Pechersky District Court in Kyiv has postponed the questioning of former Major of the State Guard Department Mykola Melnychenko concerning Oleksiy Pukach, the main suspect in the case on the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze, due to Melnychenko's request to introduce a defense lawyer into the case and grant him access to classified information.

"Personally, I do not need a lawyer. But he is required so that not only Pukach but also [Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr] Lytvyn and [second President of Ukraine Leonid] Kuchma be brought to justice," Melnychenko told reporters in Kyiv on Monday.

According to the former presidential guard, Pukach did not act alone in killing Gongadze. "I have given evidence about who, where, when and how – giving specific dates – gave orders to do away with Gongadze," Melnychenko said.

He also said that on November 29 he lodged a lawsuit with Pechersky District Court against Valentyna Telychenko, a representative of the journalist's widow, Myroslava Gongadze, "for the distribution of false information, alleging that Melnychenko refused to answer questions in court about the authenticity of his records and was inconsistent in his testimony."

Gongadze went missing in Kyiv on September 16, 2000. A decapitated corpse, which experts claimed could be that of Gongadze, was found in a forest outside Kyiv in November 2000. In May 2010, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko stated that fragments of a skull found in July 2009 in Kyiv region belonged to Gongadze.

However, the body has yet to be buried, as the journalist's mother Lesia Gongadze refuses to recognize that it belongs to her son.

Pukach, the former head of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's external surveillance department, who had long been on the wanted list, was detained in Zhytomyr region on July 21, 2009, and has been kept in custody since then.

In December 2010, the Prosecutor General's Office announced that the investigation into the criminal case was over. The investigation confirmed that Pukach killed the journalist by order of then Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko.

Kyiv's Pechersky District Court has been considering the criminal case against Pukach since April 2011.

In November 2000, a transcript of several tapes pointing to the involvement of then Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and other officials in a number of high-profile crimes, including the Gongadze murder, was published in the parliament. Those tapes were allegedly recorded by Melnychenko. However, the court refused to include Melnychenko's tapes as evidence in the case.