RSF comdemns Russia's new propaganda factory in Ukraine's occupied territories

The international human rights watchdog "Reporters Without Borders" (RSF) condemns the Kremlin's financing of a new propaganda factory, which Russia calls an online school for "war correspondents" to work in Ukraine's occupied territories, according to the statement released by the organization on April 30.

The watchdog notes that the new propaganda factory "complements the systematic repression of independent journalists in order to destroy all access to independent information and impose the Kremlin's official account of the war in Ukraine."

RSF remarks that on April 8, 2024, the “War Correspondents’ School” (“Shkola Voenkora”) showed its first class of graduates posing in front of a partially destroyed building in Ukraine’s occupied territories in a photo posted on Vkontakte and Facebook. The 20 graduates of this new online “journalism” school received their diplomas on 12 March.

The organization also reminds that the online school offers free training. The program includes learning how to conduct interviews with Russian soldiers, the logistics of reporting and a reporting internship at the war front.

The classes are taught by reporters who have worked in Ukraine’s occupied territories for Russian state media such as the TV news channel RT and the news agency Ria Novosti, and the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia. Some of the people giving classes are key figures in the Russian propaganda system such as Alexander Malkevich, the founder of a network of media outlets in the occupied territories, and Sergei Mardan, a journalist with the pro-government tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda who is charged in Ukraine with “calls for genocide.”

Jeanne Cavelier, Head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, said that the Kremlin was grooming a new generation of "war correspondents" – in reality an army of propagandists – to work in the occupied Ukrainian territories.

"The Russian forces meanwhile continue to suppress any dissenting voices with impunity, forcing independent journalists in Russia to choose between exile or prison, and tracking down those in the occupied territories who do not collaborate. RSF condemns these methods, which are designed to eliminate trustworthy journalism and a pluralistic media ecosystem in order to impose the official Kremlin narrative," she remarked.

RSF note that the school is the latest contribution to Russia’s already extensive propaganda network. In September 2023, RSF denounced the training in “journalism trades” being provided at the Mediatopol centre, supported by the Russian occupation forces, in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Melitopol.

On November 7, 2023, Russia opened a free online school "War Correspondent's School", which recruited volunteers from Ukraine's temporarily occupied territories for collaboration, as well as Russian citizens. The project is sponsored by the Russian Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives. It was initiated Vera Kironenko, a private entrepreneur from Kuskovo village, Tomsk district.

Earlier, the occupiers opened a "media school" Mediatopol in the temporarily occupied part of Zaporizhzhia oblast to recruit young people to serve the occupation authorities.

IMI has reported on the Russians destroying Ukrainian media in the occupied territories and on what they built instead.