THE NATIONAL UNION OF
JOURNALISTS OF UKRAINE
Office equipment ensured stability, helped restore journalistic activity
In the summer of 2022, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) received donor support from international partners. It was able to purchase 20 laptops for journalists. Priority was given to media workers who left temporarily occupied regions.
For a war period, a year or two is a long period. Some project participants experienced dynamic changes in their lives that were not related to their profession, and someone, thanks to the equipment they received, was able to ensure their own stability and restore journalistic activity. The stories of media workers evidence this.
Yuliya Olkhovska believes that a laptop is a journalist’s best friend
One of the laptops transferred under the program to media workers who suffered from russian aggression was received by Yuliya Olkhovska, a journalist who left russian-occupied Melitopol for Lviv in 2022.
Journalists under occupation are in danger. Yuliya was convinced of this already in March 2022, when at five in the morning, armed occupiers appeared on the doorstep of the house where the Olkhovskyis family lived. The journalist was put in a van without identification marks and brought for interrogation, which lasted five hours.
“At the end of September 2022, I managed to leave Melitopol. Soon, the occupiers introduced mandatory passes for leaving the city. I’m not sure that I would have been able to get one. So, in this regard, you could say I was lucky. When I left, I had one suitcase and a phone,” says Yuliya. “Not only things remained in Melitopol, but my entire pre-war life remained.”
The journalist chose Lviv as a temporary place of residence. The NUJU, of which Yuliya has been a member since 2008, provided the woman with assistance in carrying out her professional activities.
“At the time of my forced displacement, I was already cooperating with the Journalists’ Solidarity Center. When the editor-in-chief, Valentyna Samar, found out that I had left the occupation without equipment, she told me that NUJU provides equipment for use by journalists who found themselves in a difficult situation due to a full-scale invasion.
The Union advised me to contact the Lviv JSC if I needed any help. So, I am grateful to the then-head of the Solidarity Center, Bohdana Stelmakh, who showed that journalistic solidarity in Lviv exists not only in words but also in concrete deeds.
The journalist admits the Union’s laptop gave her the opportunity to work more efficiently because she would hardly have bought new equipment with her own money. And for more than two years now, the NUJU laptop has always been at hand, like a reliable friend.
By the way, as the journalist noted, the phone call from the NUJU caught her right in front of her laptop because the laptop is a journalist’s best friend.
Iryna Martynova has new opportunities thanks to the support of the NUJU
Donetsk, Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk, and Chernivtsi are different cities on the map of Ukraine where Iryna Martynova lived and worked with her husband, Pavlo Piskun.
Their career in Donetsk was successful. Both, as they say, were on the same wavelength – media people, young, ambitious, had a thousand and one ideas, ready to take on any to bring them to life. However the journalist family could not accept the establishment of an occupation regime in the city. Pavlo and Iryna categorically refused to cooperate with the occupiers. The East of Ukraine is their native and dear land. So, they decided to start their entire life from scratch in Druzhkivka.
“We worked then in Kramatorsk, a neighboring city from Druzhkivka, wrote materials, filmed stories, although the unrest did not subside,” says Ms. Iryna. “The full-scale invasion of the russian federation left no chance of holding on to the Donetsk Region; military operations were approaching, shelling was becoming more intense, and media people with a pro-Ukrainian position were in real danger. Like many internally displaced persons, we were sheltered by Chernivtsi. It’s good that, as before, I continued to work at the online publication “Anti-Crisis Media Center,” albeit remotely. However I had to transform quickly to master new skills in work. And then my laptop failed me, a serious breakdown put it out of order. This made life very difficult.”
From media worker Ilya Suzdaliev, the journalist learned that the NUJU‘s JSC network had expanded its activities on a large scale in Chernivtsi, where journalists who had moved to the city from different regions of Ukraine gathered. Hoping for support, she turned to her colleagues and talked about her problem with office equipment. In response, she heard that the NUJU could provide a laptop. All she had to do was write an application. She did so. Soon, Iryna Martynova was working with a new laptop, rejoicing in the new opportunities.
“The laptop came in very handy for me then,” says the media worker. “But not only then, I work with it all the time. In the summer of 2023, we moved from Chernivtsi to Cherkasy because our Anti-Crisis Media Center opened its office here. My husband still works remotely. And if in Chernivtsi we didn’t hear any explosions or sounds when Shahed drones or missiles fly, then in Cherkasy, there is enough of that. But a person gets used to everything… Now, our Center has a large grant project on the restoration of the Luhansk and Donetsk Regions. I also have enough work. In order to watch videos for stories, as well as to communicate with officials of local military administrations, I use Zoom on my laptop; everything works flawlessly.”
Oleksandr Kuzminskyi: “We need to look for ourselves in a new reality”
On February 24, 2022, Oleksandr Kuzminskyi, like the entire editorial team of the corporate newspaper Azovstal, was supposed to be at an operational meeting. But around six in the morning, the employees received an SMS message from the project manager reading, “The meeting is canceled. War.”
Less than three years of life after that day can be contained in a few concise paragraphs.
A month in the basement, when every day is like an eternity, pierced by the roar of shelling. The coming of “DPR” representatives home, the interrogation of Oleksandr and his brother. Departure from Mariupol, bypassing burned cars and human bodies along the way… They drove and drove to get as far away from the war as possible. Chernivtsi. A stop. The whole family – several generations in a small apartment, without much savings.
Attempts to find themselves in a new reality. Restoration of medical documents left at home. It was about the status of a third group of disabled persons due to oncology, which was overcome thanks to surgical intervention and the removal of an important organ. The over-bureaucratized Chernivtsi Medical Social Expert Committee, after several months of red tape, issued a certificate confirming disability.
Looking for a job, any, but preferably in the media. Volodymyr Bober, the head of the Chernivtsi organization of the NUJU, hospitably met Oleksandr at the Chernivtsi JSC. Under the patronage of Mr. Volodymyr, the NUJU provided Oleksandr Kuzminskyi with valuable assistance – a new laptop. Just what he needed for work. Oleksandr realized that he had not forgotten how to be happy and thank people for their support.
“I studied all the educational programs while working on a laptop. I did not radically change my direction. For example, graphic design is my specialty, I can be an editor, and by education, I am a director,” explains the journalist. “In Ukraine, it is difficult to find a job in the media sector because the competition is too great. In Germany, too, everything is not easy. I am ready to work in Germany or Ukraine online. Having this opportunity, I want to convey my congratulations to my colleagues with whom I had the opportunity to work. There are many great people among them! I think Mykhailo Bober also remembers me well. I want to thank him and the NUJU, which provides support to journalists. I always remember with pleasure how comfortable it was to work at the Chernivtsi JSC, and with sadness – my native Mariupol,” Oleksandr emphasized. “And, most importantly, I do not lose hope for the best.”
Liudmyla Maznova, NUJU Information Service
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