Heorhiy Shabayev

Heorhiy Shabayev was selected for the 2023 Shortlist with Ukrainian Supreme Court Judge with Russian Citizenship.

Heorhiy Shabayev, 26, is a journalist with Schemes (Skhemy), an investigative news project run by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service. He is a graduate of the Institute of Journalism at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and the author of a dozen investigations into corruption in the government, the construction industry, and in large state-owned enterprises.

After the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, he focused on the identification of Russian war criminals and the methods by which Russia tries to circumvent US and European Union sanctions. He was the first to report on Russia’s destruction of the world’s largest AN-225 Mriya aircraft at the Gostomel airfield in the Kyiv region. Also, he was the first to report the death of a Russian midshipman on the cruiser Moskva in April 2022, which was widely reported by the world media.

In 2021 he entered the list of 30 journalists under 30 years old who are creating the future of Ukrainian media according to the Heorhiy Gongadze award. Shabayev lives and works in Kyiv.

Natalie Sedletska

Natalie Sedletska was selected for the 2023 Shortlist with Ukrainian Supreme Court Judge with Russian Citizenship.

Natalie Sedletska is Kyiv-based Ukrainian investigative journalist and editor who works in the anticorruption field. Natalie is the editor-in-chief and host of the investigative program “Schemes” – a television project which she founded in 2014 with the support of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a media financed by the US Congress that operates in 22 countries where a free press is banned by the government or not fully established. Team of investigative journalists led by Natalie is exposing high-level political corruption and abuse of power by Ukrainian authorities as well as Russian war crimes.  

In 2013-2014, Sedletska was a Vaclav Havel Fellow – joint program of RFE/RL and the Czech Republic Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2015 Natalie went undercover as part of a British Channel 4 television documentary, “From Russia With Cash”. The film became an important element of the recent anti-money laundering campaign in the UK. In 2014 Natalie also participated as an investigator in the YanukovychLeaks project – when group of journalists and volunteers rescued from a lake, dried and analyzed 200 folders of documents, that shed light on the scale of corruption of Ukrainian ex-president Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia in the result of Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine.  The project was awarded with the Global Shining Light Award in Norway in 2015 – an international award in the field of investigative journalism. In 2016 Natalie received “For progress in journalism” Award named after renowned Ukrainian journalist Oleksandr Kryvenko. In 2017 she was awarded with “Light of Justice” Award for “Moral and Spiritual Leadership in Ukraine”. In 2019 Natalie Sedletska was selected from Ukraine for the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.