Is it easy for media professionals to defend their rights? Depends on their own persistence. You need to file a report with the police, follow up to make sure that it has been registered, that the proceedings are filed under a journalism-related article rather than a general criminal one, and then that it hasn’t been forgotten and is actually being investigated. It sounds like a whole extra job.

“Why Reporting Obstruction Cases Don’t Reach Verdict Stage“, a discussion hosted by the Institute of Mass Information (IMI) at the Institute for Regional Press Development’s Investigative Journalists Conference 2026, touched on why this is happening and what can be done to fix it.

Key takeaways from the discussion:

  • The number of press freedom violations committed by Ukrainian citizens over the first eight months of 2026 has already exceeded the count for the entire year 2025, according to IMI’s Freedom of Speech Barometer.
  • Official registration statistics, by contrast, are declining: journalists increasingly refrain from filing police reports since they don’t believe this will yield any real result.
  • Judicial pressure on journalists and lawsuits bearing the hallmarks of SLAPP have become more frequent. A draft bill that would allow courts to dismiss such claims is currently at the registration stage.
  • Investigations are being dragged out by a game of “ping-pong” by agencies: in the Babel case, the National Police and the State Bureau of Investigation spent two months determining which one of them should be investigating the death threats.
  • Journalists are denied access to public information increasingly often, with martial law being used as a pretext not to disclose budget spending data.
  • IMI expects to restore systematic cooperation with the Prosecutor General’s Office once new leadership is appointed at the agency.

Obsctruction goes unpunished: two stories from Khmelnytskyi

In November 2021, investigative journalist Alyona Bereza, founder of the news website ZHAR.INFO and IMI’s representative in Khmelnytskyi, was exiting a sports club when an unknown man ran up to her, doused her with liquid from a bag, and fled. Alyona recognised him as one of two men who had come to her house and rung apartments’ doorbells the day before. Not long before that, the journalist had released an investigation into the property owned by four Khmelnytskyi City Council officials, so she assumed the two events were linked.

The case should have been investigated under the article concerning attacks on journalists — Article 354-1 of the Criminal Code. It has been reclassified several times over the years from “attack on a journalist” to “hooliganism” and back again. However, almost five years later, there’s still no outcome, and no one has been convicted. Alyona believes the reason lies in the police’s reluctance to take action and she no longer expects anyone to be punished.

Alyona’s second story involves being denied access to a session of the State Inspectorate for Architecture and Urban Planning (SIAUP) in Khmelnytskyi in March 2026. At the time, the journalist reported the obstruction to the police. Despite her report being added to the national register, no proceedings were opened — the journalist later had to go to court to ensure they are.

“But it didn’t end there: I was assigned witness status in the proceedings. I said, how can I be a witness if I’m the one facing obstruction? So we then filed more motions with the police asking them to change it. Now the case has been reclassified under Article 171,” Alyona Bereza said.

Only then was she finally questioned as a victim.

“I don’t believe there’ll be a great result, but for me it was a matter of principle to build up case practice and show that this article isn’t just something written down in the Criminal Code, that it’s actually meant to be applied,” the journalist says.

She added that, on top of everything, investigators never notified her of changes to the case status.

“I think that, say, when proceedings are closed, a police officer or investigator should notify the person concerned. Well, I was never notified once. So if we hadn’t done our own monitoring—I only learned after that monitoring that my case had been closed for several months. There’s just no practice of notifying people. The police avoid doing it as much as they possibly can,” Alyona said.

More violations recorded over the 8 months of 2026 than in the entire year 2025

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion began, the Institute of Mass Information used to record roughly 200–300 press freedom violations per year, including obstruction of reporting, death threats, phsyical assault, and so on.

In 2022, a new category tracking Russia’s crimes against media was added to the Freedom of Speech Barometer, and the number of violations committed by Ukrainian actors started to drop. But not for long.

“We’re seeing a yearly increase in violations committed specifically by Ukrainian citizens — that is, offenses unrelated to the war. The number of violations over the first eight months of 2026 has already exceeded the total for the entire year 2025,” said Kateryna Diachuk, IMI’s chief of freedom of speech monitoring.

A new, fast-growing type of pressure has emerged: judicial pressure.

“We’ve seen a spike in the number of cases involving judicial pressure, particularly lawsuits bearing the hallmarks of SLAPP. This is when people want to silence journalists, to stop them saying anything, or to intimidate them pre-emptively. For example, the Slidstvo.Info investigation into the State Bureau of Investigation, which was banned by the Pecherskyi Court before it was even released. But I’m grateful to our journalists, who came together, spoke out en masse, and published the investigation in a show of solidarity,” the media expert explained.

Another problem area is access to information, where the authorities respond to queries about budget spending by hiding behind martial law to avoid disclosing data.

IMI director Oksana Romaniuk recalled that the Prosecutor General’s Office used to have a task force overseeing investigations into obstruction of reporting.

