THE NATIONAL UNION OF
JOURNALISTS OF UKRAINE
“We must continue to monitor the detector and be very careful, because if it points to this area, we must hide,” Italian journalists work in the Donetsk Region with a drone detector.
Footage from Ukraine was seen by a TV audience in Italy on April 15. In the video, Vincenzo Frenda, a well-known Italian journalist, is driving from Kharkiv to the Donetsk Region. The road is dangerous – it is a zone of drone activity.
“In the Donbas region, we drive along a road for tens of kilometers with nets that protect us from drones, we also have a detector that should signal any drones above our heads. We are arriving in Kramatorsk, the last free city.”
The Kharkiv Journalists’ Solidarity Center (JSC) was happy to help a colleague by providing a free drone detector Chuika. Unfortunately, the area where the sky needs to be monitored is only increasing.
Together with the fixer of the Italian team, we instructed our colleagues on how to use the detector. And, unfortunately, Vincenzo and the group tested the theory in practice. We saw a picture from a russian drone on the screen. The detector recorded the danger, and then the film crew heard an explosion.
“The drone detector recorded a russian drone that is above our heads. Basically, this is what it sees with the help of a camera. We have to keep watching it and be very careful, because if it points to this area, we have to hide.”
Vincenzo showed his viewers how great a threat drones pose in Kramatorsk. At the site of the shelling, where they arrived almost immediately, the journalists saw that the enemy had again attacked an ordinary residential building.
“Look, this is the place where the drone that we heard exploded recently.”
Vincenzo worked in Kharkiv, Donbas (Kramatorsk and Druzhkivka), Odesa and Zaporizhzhia in April. By the time the equipment returned from a week-long trip to Kharkiv, the next team of foreign media workers was already waiting for it.
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.
Contact the Kharkiv JSC at 093 813 7544 (coordinator Hanna Chernenko).
Kharkiv JSC
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