Russian occupation is always not only about seizing territories, but also about destroying freedom of speech within them. Local activists with pro-Ukrainian views and journalists are usually among the first victims of the occupation forces. Russia destroys independent journalism not only systematically: it seizes or closes down Ukrainian media outlets, destroys TV towers, blocks Ukrainian broadcasting and broadcasts its state propaganda channels instead, but it is also brutally done: Russia intimidates, kidnaps, holds journalists captive in inhumane conditions, tortures and executes them.
This is how Russia has been acting in the annexed Crimea since 2014. So far, the Russian authorities are illegally detaining 181 political prisoners from Crimea, 16 of whom are journalists. The most popular charges are “terrorism”, “extremism” and “calls for mass unrest”.
The occupation of Donetsk and Luhansk regions also began with abductions, attacks and hostage-taking of local journalists and bloggers. Several dozen Ukrainian journalists fell into the hands of the occupation authorities. Over the years, some of them have been released, for example, in 2019, journalist and publicist Stanislav Aseyev was returned from the captivity of the so-called “DPR”. Before his imprisonment in 2017, he was almost the last Ukrainian journalist in Donetsk. Aseev was held in captivity for 31 months, most of which he spent in the ‘Izolyatsia’ torture chamber.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russia has been scaling up the same crimes to the newly occupied territories. According to the Institute of Mass Information, in almost a year and a half, Russia has killed 65 journalists and media workers in Ukraine (including victims of shelling, not just targeted attacks). 14 journalists have gone missing, 22 have been abducted, and another 67 have been harassed and threatened.
Numerous stories of injured and killed journalists show one thing: physical violence against media workers is a consistent pattern of behaviour of the Russian occupiers. Truth Hounds recalls the stories of murders, captivity, imprisonment, torture and ill-treatment committed by the Russian military or special services against journalists since February 2022.
Systematic enforced disappearances
The fact that, with the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Russian occupiers continued to persecute journalists in a systematic and organised manner is clearly evident from the numerous crimes in the occupied Kherson region. According to several media professionals who have been captured by the Russians, they were either personally known by collaborators from the local authorities or their work was monitored during the occupation.
Anzhela Slobodian, a journalist and editor of the “We Are Ukraine” TV channel, has been working in occupied Kherson since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. She filmed and broadcast live from the occupied city under her own name for another 4 months. In June 2022, she was informed that she was on a wanted list. She was detained by the Russian military on 5 July in the house of her friend, from where she was broadcasting live: before her arrest, Anzhela had been hiding in different locations for several months, as the local occupation authorities knew about her work.
“During interrogations, they said that I had to get ‘accreditation’ from the occupiers. That is, I, a Ukrainian journalist, had to be accredited by someone unknown! No, that’s not true! I was accredited by the Ukrainian authorities! Instead, those who interrogated me were not satisfied with the fact that media workers, working under the occupation regime in the Kherson region, tell the truth about how Kherson residents live,” said Angela Slobodian in an interview with the NUJU.
Slobodian was also accused of espionage, working for the SBU and participating in an illegal armed group. The Russian military held her for 31 days in a city detention centre in inadequate conditions: a small cell with insufficient sleeping space, unsanitary conditions and one-time meals. The prisoners were also subjected to psychological pressure: in the neighbouring cell, prisoners were tortured with electricity, raped and beaten with sticks.
On 12 March, in Kakhovka, Kherson region, Russian soldiers abducted Oleh Baturin, a journalist with the Novy Den (New Day) media outlet. Oleg was reporting from occupied Kakhovka until he was detained by Russian special services.
During his first interrogations in the building of the Novokakhovka City Council, he was intimidated: “They told me: “Do you know that it is martial law now? There is a war in the country, and we can judge you as if during a war. We’ll gather here in three and sentence you to death.” They began to threaten me, describing in detail how they would cut off all my skin with a knife, so that I would slowly die in agony, how they would gouge out my eyes, cut off my ears, cut my limbs, if they wanted to, they would shoot me, but they wanted me to suffer a lot.”
The journalist was held captive for 8 days: in a cold room, chained to a radiator, beaten, interrogated, threatened, denied food and water, but the reason for his detention was never announced. After his release, Oleh wrote that the Russian military wanted to intimidate him into quitting his professional activities: “Almost no food. Almost no water for several days. No soap, no change of clothes. Not knowing where I was. But they knew exactly why. They wanted to break me, to trample on me. To show what will happen to every journalist: you will be deprived. You will be killed. For almost 8 days, I sat with my head tilted low or covered. They were afraid that I could see their faces. But I’m not afraid to show mine, sis, I’m not afraid.”
