Reinforced Doors, Shielded Windows: NUJU Fortifies Its Headquarters as Russia’s War on Ukraine’s Media Grinds On

In the first half of 2026 alone, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine recorded at least 80 verified attacks on journalists and media in the country — 35 homes damaged, 17 editorial offices and pieces of infrastructure hit, nine reporters attacked while working, and 12 killed. Twenty-eight more remain held in Russian captivity, missing in occupied Crimea, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, close to 160 media workers have lost their lives. With support from Civil Rights Defenders’ Emergency Fund, NUJU has now reinforced its own building — so that it can stay operational and keep supporting the colleagues whose attacks it documents every day.

A war fought increasingly by drone

For most of the war, artillery and missile strikes defined the danger zone: the closer to the front, the greater the risk. Over the past two years that map has changed. Strike drones have become the dominant threat, and they travel far beyond the front line. In 2026, attacks reached at least 11 regions, including Kyiv, Dnipro, Lviv, Vinnytsia and Zaporizhzhia. For journalists working outside the traditional conflict zone, the sense of relative safety that distance once provided no longer holds.

Alongside physical attacks, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine continues to document harassment, surveillance and arson aimed at investigative reporters covering corruption, and martial-law restrictions that complicate everyday reporting. A further, less visible front runs through the country’s power grid. Russian missile and drone strikes on energy infrastructure have triggered long, unpredictable blackouts nationwide — cutting NUJU staff off from encrypted communications, databases and secure document storage, and forcing people to move during air raids in search of powered locations.

The scale of that campaign sharpened in early 2026. A rare lull in strikes on the energy sector, lasting only from January 28 to February 2, gave way to renewed large-scale missile and drone bombardment. By February, Russia was launching roughly 190 strikes a day, up from about 140 in January, with ballistic missiles increasingly substituting for the cruise missiles Russian forces had struggled to deploy from Tu-95 bombers.

Building resilience, room by room

NUJU turned to Civil Rights Defenders, a partner since 2021, first for equipment that would let a core team keep working through prolonged outages: six portable Bluetti 600W charging stations, 16 power banks (30,000 mAh, PD65) and additional PD65W chargers, purchased in early February as prices climbed. The equipment was tested almost immediately. During a subsequent wave of strikes on the energy grid that left Kyiv and other regions without power for extended periods, the charging stations and power banks kept the Journalists’ Solidarity Centers running, kept staff in contact with reporters near the front, and kept international partners updated in real time.

An additional EUR 2,000 from the Emergency Fund went toward physical reinforcement of NUJU’s own premises: RC1-standard entrance doors, supplied and installed at the union’s building, and roughly 300-micron security window film applied to the windows of the Journalists’ Solidarity Center, the negotiation room, reception and the President’s office. The film covered more than 17 square meters — beyond what the grant funded, with NUJU covering the difference — reducing the risk of injury from shattered glass during an attack and closing off an easy point of forced entry.

What the equipment doesn’t yet cover

Not every NUJU team member has this level of protection. Some active staff still lack their own energy backup, even as the geography and intensity of strikes continue to widen. NUJU intends to extend both the physical reinforcements and the energy equipment further, treating security infrastructure as a routine part of running an organisation whose staff coordinate protection for journalists across the country from a building that is itself a target.

NUJU’s Journalists’ Solidarity Centers — in Kyiv, Dnipro, Lviv, Sumy, Ivano-Frankivsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv — continue to provide protective equipment, safe co-working space, legal and psychological support, and safety training to journalists working in and near the front line, alongside emergency hotlines that also serve foreign correspondents. That work, and NUJU’s international advocacy with the International Federation of Journalists, the European Federation of Journalists and UNESCO, depends on the union itself staying operational through the blackouts and attacks it exists to document.