarenko's,
and some of it Volodymyr Katelnytsky's.
Lubomyr Prytulak
cc: Yaakov Bleich, Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney,
Lesley Stahl, Mike Wallace, Simon Wiesenthal.
Morley Safer Letter 12 01Jul99 Who murdered Borys Derevyanko?
The plainest moral to be drawn from the Derevyanko-Hurvits story is that when a
muckraking Ukrainian editor takes on a corrupt Jewish politician, the Ukrainian editor
ends up dead.
July 1, 1999
Morley Safer
60 Minutes, CBS Television
51 W 52nd Street
New York, NY
USA 10019
Morley Safer:
The Committee to Protect Journalists described the contract killing of Ukrainian editor
Borys Derevyanko thusly:
Borys Derevyanko, Vechernyaya Odessa
Date of Death: August 11, 1997
Place of Death: Odessa
Derevyanko, editor in chief of Vechernyaya Odessa, a popular and
influential thrice-weekly newspaper, was fatally shot at point-blank
range on his way to work on the morning of August 11 near the Press
House, where the newspaper's offices are located. Colleagues believe
the killing of Derevyanko, who was editor of Vechernyaya Odessa for 24
years, was related to the newspaper's opposition to the policies of
Odessa's mayor. The chief regional prosecutor declared the murder a
contract killing and launched an official investigation. Local
authorities announced in September that they had arrested a suspect,
described as a professional assassin, who confessed to killing
Derevyanko, but they gave no details about his confession.
I would add that the Odessa mayor which the above account neglects to name was the
corrupt Eduard Hurvits, who was particularly threatened by Borys Derevyanko's opposition
because of municipal elections that were coming up in 1998. The comment concerning the
arrest of an assassin gives a misleading impression - in today's Ukraine, contract
killings are never solved, and those who order them are never punished.
Today, Borys Derevyanko is dead, and Eduard Hurvits, barred by his corruption from