Among the Russians who interrogated him, Oleh recognised a local collaborator, Volodymyr Leontiev, the self-proclaimed head of the occupation authorities in Nova Kakhovka, Tavriysk and Kakhovka. A few days before his abduction, Oleh Baturin had written articles about him, and Leontiev mentioned one of them during his interrogation.
Later, Oleg Baturin was also able to identify his executioner, who threatened the journalist with “execution under the laws of the USSR”. It turned out to be the adviser to the ‘head’ of the so-called ‘DPR’ Valentyn Motuzenko, who introduced himself as Ataman Ivanovych during interrogations.
Oleksandr Gunko, a journalist, poet and editor-in-chief of Novakahovka.city, lived in Nova Kakhovka under Russian occupation for six months, and during this time he was abducted several times. He was held in the local police station, which the occupiers turned into a torture chamber, and was beaten and intimidated during interrogations. The Russians also tried to persuade him to cooperate and offered him to head the editorial office of the occupation newspaper in Nova Kakhovka.
According to Oleksandr, they asked him about the website Novakahovka.city. They knew that the site was created under a grant programme and suspected the journalist of having ties to America: “When they realised that I had no connections with America, they started talking about how I wrote about the occupiers in a biased way in my materials, calling them invaders, orcs. They said that this was very offensive to them. They also showed me photos from my report on the 1 January rally, which was usually attended by our Bandera supporters with red and black flags. They asked who all these people were. I replied that some of them were vocational school teachers, and some were the head of condominiums, but I did not know their names or surnames.”
In May 2022, Russian soldiers abducted Oleksiy Vorontsov, an engineer at “Suspilne Kherson”, from his home in the then-occupied Kherson. From the beginning of March 2022, the editorial office worked remotely and remained a Ukrainian media outlet that continued to truthfully inform residents of the occupied territories. However, the premises of “Suspilne Kherson” were seized by the Russian occupation authorities. Oleksiy Vorontsov was released almost a week later after significant international publicity: the OSCE reacted to his abduction, calling it an unacceptable attack on a media worker.
In September 2022, armed Russian soldiers abducted 54-year-old journalist Zhanna Kyselyova from her apartment in Kakhovka, Kherson region. Zhanna Kyselova was quite well-known: she had been the head of the local newspaper Kakhovska Zoria for many years, which stopped publishing when the full-scale invasion began. The journalist was returned home after almost 2 weeks of captivity.
Persecution of civilian journalists
In Kherson region, not only professional journalists were abducted and held in captivity, but also bloggers who wrote about life under occupation and expressed support for Ukraine on their social media.
In September 2023, Russians kidnapped 3 local activists and bloggers in Kherson: Ukrainian Olena Naumova, Belarusian Valery Komagorov and his girlfriend Olga, nicknamed “Olegovna 29”. For 11 days, Olena Naumova was held in the basement of the Suvorov District Council building, given 100 grams of food a day, intimidated and demanded to change her political views. According to Naumova, the interrogations lasted for 4 days, and she was kept in the basement for another week to “freeze, starve and go crazy”. Then she was released under “house arrest”, but was forced to record a video with an “apology”.
“Of course, when you are faced with the fact – either you go back to the basement and rot there to the last, or we will let you go to the government-controlled territory and deport you, provided you apologise. Then they couldn’t let me go for a long time – they didn’t know what to do with me,” says Olena.
Valeriy Komagorov was held for 2 months in the basement with 50-60 other people. He was forced to keep a bag on his head all the time, interrogated daily, beaten and tortured to confess to collaborating with the Ukrainian military. Then Valeriy was released with numerous injuries of varying severity.
Wilful killings of journalists by the Russian military
There were at least 4 cases of targeted shootings of media professionals by the Russian military in the first weeks of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
On 26 February 2022, in the village of Zelenivka near Kherson, the Russian military shot dead Ukrainian journalist Dilerbek Shakirov. He worked for the Kherson weekly newspaper ‘Navkolo Tebe’ and was a member of the ‘House of Hope’ charity foundation. According to the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office, Dilerbek was shot with an automatic weapon from a car.
In early March 2022, in the village of Yahidne in Chernihiv region, the Russian military shot Roman Nezhyborts. He worked as a video engineer for the Chernihiv-based TV channel “Dytynets”. On 5 March, the Russian Armed Forces detained Roman after seizing his phone. His wife said that it is unknown what exactly was found in her husband’s phone that caused the shooting. Roman’s body was found in a cellar, he died of a bullet wound to the chest.
