We are risking our lives to expose Russia’s atrocities. The world must do more than just watch
On 23 March, at 7am, Svetlana Zalizetskaya, editorin-chief of the RIAMelitopol news outlet, learned that armed men in a white jeep had arrived at her house. She wasn’t in the city but neighbours told her they saw men with machine guns taking her parents out.
Russian soldiers had occupied Melitopol since early March, kidnapped the city’s mayor Ivan Fedorov and tried to force him to work on the Russian side. He refused.
At the same time, the Russians began putting pressure on journalists: they needed to convince the population that the Russian army had come to “liberate the city from the Nazis”.
Zalizetskaya learned that the Russians ransacked her house, took cash from her mother, and left with her 75-year-old father, saying they would return him in exchange for Svetlana. Someone called her from a Ukrainian number and told her in Russian that she had to come to Melitopol and stop “writing nasty things” on the largest Melitopol news website. In the background, she heard her father’s voice repeating, like a mantra: “They don’t beat me.”
“They told me that, because of my activities, the blood of Russian soldiers would be on my hands,” she said. “I told them it was the Russians who had come to our land and were holding my father hostage.”
Vladimir Putin has said that the purpose of the Russian invasion was “the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine”. Russian propagandists lied that Ukraine was run by “neo-Nazis and drug addicts”. All the power of propaganda was thrown at explaining to the Russians why bombs were flying into Ukrainian cities and why thousands of soldiers were killing Ukrainians.
The Russian authorities banned the media from calling the “special operation for demilitarisation and denazification” a war. A phrase has been circulating on state TV channels from the lips of officials and public figures: “Russia does not start wars – it ends them.” It’s as if someone was using George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as a roadmap for a parallel reality where “war is peace”. Russia has made it a goal to destroy independent journalism so that no one can record the atrocities its soldiers are committing on Ukrainian soil.
On 2 April, the world saw photographs of cities liberated from Russian invaders in the Kyiv region: once-peaceful towns were strewn with the bodies of murdered citizens. According to official data, in Bucha, a mass grave of 300 people was discovered, among them women, the elderly and children.
In the Vyshgorod district, north of Kyiv, the body of Ukrainian photojournalist Max Levin was found among the dead. He disappeared on 13 March, the day he went to photograph the offensive of Russian troops. The prosecutor-general’s office reported that he had been shot twice at close range. Max was wearing a bulletproof vest and a helmet with a “press” inscription that the killers must have seen. Max has four children. The youngest is two.
At the beginning of the full-scale war, on 24 February, my colleagues and I created the 2402 Foundation emergency fund for journalists. Its slogan is “freedom needs eyes”. Our first task was to find bulletproof vests and helmets for hundreds of Ukrainian journalists who were completely “naked” in the middle of a war zone.
We found them, but body armour and helmets do not protect from mortar fire, a Kalashnikov at close range or kidnapping. We are now more focused on helping with risk assessment and training in tactical medicine. Back then, little more than a month ago, I could not imagine how large-scale the elimination of journalists in Ukraine would be.
According to various sources, between seven and 13 journalists have died since the invasion began, with more than 20 injured. Many are risking their lives to document Russia’s crimes in Ukraine, and journalists are one of the important targets of Russian soldiers. For them, “press” written on a car or helmet is like a red rag.
I recently spoke with my colleagues from the Associated Press (AP) – Zhenya Maloletka and Mstyslav Chernov. We have known each other for more than eight years, since we started working as war correspondents in Donbas. They were practically the only journalists in the encircled city of Mariupol, and filmed the mass graves of people who died from the bombings and the shelling of the maternity hospital in which a woman in labour died.
They didn’t expect to witness so many war crimes. They managed to escape Mariupol, despite Russian federal channels announcing a hunt for them, saying their photographs were staged as “Nazi propaganda”. They passed 16 Russian checkpoints on their way out. I’d call it a miracle rather than luck.
Is it worth risking your life for photos and videos? This is the discussion among Ukrainian journalists. From my point of view, it will be a miracle if journalism proves Russia’s guilt in war crimes in international courts. If photographs could stop war and restore justice some decades ago, today it doesn’t help. After the Russians bombed the Mariupol theatre, which killed at least 300 people sheltering there, the west didn’t close the skies over Ukraine or even fully turn off the Swift payment system in Russia.
I doubt that any tough action will follow after photos are published from Bucha and Irpin. The world just watches the pain of others and expresses deep concern.
Russia unleashed a war in Ukraine eight years ago. The false accusations of Maidan participants of “fascism” became a reason to annex Crimea and help occupy part of the Donbas. But Russia doesn’t want witnesses to its crimes. Many Ukrainian journalists, such as Hromadske TV’s Nastya Stanko and Radio Liberty writer Stanislav Aseyev, have been held captive and tortured for reporting on what is happening in the occupied territories. Hundreds of reporters have risked their lives and health so that the world can see what Russia is capable of, and that Russia wants to destroy Ukrainians.
The Russiansshot down a Malaysian plane with 298 people aboard in 2014. The Russians imprisoned dozens of Ukrainian citizens simply because they were against the annexation of Crimea. For eight years, Russia has committed many crimes recorded by journalists, but the world just watched the pain and did nothing to stop this fresh tragedy.
Zalizetskaya’s father was released three days after the Russians took him. In exchange, the Russians demanded she renounce the RIA-Melitopol news outlet on social media. Her family is still in the occupied city without the opportunity to leave, because the Russians kept her father’s passport.
Parts of the south and east of Ukraine are controlled by Russia. From the first days, they detained activists and journalists. On 31 March, journalist Kostyantin Ryzhenko disappeared in Kherson. His father, Oleksander Ryzhenko, told the press that the Russians came to him and demanded to know where the journalist was, claiming “he has a lot of blood on him” and he was a “nationalist”. A little earlier, the socalled “Donetsk people’s republic” military kidnapped journalist Iryna Dubchenko and is holding her captive in Donetsk.
Russia is trying to silence journalists with all available violent means. Unpunished evil for eight years gave birth to real evil. And this threatens the very concept of truth.
Katerina Sergatskova is the editor in chief of Zaborona Media and a cofounder of the 2402 Foundation, which helps journalists in Ukraine. She has reported from occupied territories in Ukraine and Iraq. She is the author of “Goodbye, ISIS: What Remains Is Future.”
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For the Russians, ‘press’ written on a car or helmet is like a red rag