Europe & Central Asia

World Refugee Day draws attention to journalists who have been forced to flee their home countries due to threats, conflict, or repression. While exile is now recognized as a growing reality for journalists worldwide, the experiences of journalists CPJ supported last year reflect the reality that relocation does not necessarily bring safety. Increasingly, journalists in…

When French journalist Alice Froussard landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport a week ago, she arrived with a valid travel authorization and plans to report from the occupied West Bank, where she had worked for years. By the next morning, Israeli authorities placed her on a flight back to Paris, denying her entry.  She…

On April 11, 1999, Slavko Ćuruvija, the owner of Serbia’s first private daily newspaper, Dnevni Telegraf, was assassinated outside his home in the capital, Belgrade. After a decades-long pursuit of accountability, the case reached a turning point in February 2024 when the Belgrade Court of Appeal issued a final, non-appealable acquittal for four former Slobodan Milošević-era state…

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, its media has experienced an unprecedented crackdown. Hundreds of journalists have been forced into exile, where they continue to face transnational legal persecution, and their families have been harassed back home. Meanwhile, reporting from inside Russia has become increasingly difficult, with journalists and media outlets often silenced…

The building that houses Moldova’s oldest investigative newspaper, Ziarul de Gardă, founded in 2004, is in a small courtyard near one of the busy thoroughfares in central Chișinău, the capital. Alina Radu, the award-winning newspaper’s director, is busy checking the latest issue that just came out in print. Ziarul de Gardă’s current burning topic has…

Captured by Russian security services and sentenced on false charges, Ukrainian journalist Vladyslav Yesypenko spent over four years in a Russian prison, enduring torture while trying to maintain his sanity and physical strength.  Yesypenko, who covered Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea for the U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), was released in June. He was first detained by Russian authorities…

Radio Azattyq director Torokul Doorov says it is “very difficult” for journalists not to become activists in the face of “unfairness and injustice” in Kazakhstan. “You just want to start screaming,” says Doorov, who joined the Kazakh arm of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in 2014, and the outlet grew to be one of Kazakhstan’s most influential…

A punishing spate of laws targeting foreign-funded media will dramatically curb Georgia’s independent voices and force many news outlets to shutter or shift their business operations, say Georgian journalists and press freedom advocates. Georgia’s populist ruling Georgian Dream party has pushed through its new Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)—called an “exact copy” of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act— granting…

Documentary filmmaker Maryia Bulavinskaya’s love of history led her to buy a traditional wood home in the Belarusian village of Rogi-Iletsky in 2019. Her plans to renovate and eventually live in the house were put on hold in 2020 when she fled the country out of fear of being detained for her coverage of anti-government…

On February 9, reporter Tolga Güney welcomed a CPJ representative into the apartment he shares with several colleagues in central Izmir, Turkey. It was his 362nd day under house arrest while awaiting trial on terrorism charges. “I believe I’m in this situation for doing my job,” he said over a glass of tea. Güney is…