Russians also killed those who documented war crimes committed by the Russian army in the already de-occupied territories. In April 2022, after a long search, the police found the dead photographer and documentary filmmaker Max Levin in the Kyiv region. On 13 March, accompanied by Oleksiy Chernyshev, a military man and former photographer, he went to Huta Mezhyhirska to document the consequences of Russian aggression. They left the car and walked towards the village of Moshchun, and since then, contact with both of them has disappeared. The Vyshhorod District Prosecutor’s Office, which opened proceedings over the violation of the laws and customs of war, stated that Levin was killed by Russian soldiers with two shots from small arms.
Cases of death after torture and ill-treatment
In March 2022, in the occupied Melekine near Mariupol, the Russian military arrested 78-year-old journalist and writer Yevhen Bal. The reason for the detention was allegedly “compromising” photos with the Ukrainian military. The Russians searched the house and took Bal “to the basement” in the village of Mangush in the Mariupol district. After 3 days of torture for the purpose of ‘re-education’, he was released, but Yevhen Bal died of beatings.
On 3 April, it became known that Lithuanian film director Mantas Kvedaravičius had died in occupied Mariupol. Kvedaravičius filmed in hot spots and in 2016 made the documentary “Mariupol”, which was shown at the Berlin Film Festival.
Initially, Lithuanian media reported that his car could have been hit by a rocket during an attempt to evacuate the city. But later, Ukrainian journalist Albina Levutina, who knew the director, told delfi.lt that Kvedaravičius was captured by Russian soldiers, shot dead, and then his body was dumped. His wife, Hanna Bilobrova, found the body and took it from Mariupol via Donetsk, Russia and Latvia to Lithuania. Later, the information was confirmed by the Ukrainian Ombudsman’s office, stating that the true cause of Kvedaravičius’ death was not initially disclosed for the safety of his wife.
In April 2022, the body of activist and freelance journalist Zoreslav Zamoysky was found on Bohdan Khmelnytsky Street in Bucha. In the first days of the Russian invasion, he wrote about the fighting in the Kyiv region on his social media. The National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) reported that the photos from the morgue taken by forensic experts leave no doubt about the violent nature of his death.
Punishment – captivity and deportation to Russia
Dmytro Khyliuk, a journalist with the UNIAN news agency, has been held in Russian captivity for almost a year and a half. On 3 March 2022, the Russian military arrested Dmytro and his father in the garden of their house in the village of Kozarovychi, Kyiv region. After 8 days, his father was released, and the journalist was held in several places that were turned into temporary prisons. Among them were the airport in Gostomel, where prisoners were kept in large industrial refrigerators, and the building of an enterprise in Dymer.
An investigation by the international organisation Reporters Without Borders found that Khyliuk was later transferred to a Russian prison near the Ukrainian border. According to the testimony of prisoners held together with Khyliuk, in 2022, the journalist was held in the detention centre No. 2 in Novozibkov, Russia. “The ‘special forces’ regularly interrogated the journalist about his activities, accusing him of ‘Ukrainian propaganda and work against Russia’, and beat him several times. Former prisoners of the Novozbikov detention centre also spoke about the harsh treatment of prisoners, including interrogations and beatings.
In April last year, the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War informed the parents that Russia had confirmed the journalist’s detention in Russia. In May 2023, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, said that he had sent a letter to Russian Ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova to obtain more information about Dmytro Khyliuk, but had not received a response.
Later, Reporters Without Borders found out that in May 2023, the journalist was taken to one of the prisons in the Vladimir region, located several hundred kilometres east of Moscow, either to Penal Colony No. 7 (VK-7) near Kovrov or to Colony No. 6 (VK-6) in Melekhovo. Former inmates of the latter reported harsh treatment of prisoners, including dog bites, electric shocks and food deprivation. There is still no further information about the exact place of detention of Dmytro Khyliuk.
Approximately 18% of Ukrainian territory remains under the control of the Russian occupiers. All of the cases mentioned in this article prove a clear pattern of Russian behaviour, which consists of targeted killings, abductions and imprisonment of journalists in the occupied territories, and may also indicate a coordinated policy at the highest political or military levels. Russia is still isolating information about what is happening in the occupied regions, and we may be unaware of numerous other crimes against civilians, including targeted attacks against media professionals.
As the experience of the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and Crimea since 2014 shows, the ultimate goal of the Russians is to create conditions under which the work of Ukrainian journalists will be simply impossible. As a result, the last chances to obtain truthful information from the Ukrainian regions occupied by Russia, including about international crimes committed there, have been lost.