ON Aug 11, 2010, the investigative journalist Vasyl Klymentyev set off from his home in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city. It was 8.55am. As editor-in-chief of Kharkiv's Novy Stil (New Style) newspaper — a small publication known for unearthing juicy scandals about corrupt local officials — Klymentyev had many enemies and was rather cautious. He set the burglar alarm.

What happened next is a matter of speculation. The one fact everyone agrees on is that Klymentyev vanished. His family reported him missing the next day and Kharkiv police opened a murder inquiry. His friends are convinced he is dead, though so far there is no body. On Aug 17 a boy discovered his mobile phone and keys in a small rubber boat floating in a rural reservoir.

For journalists, Klymentyev is a chilling symbol of how press freedoms are being curtailed in Ukraine seven months after the election of Viktor Yanukovych, the country's new pro-Russian president. Yanukovych, his critics say, has set about reversing the gains of the 2004-10 Orange Revolution, in which newspapers and TV flourished. Reporters talk of a new era of fear and censorship.

Last week Kiev's district court stripped two independent opposition television stations, TVi and 5 Kanal, of their licences. TVi has fallen off the main airwaves, while 5 Kanal — which came to prominence with its coverage of the 2004 pro-democracy demonstrations — has had its audience severely reduced. The winner is Valeriy Khoroshkovsky, owner of the pro-Yanukovych Inter Media television empire — and head of Ukraine's SBU security service.

In a report last week the watchdog Reporters Without Borders said broadcast media pluralism in Ukraine was being “seriously eroded”, warning of a “disturbing level of hostility towards journalists on the part of the authorities”, including “physical attacks”.

Ukraine's apparent lurch towards authoritarianism has alarmed EU leaders and MPs. Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, expressed her concerns during a visit to Kiev last week.

“We are going back to the USSR,” Petro Matvienko, the deputy editor of Novy Stil , said last week. “In the USSR the (communist) party was in charge. Now we are in the hands of a criminal totalitarian gang. It's worse.”

Matvienko said he was certain Klymentyev was dead, killed by someone whose interests he had crossed. Shortly before his disappearance, Klymentyev had been preparing a story about the mansions of four top officials, one from Ukraine's security service.

On Aug 9, Matvienko said he, Klymentyev and a driver had gone to the picturesque Petchenegi reservoir, 50kms east of Kharkiv, where Klymentyev's belongings later turned up. Klymentyev waited in the car while Matvienko crept along a forest path to photograph a lakeside villa belonging to a regional official including its private jetty and beach. The article was to appear in the next issue of Novy Stil .

Western diplomats in Kiev describe Ukraine's new leaders as “instinctively less democratic” than their pro-western predecessors. Under former president Viktor Yushchenko, local elites felt constrained by democratic norms. Now they feel they can do what they want.

One diplomat, however, said it would be an exaggeration to suggest Ukraine was sliding into some kind of dark age. “I don't think people at the top are issuing the orders. To compare Yanukovych to Hitler is ridiculous.”

Ukraine's leaders are “not impervious to criticism”, he said, adding that the government was pursuing badly needed economic reforms. The decision to ban TVi and 5 Kanal was “mildly sinister” but “not the end of civilisation as we know it”.

Nonetheless, the Klymentyev case has been dubbed 'Gongadzegate II', a reference to the last journalist in Ukraine to be brutally murdered. Hryhorii Gongadze, a muck-racking reporter for a small website, disappeared in 2000. His corpse was eventually found in a shallow grave in woods south of Kiev. His head had been chopped off, probably with an axe. At the time of his murder Gongadze, like Klymentyev, was largely unknown.

The Gongadze case spiralled into an international scandal after secret tapes emerged in which Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine's then president, could allegedly be heard telling his security service aides to “take care” of Gongadze. Ten years on, the murder investigation is still incomplete.

Yanukovych's aides deny there is any “systematic” attempt to clamp down on the press. They admit that overzealous minders have on occasion tried to muzzle reporters — banning video footage, for example, that showed a ceremonial wreath toppling on the president's head. (The clip found its way on to YouTube, where several millions watched it.) Most members of Ukraine's current government were in power in 2002-03.—The Guardian, London