Oles Buzina

Oles Oleksiiovych Buzina (13 July 1969 – 16 April 2015) was a Ukrainian journalist and writer known for his criticism of Ukrainian politics and for the support of closer ties of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.

Oles Buzina was born on 13 July 1969 in Kyiv and attended local schools.

In 1992 he graduated from the Faculty of Philology Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv specialising as a teacher of Russian language and literature.

He began a career in journalism working for a number of Ukrainian media outlets:

He was invited as a guest to numerous talk shows in Russia.

Some of his articles were published in the Russian media.

As a writer he published eight books, mainly about prominent figures and the history of Ukraine and Russia.

Buzina was married and the father of one daughter.

In addition to his reporting, Buzina tried to enter politics.

His political stance was criticized for a comment to newspaper Den that he gave in 1999: "...my ideal is the reconstruction of the Russian Empire, but I am forced to adapt to the ugly conditions of "construction" of an independent Ukraine."

He stated that the quote was a fabrication.

In 2000 he was physically assaulted right after winning in court one of these cases.

Some of these legal actions saw Ukrainian politicians as plaintiffs: Pavlo Movchan, Volodymyr Yavorivsky.

On 20 January 2006 he claimed that as a writer he was aware of political censorship in post-Orange Revolution Ukraine, as some publishers were afraid to release his books.

In May 2009 he campaigned for adoption of a series of laws prohibiting neo-Nazi organizations, propaganda of Nazism, and ideological legacy of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists as a totalitarian fascist party.

This initiative was supported by Borys Kolesnikov, one of the leaders of Party of Regions.

In May 2009 National Expert Commission of Ukraine on the Protection of Public Morality launched an investigation against Oles Buzina as a result of complaint filed by Petro Kononenko, director of Institute of Ukrainology.

Kononenko stated that Oles Buzina "discredited most outstanding Ukrainian public figures and picks everything that's shameful in our history".

As of April 2009 Buzina was sued 11 times and every single time judges ruled out in his favour.

On 22 March 2009 he had a cake thrown at him by a FEMEN activist who declared his only fiction book sexist.

Oles Buzina was rated 4th in the "Homophobe of the Year - 2011" list by the Ukrainian gay forum.

He identified himself as both Ukrainian and Russian, though having ethnic Ukrainian parents.

His views on Ukraine expressed on multiple occasions during years of journalism and political commentary included statements that Ukraine should be part of Russia, that it should be a bilingual federal state of Russia and that it should favor an alliance Belarus and Kazakhstan rather than joining the European Union.

He ran in the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election for a constituency seat in Kyiv for Russian Bloc but failed to win parliamentary representation.

In Constituency No. 223, his 8.22% of votes was insufficient.

Buzina held anti-Orange Revolution and anti-Euromaidan views.

In January 2014, Buzina said on a Russian state-owned TV channel Russia-1 that he was receiving constant death threats.

He was found killed by a gunshot on 16 April 2015, near his residence in Kyiv.

The murder case remains unsolved.

In April 2015, the Myrotvorets website published his home addresses.

On 16 April, Buzina was found dead near his home.

His killing was one of a few targeting pro-Russian activists or people linked to former president Victor Yanukovych.

in the period.

Former MP Oleg Kalashnikov was shot and killed in his apartment block the same week.

Journalist Sergey Sukhobok was also killed in Kiev the same week, followed by the arrest of two suspects.

A previously unknown Ukrainian nationalist group calling itself "Ukrainian Insurgent Army" - named after a group of partisans who fought against the Russian army in World War II, claimed responsibility for the murders of Buzina and Kalashnikov, in emails to the parliamentary opposition and to political scientist Volodymyr Fesenko.

Markian Lubkivskyi, an advisor at the Security Service of Ukraine, said that linguistic analysis of the telephone call of the "Ukrainian Insurgent Army" indicated they were not native Ukrainian speakers, and Vasyl Vovk, the head of the Main Investigations Directorate of the Security Service of Ukraine, said the organization was fake.

Analyst Anton Shekhovtsov stated that the "Ukrainian Insurgent Army" is frequently demonised in Russian propaganda.

He also speculated that corruption related to Yanukovych's presidency or action by far-right Ukrainian activists were both plausible theories explaining the murder, as was the view of Poroshenko and others that the murders could be provocations by Russian intelligence.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that the Buzina and Kalashnikov's murders were "a deliberate provocation" aimed at "destabilising the internal political situation in Ukraine and discrediting the political choice of the Ukrainian people", and that he would personally oversee the investigations into the two murders.