Unknown man attacks MOST journalist in Kherson; identified by journalists

MOST journalist Olena Hnitetska was attacked and threatened by an unknown man while filming in Kherson.

The journalist reported this to the Institute of Mass Information representative in Kherson oblast.

The incident happened in the evening of July 8 in downtown Kherson.

"I was filming the main building of the Kherson State University, which was damaged by Russian shelling, when a man on a bicycle came up to me swearing and started threatening me and running at me and demanding that I put down the camera. I ran away from him and asked another man who was walking by to call the police. This scared the attacker off, and he ran away," Olena said.

The man who attacked the journalist Olena Hnitetska in Kherson on July 8, 2024. Photo by Olena Hnitetska

In her opinion, the man got annoyed because he happened to be in the frame.

"He got into the frame from afar, but he would be barely noticeable there. Moreover, in editing, we always remove people who are against being filmed in public places from our videos and photos," added Olena Hnitetska.

At the time of the attack, she was wearing a bulletproof vest and a helmet with PRESS badges, so the attacker clearly saw that he was obstructing a journalist's work.

Olena Hnitetska filed a statement with the police, but at the time of writing this news story, it has not yet been entered into the Unified Register of Pretrial Investigations.

Meanwhile, local journalists found out that the attacker's name was Mykola Koychev. In 2014–2018, a person with this surname was given a permit by the Kherson police to carry a non-lethal weapon due to allegedly being a journalist.

In 2018, Kateryna Handziuk posted a long list of two hundred people who received a right to carry non-lethal weapons in this way, but the list only included three media workers. At the same time, the man who allegedly attacked the journalist was on that list.