“Occupiers are deliberately attacking freedom of speech,” Sergiy Tomilenko

“Journalists are the direct target of the Russian military offensive. And that is because they are a threat to Russian propaganda,” Sergiy Tomilenko, the President of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU), said at a press conference organized by the Center for Civil Liberties based on the Ukraine Crisis Media Center.

“This follows from the evidence collected by the NUJU, other organizations, and journalists,” said the President of the Union. “After Russian troops temporarily occupy a certain Ukrainian territory, a wave of so-called ‘informational neutralization’ immediately begins: attacks on journalists and independent media coverage sources. It is obvious that journalists consider professional journalism a threat to their offensive and Russian propaganda, which is a component of this offensive. We see that the Russian authorities, having plunged Russia into a propaganda bubble, want to plunge Ukrainians living in the temporarily occupied territories into it too. The enemy aims to humiliate and deprive people of access to true information.”

Russia has committed over 500 crimes against the press and media representatives in Ukraine. According to the NUJU, at least 63 media workers have been killed since the start of the full-scale invasion. Fourteen were killed while performing their professional duties, nine became civilian victims of the occupiers, and 40 media workers were killed in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).

“The occupiers are attacking Ukrainian journalists, looking for those ready to fulfill the duties of propagandists. But to the credit of our colleagues, most Ukrainian media workers and journalists do not cooperate with the enemy, and Ukrainians’ assistance to Russian propaganda occasionally. The occupiers have been proven to import propagandists from Russia. Also shameful is the practice of stealing local media labels, as, for example, happened with Mariupol’s Pryazovskyi Robochyi [a newspaper from Mariupol].”

As you know, in the third week after Mariupol’s capture, the occupiers began to spread the faked newspaper printed in Rostov-on-Don with the name of ‘Mariupolsky Rabochy, trying to convince the readers that the newspaper’s editors had switched to the side of the Russians. On the other hand, not a single employee of the official Pryazovskyi Robochyi participated in creating the fake.

“There were similar precedents in Manhush near Mariupol, in the Kherson Region, etc. Occupiers’ bombard’ the population with copies of their fake newspapers, organize their propaganda broadcasts,” said Sergiy Tomilenko. “Contrary to these attempts, the NUJU, together with its partners, while recording war crimes against journalists and the media as much as possible, unites an international coalition around the International Federation of Journalists (as the largest European union of journalists) with the idea of creating a standalone section in the new tribunal against Putin dedicated to war crimes against journalists. Within the section, Russian propagandists who made it possible to support the population of Russia in military operations and crimes against our state should be brought to justice.”

Sergiy Tomilenko also reminded that the NUJU had prepared a review on cases of crimes against journalists entitled Murdered Free Speech.

“We claim that the occupiers are deliberately targeting free speech, journalists. But at the same time, the journalistic community is ready to accept this challenge, courageously continuing to fulfill its professional duties,” Sergiy Tomilenko concluded.

NUJU Information Service