Kyiv Independent Editor-in-Chief Olga Rudenko has been shortlisted for the Gongadze Prize, a Ukrainian prize for independent journalism.
The winner of the prize will be announced on May 21, on the birthday of Georgiy Gongadze, a prominent investigative journalist and co-founder of the news outlet Ukrainska Pravda, who was killed in 2000.
Gongadze, a critic of then-president Leonid Kuchma, was kidnapped on Sept. 16, 2000. Two months later, his headless body was found in a forest some 70 kilometers outside Kyiv.
The award was founded in 2019 by PEN Ukraine, the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School, and Ukrainska Pravda.
The other finalists are investigative journalist Anna Babinets and journalist and radio host Tetyana Troshchynska.
The prize is awarded to journalists who "are not afraid of challenges," who contribute to the introduction of liberal reforms in Ukraine," and who "open up new opportunities for the entire media environment."
The 2023 prize was awarded to Bohdan Logvinenko, founder of the Ukrainer project.
Rudenko has also recently been selected for the list of Ukrainska Pravda's Power of Women, a list of 100 Ukrainian women who bring "victory closer with daily work, self-sacrifice, and care for the next generations of Ukrainians."