Ukraine / Europe & Central Asia

  

Covering Ukraine: When a Russian missile brought death to a popular pizza restaurant

It is around 7:30 p.m. on June 27 in the Ria Lounge, one of the few restaurants still open in Kramatorsk, a frontline city in eastern Ukraine. Known by regulars as “Ria Pizza” for its signature dish, the restaurant is packed on this summer Tuesday. Locals, aid workers, off-duty soldiers, and journalists have flocked here…

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‘No other option to survive’: After one year of war, Ukrainian journalists are equipped for the long haul

In January, Ukrainian photojournalist Anton Skyba rushed to the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine to report on a town near the front line, Chasiv Yar. He came prepared. In a phone call with CPJ, he ticked off the items in his suitcase: personal protective equipment, including a helmet and an individual first aid kit with a chest patch “for…

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Frontline diary: A day in the life of a Ukraine war correspondent

Ruslan Smieshchuk, a reporter for privately owned Ukrainian TV channel Inter, had long dreamed of being a war correspondent when he covered his first conflict, the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, for local Odessa TV channel ATV. Now he hopes that the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war will be his last battlefield assignment. “War is a lot of pain and grief,” he told CPJ.   The 38-year-old…

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Russia internet protest

‘Disastrous for press freedom’: What Russia’s goal of an isolated internet means for journalists

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine presents a danger not only for reporters operating in the war zone. The campaign could also pose a broader threat to press freedoms and other civil liberties if it brings the Kremlin closer to its dream of creating a domestically controlled internet. Russia’s internet regulator, Rozkomnadzor, has long been able to…

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Some Ukrainian journalists are leaving the media for the military in the name of patriotism 

Russia’s war in Ukraine, now in its third month, has already claimed an alarming number of journalists’ lives: at least seven killed in crossfire while reporting and at least six more who died in circumstances that CPJ continues to investigate.  There are at least 10 more names that do not appear on CPJ’s list of journalists killed…

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Emily Bell: Tech companies must ‘wake up’ to their role in Ukraine war disinformation

As Russia wages an information war alongside its physical war in Ukraine, tech companies have responded with measures small and large, from reducing the visibility of propagandistic social media posts to blocking Russian state-affiliated media, to going beyond international sanctions by pulling out of the country altogether. Meanwhile, Ukrainian journalists, citizens, and officials have used…

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‘We expect anything’: A Russian union leader vows to keep helping journalists facing state repression

As journalists flee Russia fearing prosecution for their coverage of the invasion of Ukraine or their affiliation with outlets deemed “foreign agents,” the country’s Journalists’ and Media Workers’ Union (JMWU) is trying to help them. A non-governmental trade union with some 600 active members, the group defends labor rights, provides assistance to journalists, and stands…

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Opinion: Putin tolerated some critical voices in his 22-year assault on Russian media. His war in Ukraine ends even that.

On the morning after Boris Yeltsin stunned the world by resigning and turning over the Russian presidency to Vladimir Putin, The New York Times published a “man in the news” column that struggled to define the new leader. Putin was a man who “would never deceive you,” promised his political mentor and former St. Petersburg…

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Calling the war ‘war’: Meduza’s Galina Timchenko bucks Russia’s censorship on Ukraine

The Kremlin was infuriated by editor Galina Timchenko’s coverage of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. So it pressured her boss to fire her. Timchenko left Moscow with much of the staff from her popular website, moving to Riga, Latvia, where they could work free of Kremlin censorship. That may sound like today’s news, but it actually…

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Brent Renaud brought heart and compassion to his filmmaking

Brent Renaud was renowned not just for his war reporting, but for the compassion he brought to his work. From Iraq to Somalia to Mexico, his videography explored human vulnerability and human connection at the worst of times. A U.S. soldier in Fallujah calls his mother on Mother’s Day; a physical therapist coaxes a young…

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