Restraint and tactfulness – journalist on the media's approach to interviewing the released Mariupol defenders
The defenders of Mariupol, who have been released from Russian captivity, need months of physical and psychological rehabilitation in order to even minimally recover. Therefore, it is important that journalists do not try to pry any loud statements, political assessments, or gruesome details out of yesterday's prisoners or their relatives.
Journalist Tetyana Danylenko stressed this.
"I hope that in the Azovstal situation, journalists will show maximum morality and restraint. People miraculously got out of the death camps. Miraculously survived in the destroyed Mariupol. Taken together, their experience is not even close to Auschwitz. A confined space under endless bombardment from the air, water, and land, and a Stalin-style Gulag after it, multiplied by the impunity and depravity of the 'DPR' militants and the Kadyrovites," Danylenko wrote.
She noted that the released fighters did not know where they were being taken until the last moments, and had the worst guesses.
"The worst thing is that some people – and it wasn't just one or two of them – still have loved ones left in captivity. And, for example, Olenivka is not just a death camp: the people locked up in those barracks were burned alive twice," the journalist noted and emphasized, "Restraint and tactfulness. And most importantly, Russia must answer for Mariupol, Olenivka, Izyum, Bucha, Borodyanka, and other war crimes. This is the issue number one. We will have to deal with the terrible details of these crimes for the rest of our lives."
As IMI reported, on September 21, Ukraine returned 215 Ukrainian defenders from Russian captivity. 108 of them are soldiers of the Azov Regiment. Dmytro Kozatsky is among the released Mariupol defenders.
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