Journalists Olha Rudenko and Mykhailo Tkach are the winners of the Gongadze Prize

The winners of the Georgiy Gonhadze Prize were reported in Kyiv. This year, they are an editor-in-chief of The Kyiv Independent Olha Rudenko and an investigative journalist for Ukrainska Pravda Mykhailo Tkach.

This was reported on the award page.

Olha Rudenko is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of the English-language publication The Kyiv Independent. She was a finalist for the Gongadze Prize in 2024 and 2025. Olha has prepared materials for a number of global publications, and in May 2022 she was featured on the cover of Time magazine as part of a project on next-generation leaders.

"I really hope that this particular award will always be the one that will honor not only good and high-quality journalism, but also courageous and free journalism. If a journalist is truly free, he can be controversial, make mistakes, and many people may not like him. But he will never be compromising and convenient, like the journalist whose name brought us here," Rudenko said while receiving the award.

Mykhailo Tkach is an investigative journalist, since 2021 he has been the head of the investigations department of the publication Ukrainska Pravda. Previously, he was a journalist and host of the program “Schemes" (a joint project of Radio Liberty and UA: Pershy). He specializes in exposing corruption schemes, illegal enrichment of officials and violations in state structures. In 2025, Tkach was a finalist for the Gongadze Prize.

"Every day on my way to work, I am glad to work and have the honor of working in this important publication. The last year was a very serious and difficult period for us in the context of working with the ʼMidasʼ case, so I thank all my colleagues for the fact that we went through this period with dignity and did our job honestly," Tkach noted.

• The Georgy Gongadze Award is one of the main awards for professional journalists in Ukraine. It was established in 2019 by Ukrainian PEN in partnership with Georgy Gongadze’s family, Kyiv-Mohyla Business School, and the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper. The award is presented annually on May 21, Georgy Gongadze’s birthday, not for individual articles by journalists, but for their work and influence over a long period of time.
• The laureates are determined each year by the Chapter of the Prize, an independent body of nine members. The members of the Chapter in 2026 were: Myroslava Gongadze, Volodymyr Yermolenko, Lev Zhydenko, Pavlo Kazarin, Serhiy Kvit, Dmytro Lykhovii, Ivan Lyubysh-Kirdey, Sevgil Musayeva, Oksana Romaniuk.

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