Russia started cracking down on independent journalism in Crimea in an effort to purge it from the peninsula in the first months of the occupation in 2014, Investigative Journalism Centre chief editor Valentyna Samar said during the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre’s press conference “The Price of Truth: Russia’s Persecution of Journalists in Occupied Crimea”, the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre reported in a Facebook post.
Samar said that attacks, robberies, destruction of equipment, and denial of entry to the peninsula were part of a planned state policy enforced by the occupation army, Russia’s intelligence services, and their local appointees such as Sergey Aksyonov and Mikhail Sheremet.
“The one goal was to purge Crimea of press they did not control. Berkut officers from Aqyar [Sevastopol] and the ‘Self-Defence’ stood at the checkpoints at the entrance to Crimea, not letting journalists through. This happened daily, several cases per day. Such scale points to one thing: this was the state policy of the occupation army, Russia’s intelligence services, and their Crimean proxies,” Valentyna Samar stressed.
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Despite the persecution, journalists tried to continue working under occupation until the very end, but were ultimately forced to leave. Still, Samar’s team team remained committed to their professional principles.
“I am very proud that not a single journalist from our team sided with the occupiers,” the editor said.
Valentyna Samar also mentioned journalist Anna Andriyevska, whom the Russian authorities are prosecuting over a piece about volunteers of the Crimea Battalion. The case was opened under Article 280.1 of the Russian Criminal Code (“public calls for actions aimed at violating the territorial integrity of Russia”).
According to IMI, at least 27 Ukrainian civilians working in journalism and one journalist who enlisted in the Defense Forces remain imprisoned by Russian forces as of 21 October 2026.