“Unfortunately, we never managed to secure any public statements or any real communication in support of journalists from the previous Prosecutor General. But we do have hope that the new person who takes over as head of the Office will be more open to this kind of communication, and that we’ll be able to work more actively in this direction,” Oksana Romaniuk said.

Fewer victims, more pressure

Oleh Pelepiuk, a representative of the Prosecutor General’s Office, assured the attendees that the agency reviewed IMI’s monthly reports on violations of journalists’ rights and forwarded them to various units and regional offices for each individual case to be processed.

“All this work was set in motion seven years ago — with involvement by the Institute of Mass Information and many others. It’s not that we started it from scratch, since work in this area had already been under way, but somehow, I think, we contributed to making it more active and more effective,” the prosecutor said.

According to him, there have been fewer victims in cases filed under the journalism-related Articles 171 and 345-1, with the number dropping from 156 in 2021 to 24 over the first eight months of 2025. However, this doesn’t mean there have been fewer violations — journalists simply aren’t reporting them to the police. For instance, 42 proceedings were registered between January and August, Pelepiuk reported.

“More has been going on in two areas in particular for us. One is cyberattacks. They simply don’t reach the registration stage, and it’s not even clear which angle to approach them from to properly document them. The second thing is that we’ve seen a rise specifically in legal, judicial pressure. This is also evolving, and I think it’s reflected in the registration figures. And, again, not everyone reports it,” the prosecutor said.

He agreed with the journalists’ complaint about not being notified when cases are closed.

“Even if a person isn’t the victim, but simply the one who filed the report, they have the right to be notified of the outcome,” he said.

Most important investigative journalism is being done in Ukraine

Paradoxically, the press freedom situation in Ukraine actually improved after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Ukraine currently ranks 55th in the Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), compared to 97th place in 2021.

RSF’s Pauline Maufrais stressed that Ukraine’s position had been affected positively by updated media legislation on one hand, and negatively by the lack of concrete results from investigations into violations targeting journalists on the other.

“When there are no concrete results after one, two, three years, then the question of impunity arises,” Pauline Maufrais said.

At the same time, she praised the work of Ukrainian journalists.

“In Ukraine, journalists are able to work — even in wartime, and that’s really significant. There are restrictions, but they’re still able to work. And there are a lot of people abroad who don’t know this at all, and who don’t think it’s possible to work as a journalist in Ukraine. And the most important investigations published since 2022 have been produced in Ukraine,” the RSF representative said.

What new legislation must change

Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, Chair of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Freedom of Speech, described the key problem pertaining to investigations.

“We record it, enter it into the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations — and then the ping-pong begins. Who’s going to investigate it, will it even be investigated, how will it be investigated.” One example is the Babel case, where the National Police and the State Bureau of Investigation spent two months unable to agree on jurisdiction. “The case just goes cold,” he said.

Yurchyshyn attributed the drop in the number of opened cases to journalists’ growing disillusionment:

“The vast majority of journalists, especially regional ones, think, ‘This is monkey business. I’ll file another report, and it won’t get investigated,'” Yaroslav Yurchyshyn said.

Protecting journalists against frivolous lawsuits is another priority.

“Europe has established an anti-SLAPP practice, drawing on very painful experience of assassinations and obstruction, allowing judges to dismiss such claims either at the initial stage or during the course of proceedings. We have a good precedent here, because Bihus.Info secured a Supreme Court ruling: the claim was dismissed on the grounds that it bore the signs of SLAPP. But that was at the cassation level, and we still don’t have a corresponding provision in the law.

“Oksana [Romaniuk], myself, and many of our colleagues formed a task force and have worked through this issue pretty thoroughly. I really hope that we’ll register a draft bill next week that would allow courts to dismiss cases against journalists and civic activists on certain grounds. And this would significantly affect the workload, including for our colleagues in law enforcement,” Yurchyshyn explained.

Legal assistance for journalists

Lawyers at IMI offer free legal consultations for media professionals. To reach out to them, fill out this online form. You can also use the form to report violations of journalists’ rights — IMI’s lawyers will help you draft a statement to the police.

If a media outlet needs legal representation in court, lawyers at the Institute for Regional Press Development can help with that; their contact details are available here.

The Institute of Mass Information (IMI) is a civil society organization specializing in the media, operating since 1996. IMI defends the rights of journalists, studies the media landscape and reports on media-related events, fights propaganda and disinformation, and provides media workers with safety equipment for trips to combat areas (since the start of the Russo–Ukrainian war in 2014).

IMI carries out the only monitoring study of freedom of speech in Ukraine, keeps a list of transparent and responsible online media outlets, and tracks Russia’s media crimes in the war on Ukraine. IMI has representatives in 20 oblasts of Ukraine and runs a network of Media Hubs that provide journalists with unfailing support. IMI’s partners include Reporters Without Borders (RSF); the organization is also a member of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX).