Liubysh-Kirdei, Rudenko, Tkach – Gongadze Prize 2025 Finalists

The members of the Gongadze Prize Chapter have determined the shortlist of nominees for the 2025 award. Among the contenders are Ivan Liubysh-Kirdei, photographer and war correspondent for Reuters; Olha Rudenko, editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Kyiv Independent; and Mykhailo Tkach, head of the investigative department of Ukrainska Pravda.

Gongadze Prize 2025 Nominees

(Listed alphabetically by surname)

Ivan Liubysh-Kirdei, photographer and war correspondent for Reuters. While on assignment in Kramatorsk in August 2024, he was wounded in a Russian artillery attack, spent several months in a coma, and is currently undergoing rehabilitation.

In 2015, he received the annual German award for television and film operators, the Deutscher Kamerapreis, in the “Best News Report from a War Zone” category for the documentary “Escape from Ilovaisk,” produced for the German broadcaster ARD.

Olha Rudenko, editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Kyiv Independent, a leading English-language publication about Ukraine. The publication was launched in 2021 by 30 of the 50 staff members dismissed from the editorial team of the Kyiv Post. Rudenko was also a finalist for the 2024 Gongadze Prize.

Her work has appeared in international media, and she was a fellow at the Chicago Booth School of Business. In May 2022, she was featured on the cover of Time magazine as one of the next generation leaders. In December 2022, she received the Women of Europe award in the “Woman of Action” category.

Mykhailo Tkach, investigative journalist who has headed Ukrainska Pravda’s investigative department since 2021. During this time, he has published dozens of high-profile reports exposing corruption and abuse of power, increasing government transparency and accountability, and driving positive change in Ukraine.

Before joining Ukrainska Pravda, he worked for six years on the program “Schemes: Corruption in Details” (a joint project of Radio Liberty and TV channel UA: First) and for five years on the investigative program “Money” (1+1 TV channel).

What the Gongadze Prize is awarded for

According to the Prize’s regulations, only members of the Chapter may nominate journalists for the award. Three finalists are selected from a longlist by voting. The Laureate is announced during the Award Ceremony on May 21.

The nominees proposed by the Chapter members must meet the following criteria:

• commitment to the principles and values of independent journalism;
• innovativeness;
• significant contribution to the development of a specific genre or the media landscape as a whole;
• creation of materials that have led to the resolution or understanding of critical social issues and changes in the country.

Only journalists who work in Ukraine and have been in the profession for the last 5 years are eligible.

2025 Chapter Members:

• Myroslava Gongadze, journalist, activist, and wife of Georgiy Gongadze;
• Volodymyr Yermolenko, philosopher, editor-in-chief of UkraineWorld, President of PEN Ukraine;
• Sevgil Musaieva, editor-in-chief of Ukrainska Pravda;
• Diana Dutsyk, journalist, activist, KMBS representative;
• Thomas Brunner, entrepreneur, founder of a volunteer aid center for Ukraine in Austria, representative of the Prize’s Patron Community;
• Tetiana Troshchynska, media manager, journalist, 2024 Prize Laureate;
• Maksym Butkevych, human rights defender, journalist, activist, officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine;
• Yevhen Hlibovytskyi, journalist, activist, Director of the Frontier Institute; 
• Marcin Walecki, Director of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in Ukraine.

The Chapter always includes representatives of Georgiy Gongadze’s family, PEN Ukraine, Ukrainska Pravda, Kyiv-Mohyla Business School, and the Prize’s patron community, as well as the previous year’s laureate. The six permanent members invite three additional experts selected from among Ukrainian media professionals, media managers, moral authorities and leading intellectuals.

The Georgiy Gongadze Prize is one of the most prestigious awards for professional journalists in Ukraine. It was established in 2019 by the PEN Ukraine in partnership with the family of Georgiy Gongadze, the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School and its alumni, and the publication “Ukrainska Pravda”. Previous laureates of the Prize include Vakhtang Kipiani (2019), Pavlo Kazarin (2020), Myroslava Barchuk (2021), Mstyslav Chernov and Yevhen Maloletka (2022), Bohdan Lohvynenko (2023), and Tetiana Troshchynska (2024). In 2022, photojournalist Max Levin was awarded a special prize posthumously.

The Georgiy Gongadze Prize is awarded thanks to the support of patrons who ensure its sustainability and development. The patrons are exclusively alumni of Kyiv-Mohyla Business School who uphold the prize’s values and seek to transform Ukrainian society through high-quality professional journalism.

2025 Prize Patrons: Mykola Viknianskyi, Mykola Sushko, Thomas Brunner, Oksana Prosolenko, Anton Artemenko, Maksym Diadyk, Mykola Demchenko, and Olha Velyka.

2025 Media partners of the Georgiy Gongadze Prize ceremony: Suspilne, UP Club, Espresso, NV, LMF, Detector Media, Institute of Mass Information, MediaMaker, Media Center Ukraine, and the Commission on Journalistic Ethics.

Read more: https://mediacenter.org.ua/news