The Cassette Scandal was a Ukrainian political scandal in November 2000 in which Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma was caught on tape ordering the months-earlier kidnapping of journalist Georgiy Gongadze, whose decapitated corpse had recently been found. The scandal was one of the main political events in Ukraine's post-independence history, dramatically affecting the country's domestic and foreign policy. The scandal, triggering the Ukraine Without Kuchma protests, also began a slow and gradual shift of Ukraine's political and cultural orientation from Russia towards the West, although this only became more pronounced after Euromaidan in 2013–2014. The scandal also damaged Kuchma's political career.
Georgiy Gongadze, journalist, founder of a popular Internet newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda, who was kidnapped and murdered in 2000.
Leonid Danylovych Kuchma is a Ukrainian politician who was the second president of Ukraine from 19 July 1994 to 23 January 2005. The only President of Ukraine to serve two terms, his presidency was marked by democratic backsliding and the growth of the Ukrainian oligarchs, as well as several scandals and improvement of Russia–Ukraine relations.
Kuchma in 2019
President Vladimir Putin with Leonid Kuchma, in the centre, and Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev before an expanded meeting of the CIS Council of Heads of State in 2000.
Ukraine without Kuchma protests, 6 February 2001
Kuchma with his son-in-law Viktor Pinchuk in 2014