THE NATIONAL UNION OF
JOURNALISTS OF UKRAINE
In May 2026, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) recorded 22 verified cases of the impact of russian attacks on civilian journalists, newsrooms and media infrastructure. This is almost three times more than in April, when 8 cases were recorded, and the highest monthly figure since the beginning of the year.
The NUJU monitoring covers exclusively verified cases of the physical impact of russian aggression on civilian journalists and the media: injuries to journalists, damage to newsrooms, housing and property of media workers.
For comparison: in January, 2 cases were recorded, in February – 10, in March – 18, and in April, the number of such cases was 8. In total, in the five months of 2026, the NUJU monitoring registered 60 verified cases.
“Behind each of the 22 cases recorded in May, there are human stories. These are journalists who run to shelters in the middle of the night, lose their homes, newsrooms or equipment, but continue to work. Russian missile and drone terror has a direct impact on the Ukrainian media sphere. Our task is to document these consequences, convey the truth about them to international partners and help colleagues who need urgent support after the attacks,” notes NUJU President Sergiy Tomilenko.
The main factor of growth
The determining factor of the May hike was the massive combined missile and drone attack on Kyiv overnight into May 24.
In just one night in the capital, at least ten media facilities were damaged — newsrooms, a news agency, studios of foreign broadcasters, the office of the regional organization of the NUJU, and housing for journalists.
Even without taking this episode into account, May would have yielded 12 cases, which still exceeds the April figure.
Structure of May cases
Damage to newsrooms and media infrastructure — 12 cases
The most numerous category based on May monitoring.
The offices of the newspapers 20 Minutes and RIA Plus in Ternopil, the newspaper Mayak in Bohodukhiv, the branch of Suspilne Zaporizhzhia, and the newspaper Promin in Snovsk were damaged.
After the attack on Kyiv on May 24, the newsrooms of Graty, Realna Hazeta, Shelter, the UNIAN news agency, as well as the studios of the German broadcasters ARD and Deutsche Welle were damaged.
Separately, the buildings of the Zoria publishing house in Dnipro and the office of the Kyiv regional organization of the NUJU were damaged.
Damage to journalists’ homes — 6 cases
The apartments of the operators of the Public Dnipro Yurii Tynyk and the D1 TV channel Oleh Rodionov, and the host of the Hromadske radio Andrii Hryn in Kramatorsk were damaged.
In Kyiv, after the attack on May 24, the apartments of TV presenter Olha Freimut, lecturer at the Institute of Journalism of the Kyiv National University Artem Zakharchenko, as well as the couple of media workers Ihor Martynenko and Viktoriya Zabiyan were damaged or destroyed.
“The most terrible thing is the feeling of expectation that this is not the end and something else will happen now,” says Viktoriya Zabiyan, whose apartment was damaged during the russian attack on Kyiv.
Damage to journalists’ cars – 3 cases
As a result of russian attacks, the cars of akzent.zp.ua journalist Yana Mozul in Zaporizhzhia, Channel 5 correspondent Valentyna Pestushko in Kherson, and TV presenter Ihor Martynenko in Kyiv were damaged.
Journalists injured – 1 case
On May 13, the editing director of Suspilne Ivano-Frankivsk Oksana Rudyk received a shrapnel wound to her leg on the way from her office to a shelter during an attack by drones.
The media worker was hospitalized.
Geography
While in April the largest number of cases was recorded in the Dnipropetrovsk Region, in May Kyiv became the geographical epicenter.
Ten out of twenty-two cases are related to the capital and the consequences of the massive attack on May 24.
Other cases were recorded in Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Donetsk Regions, Kherson, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk.
Separately about the dead media workers
The NUJU monitoring does not include journalists and media workers who died or were injured during military service in the Defense Forces of Ukraine.
At the same time, in May, it became known about the death of former cameraman and editing director Oleksandr Klymenko, who did not return from a combat mission in July 2024.
Methodology
Monitoring of russian attacks on the media sphere is carried out by the NUJU.
It includes only verified cases of physical impact of russian aggression on civilian journalists and media: injuries to journalists, damage to newsrooms, housing and property of media workers.
Verification is based on official reports from newsrooms and media organizations, appeals from journalists and their families, publications in open sources, as well as on the own monitoring and information of the regional coordinators of the network of Journalists’ Solidarity Centers (JSC) of the NUJU.
The data is regularly transmitted to international partners – the International and European Federations of Journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists and other organizations that document the crime and russia against journalists and the media.
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The May indicator continues the systematic monitoring of the NUJU since the beginning of 2026. In January-April, the Union counted 38 incidents – 21 cases of damage to media workers’ homes, 7 damaged newsrooms and media infrastructure facilities, 9 attacks on journalists while performing their duties and one injury; since the beginning of the year, eight journalists have died at the front, in the ranks of the Defense Forces. The dynamics of these months were uneven, with a peak in March, when a massive drone attack on the 24th simultaneously hit the homes of journalists in Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Lviv and Vinnytsia – a scenario that the May attack on Kyiv on the night of the 24th actually repeated, but in the capital.
The main threat to media workers throughout the year remains strike drones –Shaheds, FPVs, Lancets and Molnya, which account for the majority of direct attacks on film crews and the vast majority of damage to newsrooms and housing. Of particular concern is the fact that the “PRESS” marking has become a label for FPV operators, which is why the NUJU can no longer recommend that colleagues mark their equipment with it, and the most dangerous region for journalists remains the Dnipropetrovsk Region. The problem of the Kremlin’s civilian prisoners persists – 28 Ukrainian journalists are still in russian captivity; NUJU data is regularly transmitted to the International and European Federations of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists to document russia’s crimes against the media.
NUJU Information Service
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