Speakers described harrowing accounts of abductions and torture of Ukrainian journalists on occupied territories. The session called for stronger international protection and accountability.
At the European Union’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, they discussed the illegal detention of Ukrainian female journalists by the Russian authorities, drawing attention to human rights and freedom of expression violations amid forced restrictions in the occupied territories.
According to a Ukrinform correspondent in New York, the event, held as part of the 70th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, was organized by the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine in partnership with the Committee to Protect Journalists, PEN America, and the EU Delegation to the UN.
Participants discussed cases of illegal detention of Ukrainian female journalists on territories occupied by Russia, their conditions of detention, and the necessary to strengthen international mechanisms for media protection and accountability for those responsible.
Participants and Testimonies
Testifying were a former political prisoner, a freelance journalist for Radio Svoboda Vladyslav Yesypenko; the sister of the imprisoned Melitopol journalist Olena Rudenko; editor of RIA “Pivden” Svitlana Zalizetska; human rights defconcludeer and former detainee Lyudmila Gapplyynova.
Head of the National Council of Ukraine on Television and Radio Broadcasting Olha Herasyimyuk
Herasyimyuk urged the international community to intensify pressure on Russia to secure the release of illegally detained Ukrainian journalists and hold those responsible to account.
She stressed that in frontline and occupied territories Russia abducts “journalists, holds them without contact with their families, without access to lawyers, and subjects them to torture.”
She recalled journalist Viktoriya Roshchyna, who disappeared in August 2023 while working in the occupied territories, and in October 2024 her family was informed of her death.
Her tragedy became Russia’s message to every journalist who dares to seek the truth in the occupied territories
“Iryna Levchenko remains in prison, as do dozens of her colleagues, not knowing whether the world remembers them. We remember. And we will not be silenced,” emphasized Herasyimyuk.
According to rough estimates, Russia illegally detains more than 16,000 civilians from Ukraine’s occupied territories, she noted.
According to her, in four years of full-scale war Russia has committed more than 900 crimes against the media in Ukraine.
Iryna Levchenko remains in prison, as do dozens of her colleagues, not knowing whether the world remembers them. We remember. And we will not be silenced
As of 2014, at least 112 journalists had been held in Russian captivity. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia has detained about thirty civilian journalists.
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