Call from the Mayor’s press secretary and a paper’s disappearance from sale

The management of the Dnipropetrovsk newspaper “Litsa” [Faces or People] has submitted a formal request for information to the Ukrainian Postal Service and plans to send analogous requests to the prosecutor’s office and to the City Council in connection with yesterday’s disappearance from kiosks of the newspaper. The Chief Editor Olena Harahuz told IMI that the day before she had received a call on her mobile from Tetyana Maznichenko, Press Secretary to the Mayor of Dnipropetrovsk Ivan Kupychenko. The Press Secretary had asked whether the newspaper really was publishing an article about the Mayor and had received an affirmative response. Asked who, in the management’s opinion, was behind the removal of the newspaper from sale, Olena Harahuz replied that at present they did not suspect anyone in particular, however they knew definitely why it had happened, and this was because of material about the Mayor entitled “Headless horsemen”*. The article began with the following: “In the evening of 25 December, local law enforcement officers right in the hospital (where the local Mayor was admitted over a heart attack following the release of information about his involvement in the squandering of money from the local budget), charges were issued against the Mayor of Dnipropetrovsk Ivan Kupychenko. Prosecutor’s officials had planned to do this three days earlier, however were unable to due to the deterioration in the state of health of the Mayor”. The material on this subject was on the first page. On 27 December the issue of the newspaper had disappeared from kiosks in Dnipropetrovsk. * the word for Mayor in Ukrainian literally means “City Head” [translator]