THE NATIONAL UNION OF
JOURNALISTS OF UKRAINE
Ivano-Frankivsk media worker and cameraman for TV and radio company Vezha, as well as a military serviceman, Andrii Shkvarla, has been mobilized in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) since March 2022. He was undergoing treatment for a spinal injury and is now undergoing rehabilitation.
Ivano-Frankivsk Journalists’ Solidarity Center (JSC) coordinator Viktoriya Plakhta also noted that, if necessary, charitable contributions from union members received from the replacement of press cards will be directed to help mobilized and demobilized media workers who are members of the regional JSC.
Employees of the Ivano-Frankivsk JSC personally met with a colleague who is a military serviceman and provided him with assistance. During a friendly conversation, Andrii Shkvarla thanked the journalistic community for their support and briefly shared his story.
The winners of the charity draw also visited the coworking space of the Ivano-Frankivsk JSC to receive their gifts. In total, approximately fifty donors participated in the charity prize draw.
REFERENCE INFORMATION. Helping Hand is an all-Ukrainian charity event held in May and early June 2025 under the slogan “Journalists for Journalists” by the JSCs of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) in various regions of Ukraine. During charitable offline and online auctions, fairs, lotteries, and other events, funds were collected to help the families of journalists who volunteered or were mobilized into the ranks of the AFU, as well as to support injured journalists and their families. If possible, at the Center’s discretion, part of the funds could be transferred to repair a car for the military press service (the collection was announced by NUJU). The collected funds were distributed by the NUJU Centers of Journalistic Solidarity, taking into account the needs of journalists and their families in the respective region. The transfer of the collected aid within the framework of the Helping Hand campaign was timed to coincide with Journalist’s Day (June 6).
Earlier, we reported that 21 thousand hryvnias were collected in Kharkiv for the family of journalist Anastasia Fedchenko, whose husband died at the front, protecting us all, and did not even have time to see his daughter Katrusia.
The Helping Hand charity auction-fair was successfully held in Zaporizhzhia, featuring lots of artworks by media workers.
In Ivano-Frankivsk, more than UAH 7,000, collected during the charity prize draw within the framework of the All-Ukrainian Helping Hand campaign, will be transferred for treatment to a mobilized colleague, Andrii Shkvarla, a cameraman with the TV and radio company Vezha, a serviceman of the AFU.
In Dnipro, over UAH 17,000 were collected thanks to the solidarity of the journalistic community in support of the famous TV journalist Iryna Stryzhka (Dmytriyeva), who was injured as a result of a hostile UAV strike on the Dnipro.
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The network of Journalists’ Solidarity Centers is an initiative of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, implemented in collaboration with the International and European Federations of Journalists and UNESCO and with the support of the People of Japan. Our primary goal is to assist media professionals working in Ukraine during the war. The Centers are active in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Lviv, and Ivano-Frankivsk. The project is part of UNESCO’s broader efforts to support the Safety of Journalists and Freedom of Expression in Ukraine.
Ivano-Frankivsk JSC
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