Propagandist’s death does not make them a journalist

As the President of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU), I urgently appealed to the leadership of the International Federation of Journalists and the European Federation of Journalists with a call not to play along with russian propaganda due to the organizations’ statement on the need to investigate the death in Ukraine of the so-called ‘journalist / russian RIA Novosti’s propagandist, Rostislav Zhuravlev.

An employee of the Russian state media, Rostislav Zhuravlev, engaged in propaganda, incited enmity against Ukrainians and encouraged the war. In addition, the deceased supported separatists in the east of Ukraine in 2014-2015 with a weapon in his hands. The death of Rostislav Zhuravlev in the temporarily occupied territory of the Zaporizhzhia Region is the death of a russian propagandist serving the Kremlin.

The aggressor, as well as his propagandists, are doing their best to destroy Ukraine and Ukrainians. They call the killing of innocent residents a special operation and deliberately silence the atrocities committed by their country.

Thousands of people have been killed by Russian weapons, hundreds of thousands of hectares of Ukrainian land have been contaminated by landmines, and Ukrainian soldiers are killed every day defending their homeland.

The EFJ and the IFJ once denied the journalistic status of the pro-Kremlin union of journalists of russia and suspended its membership in the IFJ. And we sincerely welcome it! But it is not necessary to recognize propagandists as journalists, even though the circumstances are tragic.

We call on our European and international colleagues to remember that the word in the hands of the Kremlin is a weapon that destroys all living things in its path.

We invite respected colleagues from the IFJ and the EFJ to Ukraine to make sure that russia is a beast with hands covered in blood.

NUJU President Sergiy Tomilenko