During the war with the Russian Federation since 2014, 75 journalists have died in Ukraine

Since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war in the period from 2014 to 2023, 75 media workers have died.

As the Institute of Mass Information (IMI) informs, these are the data of the Monitoring of Russian crimes against journalists and the media, which is carried out by the IMI.

“Since 2014, Russia’s war against Ukraine has been accompanied by crimes against journalists and the destruction of independent journalism in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories, and from the full-scale invasion in 2022 also in the territory controlled by the Ukrainian authorities.

Murders, kidnappings, threats, arrests of media representatives are just a small list of crimes committed by the Russian occupiers against the media,” said Kateryna Dyachuk, head of the freedom of speech monitoring department of IMI.

Before the full-scale invasion, in the period from 2014 to 2022, seven journalists were killed on the territory of Ukraine.

Three of them died while performing a journalistic task, four – as participants in hostilities. All of them died in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The IMI recalled that in 2014-2015, three media workers died while performing their professional activities:

• Serhii Nikolaev,
• Andrea Rockelli and his translator Andrei Mironov.

Four more media workers died at the front, protecting Ukraine from the Russian invasion:

• Victor Gurniak,
• Oleksandr Chernikov,
• Dmytro Labutkin,
• Oleg Zadoyanchuk (Ukrinform journalist).

At the same time, since the beginning of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russia has killed 68 journalists:

• 10 of them died while performing professional duties,
• 58 – as participants in hostilities or as a result of Russian shelling or torture (45 of them died as participants in hostilities, 13 as a result of Russian shelling or torture).

In September of this year, two journalists were killed:

• Volodymyr Mironyuk,
• Andrii Kryshtal.

The IMI also noted that they do not record in their monitoring the deaths of representatives of Russian propaganda resources in the occupied territories of Ukraine, since they are not engaged in journalistic activities, but information support of military aggression. In addition, all of them enter the territory of Ukraine illegally.

For a democratic society in times of crises, wars and conflicts, the work of journalists acquires special importance. That is why any crimes against journalists, intimidation and oppression cannot go unpunished.