AFTER UKRAINIAN FORCES regained control of the port city of Kherson last November, following eight months of Russian occupation, some journalists entered the liberated city within hours. Without formal permission to be there, they documented the jubilant crowds welcoming soldiers with hugs and Ukrainian flags. Ukrainian officials, who tightly control press access to the front lines, responded by revoking the journalists’ press credentials, claiming that they had “ignored existing restrictions.”
In the months since then, as Ukraine has sought to liberate more territory occupied by Russia, the Ukrainian government has intensified its efforts to control the narrative of the war by tightening journalists’ access to the conflict. “After that, things started getting worse. … They have tried to place more control on journalists,” Katerina Sergatskova, editor-in-chief of Zaborona Media, an independent Ukrainian publication, told The Intercept. “Now it’s really hard to make reports from Kherson, for example.”
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion last year, Ukrainian authorities have threatened, revoked, or denied press credentials of journalists working for half a dozen Ukrainian and foreign news outlets because of their coverage, the news outlet Semafor reported earlier this month. In one recent example, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense did not renew the press credentials of a Ukraine-based photographer who accused the country’s security services of subjecting him to interrogations, a lie detector test, and accusations that he was working against Ukraine’s “national interest.” Government officials restored Anton Skyba’s accreditation last week, following a pressure campaign by colleagues and press freedom advocates, who have been denouncing tightening restrictions on media access to the front lines. But the episode put a spotlight on tensions between Ukrainian authorities and the journalists covering the conflict that have quietly escalated in recent months. Veteran war correspondents, for their part, are accusing Ukrainian officials of making reporting on the reality of the war, with rare exceptions, nearly impossible.
Hellbound and Down 