In Ukraine and Russia, these newspapers come under less scrutiny than their local counterparts, which made the move to muffle reporting at The Kyiv Post unusual. English-language newspapers like The Moscow Times, The Prague Post, The Budapest Times, The Slovak Spectator, The Baltic Times and The Krakow Post have been springboards for a generation of American journalists interested in working in the former East Bloc — though not in the servile role of many local publications.

“Kyiv Post had a great tradition of editorial independence,” Mr. Bonner said in an interview. “I don’t want the job if it’s not independent journalism. Who would want it?”

In the interview, reporters at The Kyiv Post, whose name is an alternative spelling for the Ukrainian capital, had asked Mr. Prysyazhnyuk about a hot topic in Ukrainian business circles — the appearance of favoritism in awarding grain export quotas to a trading company, Khlib Investbud, suspected of having insider ties with government officials. At one point, he said he did not know who owned the company, and “should not know this.” Later in the interview, he said he did know who the owners were.

After disregarding the calls from a representative of the publisher — Mohammad Zahoor, a British citizen with other business interests in Ukraine — Mr. Bonner was fired on the day of publication, April 15.

Most of the staff of 23 Ukrainians and seven Western journalists and editors then struck in protest, taking laptops to a city park and posting updates about the dispute on a Facebook page.

The recourse to social networking sites “shows how hard it is to practice censorship these days,” Mr. Bonner said.

While on strike, reporters and editors wrote that they were told by representatives of Mr. Zahoor’s publishing company, the Istil Group, that “independent journalism potentially threatens the company’s other investments in real estate, media and other areas.”