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November 28, 2025 – Ukraine –
The Operation Midas has taken a troubling turn as concerns mount over alleged surveillance and intimidation of journalists. On 28 November 2025, Yaroslav Yurchyshyn — chair of the parliamentary Committee on Freedom of Speech — formally called on Ukraine’s human-rights commissioner, police, prosecutor’s office, and state investigators to launch an inquiry into reported unlawful gathering and distribution of sensitive information about media workers by suspects linked to the probe.
Yurchyshyn warned that the gathering of dossiers on journalists harkens back to the 1990s and early 2010s, when political actors collected personal files on journalists investigating corruption. According to him, the suspects in Operation Midas had accumulated documents on at least ten journalists labelled “for official use, no distribution allowed.” Such actions, Yurchyshyn argued, could violate Ukraine’s personal-data protection laws and several articles of the Criminal Code about illegal tracking, privacy breaches, and interference with journalistic work.
The request for a probe follows revelations that suspects arrested in the corruption scandal — which centers on alleged systemic graft in Ukraine’s energy sector — may have also been compiling personal dossiers on journalists, raising fears that the anti-corruption operation may be used as cover for targeting media professionals.
Media-freedom advocates say that uncovering and publicizing such dossiers would threaten not just individual reporters but the entire landscape of independent journalism in Ukraine. Critics warn that beyond undermining personal safety and privacy, such practices amount to chilling the press: when journalists know they are being watched, they may self-censor or abandon critical investigations — especially into powerful interests tied to state-run industries.
As of now, the agencies named in Yurchyshyn’s appeal — including the national police, the State Bureau of Investigation, and the Prosecutor General’s Office — have not publicly confirmed initiation of the requested probe. For many observers, this case will serve as a test of whether Ukraine remains committed to protecting press freedom even as it battles corruption. The coming weeks will reveal whether the state treats the alleged surveillance as a criminal offence or as collateral damage in the fight against graft.
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