Since the beginning of Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine in 2014, 75 journalists have lost their lives in Ukraine, the Institute of Mass Information (IMI) reported on Nov. 2. Russia’s war against Ukraine has been marked by a disturbing pattern of crimes against journalists and the systematic erosion of independent journalism in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories, said Kateryna Dyachuk, the head of the Freedom of Speech Monitoring Department at IMI.
“Murders, kidnappings, threats, and arrests of media representatives are just a small part of the crimes committed by Russian occupiers against the media,” Dyachuk said. According to the institute’s data, before the full-scale invasion from 2014 to 2022, seven journalists were killed in Ukraine. Three of them died while performing journalistic assignments, and four as participants in combat operations. All of them lost their lives in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.