“In war, you have to survive, but survive with dignity,” military man and journalist Oleh Zontov

“For me, the most important event since the beginning of the war, or rather, not an event, but a process, was personal transformation. And this is not only the external side, when you change the newsroom to a dugout, and a suit to a pixelated uniform. Namely, internal changes,” said in a comment to NUJU Ukrainian journalist and now a military man, Oleh Zontov.

Oleh is a member of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) a media professional with extensive professional experience in various media.

His path in journalism is quite eventful: in the town of Sloviyansk, he was the founder, publisher, and editor-in-chief of three weeklies at once – Sloviyanski Vidomosti, Hazeta Oholoshen, and Ekran Sloviyanska. He also headed the Sloviyansk-based organization of the NUJU. Then, in Poltava from 2018 to 2021, he was the general director of Studio City LLC headed the regional TV channel Central. A few months before the start of the full-scale invasion, he moved to Kyiv, where he took the position of head of the communications department at the large company BGV Group Management LLC.

The combination of journalistic experience and military service gives Oleh Zontov a special perspective on the events taking place. He understands well the importance of truthful coverage of the war and the need for analytics and objective information for society.

Addressing fellow journalists, he calls for truthful coverage of events at the front.

“People should know the truth about what is happening: where we have weaknesses and what difficulties the Ukrainian army is experiencing. We must remember that journalists are not propagandists but Ukrainian society. Ukrainians are distinguished precisely by the fact that they have critical thinking and can draw conclusions,” emphasizes Oleh Zontov.

NUJU Information Service