505 crimes against journalists and media committed by Russa in the year and a month of the war

In the year and a month since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia has committed 505 crimes against journalists and media in Ukraine.

This is evidenced by the Russian War Crimes Monitoring carried out by the Institute of Mass Information.

In the thirteenth month of the war, the IMI recorded eight freedom of speech violations committed by Russia. These include attacks on journalists and media offices, cybercrimes against Ukrainian media, and spreading Kremlin propaganda in the temporarily occupied territory of Zaporizhzhia oblast.

On March 13, cameraman and UAF serviceman Oleksiy Olkhovyk was killed by Russian strike from an anti-tank grenade launcher in Bakhmut. With the start of the full-scale invasion, Oleksiy Olkhovyk joined the 241st Territorial Defense Brigade of Kyiv, but later was sent to the front line in Donetsk oblast. In September 2022, Oleksiy Olkhovyk was wounded in a mine explosion and was recovering for about a month. After recovering, he went back to the front line – to Bakhmut.

According to IMI, Oleksiy Olkhovyk became the 49th media worker to die in Ukraine as a result of the Russian armed aggression. Eight of those media workers died while reporting, 41 died as combatants or were killed by Russian shelling not while performing journalistic work.

On March 13, cameraman and UAF serviceman Oleksiy Olkhovyk was killed by Russian strike from an anti-tank grenade launcher in Bakhmut. With the start of the full-scale invasion, Oleksiy Olkhovyk joined the 241st Territorial Defense Brigade of Kyiv, but later was sent to the front line in Donetsk oblast. In September 2022, Oleksiy Olkhovyk was wounded in a mine explosion and was recovering for about a month. After recovering, he went back to the front line – to Bakhmut.

According to IMI, Oleksiy Olkhovyk became the 49th media worker to die in Ukraine as a result of the Russian armed aggression. Eight of those media workers died while reporting, 41 died as combatants or were killed by Russian shelling not while performing journalistic work.

Two filming crews came under Russian fire. In Kherson oblast, it was a BBC crew filming a report on Ukrainian aid workers. Journalists had come to Mylove village, following the volunteers. The shelling started as aid workers were distributing supplies to residents of the de-occupied village. No one was killed during the shelling.

In Bakhmut, Donbas.Realii correspondents came under Russian shelling. According to the correspondent Yehor Loginov, they were filming the work of the Ukrainian military a few kilometers away from the front line, which is when the Russian troops started shelling the positions with mortars and "Grads". "Our positions were under fire, but we made it to a dugout. We sat through the shelling and left," the journalist said. Nobody was injured.

In Nikopol, a Russian missile strike damaged the building of the local radio station Nostalgie. All the windows were blown out by the shelling, a third of the slate roof was destroyed, the equipment was damaged. The broadcasting has been stopped, said the radio station's CEO, Valery Tereshchenko, to the IMI.

In the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia oblast, the Russians created a new propaganda newspaper, "Golos Novorossyi". The propaganda publication is funded from the Russian "Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives", according to the newspaper's website. The propagandists plan to "report on the news and the everyday life of Russia's new regions, on their integration into the united cultural, economic and civilizational space of the Russian Federation."

In addition, IMI recorded four cases of cybercrime during the thirteenth month of the war:

• The Facebook pages of the Ukraïner project were hacked and taken over. In his comment to IMI, Bohdan Logvynenko did not rule out that Russians were involved in the hacker attack on the project's Facebook pages. Later, he reported that Facebook had restored access to all of Ukraïner's 12 pages.
• Hackers played the USSR anthem on the air of Inter. This happened as Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, was speaking on the "Unified Telethon". Technicians at the Inter Media Group reported that they had taken all necessary measures to eliminate the threat of external interference in the work of broadcast servers.
• Russian hackers attempted to hijack the FM Halychyna radio station. The day before, calls for a hacker attack on the radio station were circulating on Russian Telegram channels. Specialists at the radio station responded to the enemy's actions in time and managed to eliminate the threat. The only thing the hackers managed to do was to temporarily stop the radio station's website from working.
• The editors of RBC Ukraine filed a statement with the cyberpolice over website forgery and a fake article criticizing the UAF Commander-in-Chief, Valery Zaluzhny.

The full list of Russia's crimes against media is available here. 

The list of journalists killed over the course of Russia's aggression is available here.