Serhatskova left Ukraine

Co-founder of the online media outlet “Zaborona”, Kateryna Serhatskova, left Ukraine after receiving threats. This information was published in The New York Times article. 

The information was confirmed for “Detector media” by the executive director of "Zaborona", Olena Sadovnik.

Sadovnik did not inform to which country Serhatskova went, saying that this information is confidential. At the same time, the media outlet states that, based on its sources, Serhatskova and her family went to one of European countries.

According to Olena Sadovnik, at this time there are no news about how  the case based on claim of Kateryna Serhatskova to the police about threats is progressing.

For the context, media outlet "Zaborona", of which Serhatskova is the head, published the material about StopFake, where they assumed that there are connections between the representatives of this fact-checking agency and the ultra-right. 

StopFake denied such assumptions and announced that information attacks against its team are getting more frequent. As a response to StopFake, “Zaborona” published one more material.

After this, TV anchor and blogger Roman Skrypin published in the Facebook a photo of Kateryna Serhatskova with her five-year-old son and accused the journalist of being a Cremlin agent. In the comments to the same post, he published the journalist's address. After numerous complaints, Facebook deleted this post, yet Roman Skrypin continued publishing other derogatory posts about Kateryna Serhatskova.

In the evening of July 13, Kateryna Serhatskova and her family left Kyiv, feeling her life was in danger. She also filed an official complaint to the police, yet she did not request police protection.

The police registered  Kateryna Serhatskova's complaint, yet the police did not confirm opening a criminal proceeding based on this complaint. Kateryna Serhatskova told the Committee for Protection of journalists (CPJ), that the police refused to start investigation, se her lawyer filed a complaint to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Human Rights Watch called out the Ukrainian authorities to guarantee safety to Kateryna Serhatskova after publication of her personal data in the Internet.

Hromadske expressed their readiness to become a platform for discussion between “Zaborona” and StopFake, and also called out to the media community to start a broader discussion. In addition, the members of NGO “Hromadske television” denounced Roman Skrypin's comments against Kateryna Serhatskova.