Ukraine’s law enforcement bodies have declared 17 Russian citizens suspects of crimes against journalists. Three of these Russians have already been sentenced and 11 more indictments have been submitted to court, said Taras Semkiv, head of the Department for Combating Crimes Committed in Armed Conflict (Prosecutor General’s Office) during the Donbas Media Forum on 10 October, reports Slidstvo.Info.
According to Taras Semkiv, Ukrainian law enforcers have opened 124 proceedings since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.
In particular, the PGO representative said that a suspicion notice had been served to the manager of the pre-trial detention center No. 2 in Taganrog (Russia), who “inflicted severe physical and moral suffering, humiliation of honor and dignity through use of violence, ill-treatment, and torture, on a Ukrainian journalist (Viktoria Roshchyna. – Ed.)”.
Deputy head of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff has also been notified of suspicion for the shelling strike on the hotel and restaurant Sapphire in Kramatorsk (Donetsk oblast), which killed Reuters employee Ryan Evans and injured five of his colleagues and five other civilians.
Semkiv added that in 2024, two “DPR” paramilitaries were sentenced for kidnapping of a Ukrainian journalist (Oleh Baturyn. — Ed.), illegally imprisoning him in a Kakhovka district police office torturing him.
An indictment against the Russian serviceman who shot Dytynets TV director Roman Nezhyborets dead during the occupation of Yahidne village (Chernihiv oblast) has also been submitted to court.
National Police chief Ivan Vyhivskyi reported in May that the police had registered 13 proceedings for crimes against mass media representatives in 2025.
The data shared with IMI by the Prosecutor General’s Office suggests that he police registered 85 proceedings for crimes committed against media representatives in 2024. However, only six of these cases were investigated and submitted to court with indictments (compared to 7 proceedings having been passed to court in 2023 and four in 2022).
According to the Institute of Mass Information, Russia committed 848 crimes against journalists and media in Ukraine in the 3 years and 7 months of the full-scale war.