Reporters Without Borders’ investigation: tracing missing Melitopol journalists

A year after a raid by russian occupiers in Melitopol, southern Ukraine, which led to the arrest of several journalists and contributors to Telegram news channels, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) investigated their fate. The organization searched for several of them in russian prisons.

August 20, 2023, in Melitopol, was a turning point in the history of the occupation of the city. At dawn, at least four journalists and contributors to the Telegram channel were arrested by men in military uniform, as documented by the RSF. Then, silence for weeks… Although their arrest was finally confirmed in October by propaganda videos in which journalists were forced to make false confessions, no information about them has been filtered since then. russia holds them outside the law, moving them from prison to prison in a situation more akin to the disappearance than detention. The RSF investigated and traced their path.

Before this raid, Melitopol was the arena of fierce resistance to the russian invasion. The “Cherry Capital,” as it is known in Ukraine, was quickly captured after a large-scale invasion by russia on February 24, 2022, and saw anti-occupation demonstrators marching through its streets and information on the Internet about the consequences of the war under russian rule. Repression intensified. In March 2022, the mayor was arrested, and then, in the summer of 2023, the same happened to several journalists. At the same time, as the RSF found out, the Mediatopol center – a school of propaganda where they teach how to use cameras and microphones – began work.

Since then, the news in Melitopol has been covered with a blanket of lead. Journalism seems to have lost its last specialists… News comes in trickles. For those who try to join the free Ukraine, the risk is great. “One phone call can ruin your life,” sums up a former reporter whom we met in Zaporizhzhia, where the administration of Melitopol was transferred.

“Repression against journalists and propaganda: russia exports to the occupied territories its policy of predation on information that already works at home. Many in Melitopol became victims of this hunt for journalists. The RSF is documenting the facts of their capture, which is a war crime, and is mobilizing efforts for their release.”

Arnaud Froger, the Head of Investigations at the RSF

Four journalists were detained, and another was made a slave

First, on August 20, 2023, the administrator of the Ria-Melitopol Telegram channel, a local media outlet with more than 80,000 subscribers, was arrested. Heorhii Levchenko was arrested before dawn, probably around 4 a.m., as can be seen in the night pictures of his arrest. The russians filmed everything. The video was made public two months later and aired on russia’s First Channel, the Kremlin’s leading propaganda channel. Under duress, the journalist looks remorseful and scared in his cell, most likely back in Melitopol. In a communiqué dated October 27, 2023, the Federal Security Service (FSB) of russia accused the journalist of passing on information about the russian military to Ukrainian special services.

Was he transferred to a detention center in Mariupol, a port city in southeastern Ukraine, the site of one of the biggest battles since the start of the war? This is what multiple sources told the RSF without being able to confirm. In this prison, however, the RSF found two contributors to the Melitopol: is Ukraine Telegram channel, which broadcast local news during the occupation: Yana Suvorova, the channel’s administrator, and her colleague Vladyslav Hershon. Also arrested at dawn on August 20, 2023, they were filmed for “reportage.” The same method: arrest, interrogation, and forced confession on the leading TV channel of russia.

In an FSB document seen by the RSF, the two journalists are accused of “intending to participate in sabotage and terrorist operations” in the Zaporizhzhia Region together with agents of Ukrainian military intelligence. Any solid evidence does not support the allegations contained in the document.

According to information collected by the RSF, before arriving in Mariupol, journalists were moved to several places of detention, sometimes improvised. Sometimes they ended up among recidivist russian prisoners or in cells so overcrowded that some had to “sleep” standing up.

Anastasiya Hlukhovska went through the same way. The journalist of the Ria-Melitopol publication decided to suspend her activities after the invasion. Arrested during the wave on August 20, 2023, she was first held in a hardware store in Melitopol, which the russians had turned into a makeshift prison, and then transferred to a pre-trial detention center in the village of Pryazovske, 30 kilometers away. She, like her colleagues, is accused of “terrorism.” According to information received by the RSF, she is currently being held in the Rostov Oblast in southwestern russia.

While investigating the disappearance of the Melitopol journalists, the RSF learned of the existence of Yevhen Ilchenko, a man who decided to open his own Telegram channel to report on the russian occupation of that city. Arrested, he was enslaved and subjected to forced labor. Jailers forced him to dig trenches, as established by the RSF.

Ukraine and russia are ranked 61^st and 162^nd, respectively, out of 180 countries in the 2024 RSF World Press Freedom Index.

Reporters Without Borders