After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the rules of journalism in the occupied areas changed overnight.
Independent news outlets disappeared. Newsrooms were empty. Phones and computers were hacked and searched. Journalists were imprisoned, forced to flee or pressured into cooperating with the Russian occupiers. The few who dared continue faced constant intimidation, every message and post scrutinized.
Heorhiy Levchenko, a 36-year-old editor for RIA Melitopol, a Telegram news channel covering the occupied southeastern city, kept working. By the next year, he was behind bars in Russia.
“Journalists are being viewed as ingredients of warfare, and that’s why they are targeted,” Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Kolchinsky, formerly a reporter for U.S.-funded Voice of America, told Capital News Service in an interview.
Eighteen months after Russian forces seized Melitopol in March 2022, Levchenko was arrested on terrorist and state treason charges.
A Russian court said he had organized a network of correspondents who sent him information “containing calls for terrorism and violence against military personnel and representatives of the Russian authorities” in the local region, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists,
a New York-based nonprofit.
Levchenko was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison, according to the CPJ. The name of the prison has not been made public.
Levchenko’s case shows Russia’s efforts to eliminate reporters’ work in the conflict zone, allowing Russia only to control information to citizens and distort the truth, said experts and press freedom advocates.
Neither the Russian nor the Ukrainian embassy responded to requests for comment.
Press freedom in Ukraine under martial law
When the war began, media in areas not occupied by Russia were affected too. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky imposed martial law, restricting the distribution of information that disclosed military positions, troop movements or weakness in security, according to Lina Kushch, first secretary of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine. But the media remains largely independent despite restrictions, experts said, and frequently publish stories challenging government statements.
“The number and the freedom of online as well as other media in Ukraine are very impressive for a wartime country,” William Taylor, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told CNS in a telephone interview. “There’s an independent, vibrant media that publishes things that aren’t always welcome by the government.”
The restrictions, Ukrainian officials have said, are essential for maintaining national security. They say releasing some information would put military troops at risk or reveal operational and procurement information, Kushch said.
Kushch acknowledges that there are times when this reasoning makes sense. However, she warns that widespread concealment could promote corruption. “Sometimes it makes sense,” she said. “But sometimes it hides corruption.”
Kushch cited an expensive food procurement scandal at the Defense Ministry as an example. Journalists discovered inflated price contracts, which caused public outrage and forced officials to take action. The inflated prices allowed Defense Ministry officials and commercial suppliers to skim from the excess, according to The Kyiv Independent.
“After journalists investigated overpriced food for the army, parliament adopted a special law and part of this information became open again,” Kushch said.
Two separate information systems
Ukraine exists as “a collection of different spaces that are facing very different kinds of realities,” said Piotr Kosicki, an associate professor of history at the University of Maryland.
Information shared in unoccupied Ukraine is “extraordinarily open,” led “ground up by Ukrainians” through digital platforms and local reporting, he said. Open coverage of political discussions, military tactics and government decisions persists, demonstrating the Ukrainian state’s deliberate attempt “to be not like Russia.”
Unoccupied Ukraine has developed into “an extraordinary incubator of a certain form of press freedom,” he said.
Russia’s pattern of media repression
Anna Brakha, senior researcher for the CPJ Europe and Central Asia program, told Capital News Service that Levchenko’s case is not unique.
The extent of the danger to journalists is highlighted by Reporters Without Borders’ most recent assessment of the war: 13 journalists killed by Russian forces, at least 47 injured and 18 Ukrainian journalists imprisoned by Russia.
Zhanna Kyselova, the editor-in-chief of the local newspaper Kakhovska Zorya, is the only journalist officially reported missing. Moscow hasn’t provided any information regarding her whereabouts.
Many newsrooms found it too difficult to handle the fatigue and psychological impact of being on the front lines and pulled their journalists out, Brakha said. The threat dramatically increased when Russia began using unmanned armed drones to target reporters close to the front.
“Working on the front line is really dangerous at the moment,” she said. “The fatigue and psychological impact of front line reporting explains why most of the killings of journalists occurred in the early weeks and months of the war.”
Growing concerns for journalists
In August 2023, Anastasia Hlukhovska, another journalist, was captured by Russian forces. CPJ believes she is detained at Taganrog prison, a Russian facility where journalist Victoria Roshchyna was killed in 2024.
After Roshchyna’s body was eventually brought to Ukraine, an autopsy showed she had suffered considerable trauma, according to Important Stories, an independent Russian investigative outlet in exile, and Forbidden Stories, a French-based investigative group.
The body showed “Numerous signs of torture and ill-treatment …including abrasions and hemorrhages…a broken rib, neck injuries, and possible electric shock marks on the feet,” according the outlets. The findings of the forensic medical examination were explained by Yuriy Belousov, the head of the War Crimes Unit of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office.
According to a source close to the investigation, who spoke with media outlets, Roshchyna’s body was also “missing some organs: the eyeballs, the brain, part of the larynx, and the hyoid bone was broken.”
Russia denies holding Hlukhovska. “We are really concerned about her fate,” Brakha said.
Russia’s systematic targeting of journalists
Levchenko’s story fits a common pattern, said Brakha: A journalist covering local news during the occupation is imprisoned in an undisclosed location, kept isolated for months and finally sentenced.
A video showing Levchenko behind bars aired Oct. 29, 2023, by the Russian state multimedia platform Smotrim, which claimed he had confessed to operating a network aimed at discrediting the Russian army. “That’s how we learned about his detention,” Brakha said, adding that Levchenko was detained for almost two years with no knowledge of the charges against him. The tactic is common.
She said Russian authorities keep journalists held without charge because “it allows them to hide their movements between detention centers and even deny they are holding them at all.”
Brakha said international advocacy might be the only thing keeping many of these journalists alive. “We are pushing in our conversations with external actor governments to put pressure on Ukrainian authorities to include journalists who are detained by Russia in their prisoner exchange list.”