Oles Buzina

Oles Buzina
Born	(1969-07-13)13 July 1969 Kiev, Ukrainian SSR, USSR
Died	16 April 2015(2015-04-16) (aged 45) Kiev, Ukraine
Citizenship	Ukraine
Occupation	journalist, writer, politician
Website
www.buzina.org

Oles Buzina (Ukrainian: Оле́сь Олексі́йович Бузина́; 13 July 1969,^[1] Kiev, Ukrainian SSR – 16 April 2015, Kiev, Ukraine) was a pro-Russian^[2] Ukrainian journalist and writer.^[3] He was affiliated with the Russian Bloc party but had been unsuccessful in seeking office.

He was murdered on 16 April 2015, shot on the sidewalk not far from his flat in Kiev.

Biography

Oles Buzina was born July 13, 1969 in Kiev and attended local schools. In 1992 he graduated from the Faculty of Philology Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (specialty "teacher of Russian language and literature").^[1] He started a career in journalism.^[1] Buzina worked for a number of Ukrainian media:^[4][5]

• Newspaper Kievskiye Vedomosti (1993-2005)
• Newspaper 2000 (2005-2006)
• Various magazines, such as Natali, EGO Ukraine, XXL Ukraine
• From October 2006 Buzina was an anchorman of Teen-liga program on TV channel Inter
• Newspaper Segodnya, where he had his own column and blog since 2007
• An an expert, he participated in the reality-show Bachelor on TV channel STB from 2011
• From 2012 he was host of Po sledam prashurov (eng. Tracking the Ancestors)^[6] show on K-1 TV channel.
• In January 2015 he became editor-in-chief of Segodnya newspaper, where he had worked for many years. ^[7] He resigned in March,^[8] protesting the censorship of the newspaper's owners, having limited control over newspaper's policy, his absence of control over newspaper's website, and an imposed ban on his appearance on TV and interviews with the press.
• Buzina founded his own website, featuring blogs and sale of some of his books online.

He was invited as a guest to numerous talk shows in Russia. Some of his articles were published in Russian media.

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

Personal life

Buzina was married and a father of one daughter.

Politics

In addition to his reporting, Buzina tried to enter politics. He ran in the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election for a constituency seat in Kiev for Russian Bloc.^[9] But he failed to win parliamentary representation.^[10] In constituency 223, his 8.22% of votes was insufficient.^[9]

Literary views

His favourite books were A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov and The White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov.^[11]

Political and public views

Oles Buzina had anti-Orange Revolution,^[12][13] and anti-Euromaidan views.^[14]

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.^[12]

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.^[15] This initiative was suported 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".^[16]

As of April 2009 Buzina was sued 11 times and every single time judges ruled out in his favour.^[17] In 2000 he was physically assaulted right after winning in court one of these cases.^[4] Some of these legal actions saw Ukrainian politicians as plaintiffs: Pavlo Movchan, Volodymyr Yavorivsky.^[12]

On 22 March 2009 a FEMEN activist threw a cake at Oles Buzina, protesting his book that she perceived as sexist.

On 22 March 2009 he had a cake thrown at him by a FEMEN activist, that 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.^[17]

His views on Ukraine expressed on multiple occasions during years of journalism and political commentary included statements that Ukraine should be an independent state, not part of Russia,^[17] that it should be a bilingual federation^[17][18] that it should favor an alliance of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan rather than joining the European Union.^[19][12]

His political stance was criticized^[20] for a comment to newspaper Den that he allegedly gave in 1999:

My ideal is recreation of the Russian Empire, but I am forced to adapt myself to the ugly conditions of creating the independent Ukraine.

—When you wouldn't shake a man's hand?, Day.kiev.ua ^[21]

He claimed the quote was a fabrication.^[22]

Murder

Appearing on a Russian TV show, Oles Buzina said that he received constant death threats in Ukraine and was not sure if he would live long.^[23][24]

On 14 April 2015, two days before the murder, Buzina's personal data, including his address and mobile phone number, were published in the "Purgatory" section on a Ukrainian website Mirotvorets;^[25] he was called a "separatist" and a "homophobe".^[26] He was found murdered on 16 April near his home.

On 18 April, Euronews reported that "A Ukrainian nationalist group" calling itself "Ukrainian Insurgent Army" claimed responsibility for the murders of Buzina and other opposition figures.^[27] Markian Lubkivskyi, an advisor at the Security Service of Ukraine, said that linguistic analysis of the telephone call indicated they were not native Ukrainian speakers.^[28]

Die Zeit reported on 23 April that the murder of Buzina was endorsed by one of the Ukrainian volunteer battalions called "Battalion OUN." It posted on its Facebook page that it supports the "hard work" of cleansing Ukraine from "internal occupiers like Buzina" by "unknown patriots."^[29]

Reactions

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on live Russian TV that this murder was a political one and offered his condolences to the family of the victim.^[30] Radio Free Europe reported that "At 2:05, Ukrainian presidential adviser Anton Herashchenko confirmed the slaying on Facebook. And by 2:17, Russian President Vladimir Putin was already using Buzina's killing to attack Ukraine's "democratic" values during his annual call-in show with the Russian public."^[31] The German newspaper "Die Zeit" reported that the murder of opposition activist Buzina follows a string of murders and deaths of five public figures critical of the former president of Ukraine.^[32] Ukrainian officials blamed "Russian special forces assassins" for the murder.^[33] United Nations Human Rights Commission representative Seid Raad al-Hussein described this murder and others as disturbing and demanded quick and decisive investigation.^[34]

EU, Germany,^[35] USA, UNESCO,^[36] OSCE,^[37] Amnesty International^[38] have demanded an independent investigation of the murder of Ukrainian journalists Oles Buzina and Sergey Sukhobok and politician Oleg Kalashnikov.

Publications by Buzina

• «Вурдалак Тарас Шевченко» (2000), [The Ghoul Taras Shevchenko]
• «Тайная история Украины-Руси» (2005), [The Secret Story of Ukraine and Rus']
• «Верните женщинам гаремы» (2008), [Bring Back Harems to Women]
• «Революция на болоте» (2010), [Revolution in Swamp]
• «Воскрешение Малороссии» (2012) [The Resurrection of Little Russia]
• «Союз плуга и трезуба. Как придумали Украину» (2013) [The Union between Plough and Trident. How Ukraine Was Invented]
• «Докиевская Русь» (2014) [The Rus' Before Kiev]
• ЭМСКИЙ УКАЗ ПРОТИВ РУССКОГО ЯЗЫКА on line (2008) [ Ems Ukaz Against The Russian Language]

References

External links

• Official website
• Photographs of crime scene; Buzina's body covered on the street, El Murid
• Oles Buzina personal blog, on Segodnya, in Russian
• Last interview (Russian language video with English transcript)