THE NATIONAL UNION OF
JOURNALISTS OF UKRAINE
On March 26, a solemn gathering of journalists was held in the Crimean House in the capital of Ukraine on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Krym.Realii project by the Ukrainian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
The President of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU), Sergiy Tomilenko, addressed the participants. He noted that over the past decade, the Krym.Realii project has become one of the leading mass media in Crimea. Its journalists have repeatedly acted as partners in the implementation of projects aimed at overcoming the information blockade around Crimea and fighting disinformation for freedom of speech and the rights of Crimeans to know everything.
Sergiy Tomilenko and NUJU First Secretary Lina Kushch congratulated the team of journalists on their tenth anniversary and presented the editor-in-chief of the Krym.Realii project, Volodymyr Prytula, with the NUJU Special Award for the team’s achievements in the struggle for the establishment of freedom of speech and the fight against disinformation. A citizen journalist from Crimea, Vyacheslav Yesypenko, a freelancer of the Krym.Realii project and journalists Stanislav Asieiev and Mykola Semena had previously been awarded the NUJU Ihor Lubchenko prize for the protection of freedom of speech.
The photo exhibition titled Ten Years Of Occupation And Resistance Of Crimea In Photos Of Krym.Realii Journalists was opened in the Crimean House. The exhibition presents 26 photos of Krym.Realii and Radio Liberty journalists, taken in Crimea from 2014 to 2022 – Anton Naumliuk, Stanislav Yurchenko, Alina Smutko, Taras Ibragimov, Oleksandra Surhan, Emine Dzhaparova, Ezaber Pinkhas, Yevhen Zhuk, Anatolii Krymskyi, Volodymyr Prytula and journalists of Crimean Solidarity who cooperated with the Krym.Realii project.
At the opening of the exhibition, the head of the committee on freedom of speech of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, the editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian service of Radio Liberty Mariyana Drach, the permanent representative of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Tamila Tasheva, the editor-in-chief of the Krym.Realii site greeted the team of journalists of the Krym.Realii project at the opening of the exhibition. Volodymyr Prytula and other representatives of the mass media sphere. The meeting was attended by the wife of Vladyslav Yesypenko, Kateryna Yesypenko, together with her daughter Stefaniya.
The participants of the meeting also held a discussion called Crimea: Visions Of The Future 2.0, dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the Krym.Realii project of the Ukrainian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In particular, the participants in the meeting were the chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Refat Chubarov, the leader of the Ukrainian music band Antitila, Taras Topolia, the director and human rights defender of the ZMINA Center for Human Rights, Aliyona Luniyova, and other analysts, human rights defenders, and journalists took part in the discussion.
The Crimean project of Radio Liberty was created in March 2014 – in the first weeks of the occupation and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by the russian federation. The russian authorities tried several times to block the Krym.Realii sites and jam the Krym.Realii Radio signal, as well as constantly hindered the work of journalists in Crimea. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, russia has blocked Krym.Realii sites in the territory of the russian federation and the regions of Ukraine occupied by it, as well as seized a radio transmitter in the Kherson region that relayed Krym.Realii Radio programs to the territory of almost the entire Crimean Peninsula. Radio Liberty is recognized as an “undesirable organization” in russia.
In 2016, representatives of the russian FSB searched the homes of six Krym.Realii journalists from Simferopol, Sevastopol, and Yalta and seized equipment. The russian authorities banned several journalists from entering the Crimean Peninsula for long periods of time.
Over the past ten years, more than 70 journalists of Krym.Realii have been pressured or harassed by russian special services, and most of them were forced to leave the russian-occupied peninsula. In March 2021, Krym.Realii freelancer Vladyslav Yesypenko was arrested by the russian special services, charged with possession of ammunition, and sentenced to six years in prison. Also, more than a dozen bloggers and citizen journalists who provided information to Krym.Realii were arrested by the russian authorities and convicted on trumped-up charges of terrorism or extremism.
NUJU Information Service
Photo by Mykola Myrnyi / ZMINA
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