Journalist attacked in Kherson for filming underground school construction
Olena Hnitetska, a journalist with the online news outlet MOST, was attacked by an unknown man on a school's premises in Kherson, today, September 30. The man shoved her and took away her phone, tossing into a pit where construction equipment was working, Olena Hnitetska reports to the Institute of Mass Information representative in Kherson oblast, Serhiy Nikitenko.
According to the journalist, she is working on a report about the construction of underground schools in Kherson and "wanted to inspect a construction site which has sparked indignation among the locals personally."
"Arriving at the construction site, I saw a man and a woman. A guy approached me and I told him that I was a journalist. He pointed to the people whom I had seen earlier and told me they were the developer's representatives. When I approached them to ask a question, the man started to lash out at me, took away my phone and tossed it into the pit, started shouting something, shoving me and throwing stones at me," she said.
According to Olena, the man refused to give her phone back and she left the building and asked a passerby to call the police.
At that moment, she added, a man who introduced himself as Viktor Spurza arrived at the construction site.
Olena Hnitetska was examined by medics after the September 30, 2024 assault. Photo by MOST
"He immediately told me that he knew everything about me and the online outlet MOST. Passed his greetings to the editor. He started saying, 'You write bad things about me all the time. Why did you come here at all?' At that moment, the police arrived and this Spurza ordered the assailant to give me back my phone," Hnitetska said.
As the IMI representative notes, Viktor Spurza, a Lviv oblast resident, is a co-founder of Budpostach-STSV LLC, which is building several underground schools in Kherson on city budget money. In autumn 2023, the Starosambirskyi District Court of Lviv oblast convicted him under Part 4 of Article 358 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (Aware use of a forged document) and fined him 850 hryvnias.
The police officers who arrived at the scene interviewed those present, who started claiming that there had been no attack on the journalist, and that the attacker, whom Olena pointed out, dropped her phone accidentally.
He did not explain how the journalist's phone got into his hands. The police recorded explanations from the journalist and witnesses.
Olena Hnitetska was examined by ambulance medics, who found no injuries.
On September 29, residents of a Zaporizhzhia private sector, which was targeted by Russian anti-aircraft missiles, interfered with the work of Elmira Shahabudtdynova, a journalist with the local website 061.ua, as she was photographing the aftermath of the Russian strike.
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