Seventy-five journalists killed in Ukraine since Russia unleashed war in 2014

These are the data of the Monitoring of Russian crimes against journalists and the media which is carried out by the Institute of Mass Information (IMI).

"Since 2014, Russia's war against Ukraine has been accompanied by crimes against journalists and the destruction of independent journalism in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories, and from the full-scale invasion in 2022 – also in the territories controlled by the Ukrainian authorities. Murders, kidnappings, threats, arrests of media representatives are only a small list of crimes committed by Russian occupiers against the media," said Kateryna Diachuk, head of the IMI freedom of speech monitoring department.

Before the full-scale invasion, in the period from 2014 to 2022, seven journalists were killed in the territory of Ukraine. Three of them were killed while performing a journalistic task, four – as participants in hostilities. All of them were killed in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

IMI noted that three media workers – Serhiy Nikolayev, Andrea Rochelli and his translator Andrei Mironov – were killed while performing their professional activities in 2014-2015. Four more media workers were killed at the front, defending Ukraine from the Russian invasion: Viktor Hurniak, Oleksandr Chernikov, Dmytro Labutkin and Oleh Zadoyanchuk (Ukrinform journalist).

At the same time, since the beginning of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russia has killed 68 journalists. Ten of them were killed while performing professional duties, 58 as participants in hostilities or as a result of Russian shelling or torture (of them, 45 as participants in hostilities, 13 as a result of Russian shelling or torture).

In September of this year, two journalists were killed – Volodymyr Myroniuk and Andriy Kryshtal.

It is underscored that IMI does not record in their monitoring the deaths of representatives of Russian propaganda resources in the occupied territories of Ukraine since they are engaged not in journalistic activities but information support for military aggression. In addition, all of them enter the territory of Ukraine illegally.

In May, it was reported that the number of journalists killed during the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine reached 56.