By KYIV. Nov 2 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war from 2014 to 2023, 75 media workers have been killed, according to the Institute of Mass Information (IMI), which monitors Russian crimes against journalists and media.
“Since 2014, Russia’s war on Ukraine has been going hand-in-hand with crimes against journalists and the suppression of independent journalism in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories and, with the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, also in the territory controlled by the Ukrainian authorities. Murder, abduction, death threats, arrests of media workers – this is but a short list of crimes committed by the Russian occupiers against the media,” said Kateryna Dyachuk, head of the IMI freedom of speech monitoring department.
It is reported that before the full-scale invasion, in the period 2014–2022, seven journalists were killed on Ukrainian land. Three of them died while reporting, and four were killed as combatants. All of them died in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. “As you may know, in 2014–2015, three media workers were killed while performing their professional duty: Serhiy Nikolayev, Andrea Rocchelli, and his interpreter Andrei Mironov. Four more journalists were killed in action while defending Ukraine from the Russian invasion: Victor Hurnyak, Oleksandr Chernikov, Dmytro Labutkin, and Oleh Zadoyanchuk,” the message reads.
According to IMI, since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russia has killed 68 journalists. Ten of them died while reporting, 58 were killed as combatants (45) or died of Russian shelling or torture (13). Two journalists were killed this September: Volodymyr Myronyuk and Andriy Kryshtal.
As reported, the IMI monitoring does not cover the employees of Russian propaganda outlets who have died in Ukraine’s occupied territories, since their work is not reporting, but media support for military aggression.
