[7] In 2012, Guzhva was fired from the position of editor-in-chief of the newspaper Segodnya by the decision of the supervisory board of the owner of the publication - the company SCM Holdings of businessman Rinat Akhmetov.

[4] After leaving the Segodnya newspaper, Igor Guzhva moved to Moscow, and since March 2012, he has been part of the leadership of the Russian publication Moskovskiye Novosti as the chief editor.

[15] Igor Guzhva denied the accusations and stated that the authorities and nationalists were attacking the holding company because it had an independent position and covered the situation in the country objectively.

One of the characteristic features of the Internet project headed by Guzhva is his sharp criticism of the authorities.In January 2017, Strana.ua issued a statement in which it said that criminal cases were being prepared against the publication in order to arrest the editorial managers.

[26] On 22 June 2017, Igor Guzhva, together with a man named Anton Filipkovsky, was detained at the Strana.ua editorial office by police and prosecutors under Part 3 Article 189 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (extortion).

Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko said that Guzhva allegedly received 10,000 dollars for not posting on his website compromising information about Radical Party MP Dmytro Lynko, who had reported the incident to the police on 31 March.

[31] On June 24, the Shevchenko District Court of Kyiv chose a measure of restraint for Igor Guzhva in the form of a 2-month arrest with an alternative to post bail of 500,000 hryvnias.

[33] Later, searches were carried out in the editorial office and on the apartments of some of its employees regarding the alleged receipt by Igor Guzhva of a flash drive with classified information from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

On February 1, 2018, the editorial board of Strana.ua published an appeal to President Petro Poroshenko stating that Igor Guzhva had left Ukraine and asked the Austrian authorities for political asylum.

[48] On August 20, 2021, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC) decided to impose personal sanctions against the founder of Strana.ua, Igor Guzhva, and directly affiliated legal entities.

[52] The presidential decree stipulated the blocking of the Strana.ua website and the obligation of providers to close access to the site, as well as to the pages of the publication on social networks.

The National Commission for State Regulation in the Sphere of Communication and Information ordered all providers in Ukraine to block any mirrors of the Internet publication.

[54] Igor Guzhva issued a statement in which he called the blocking of Strana.ua a legal uproar and extrajudicial punishment, as well as stated that sanctions against him and the Strana.ua publishing companies would not stop the work of the publication.

The Council of Europe platform for the promotion of protection of journalism and safety of journalists has called the decision on sanctions and blocking of Strana.ua a threat to the media freedom in Ukraine.

[55] The European Federation of Journalists issued a statement saying that the imposed sanctions are “a threat to the press, media freedom and pluralism in the country”.

[57] In November 2021, the Supreme Court of Ukraine accepted for consideration Igor Guzhva's lawsuit challenging President Zelenskyy's decree imposing sanctions against him.