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‘They see journalists as pets’ How the Ukrainian authorities have tried to control the country’s media industry since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion

Source: Meduza

In the spring of 2022, reporters in Ukraine were faced with an impossible choice, according to journalist Kateryna Sergatskova: they could continue informing their readers about what was happening or they could abandon their work to save themselves and their loved ones. “It was literally a choice between journalism and death,” she told Meduza. At first, Ukrainian media rallied around the government and supported President Volodymyr Zelensky, rarely criticizing the authorities’ decisions. Within a few months, however, the situation started to change. “We realized with horror that the war was dragging on, people were dying, and the corrupt officials weren’t going anywhere,” a source from one independent Ukrainian outlet says. He recalled anguished debates between investigative journalists about how to continue doing their jobs without harming their country. Most of them, he said, ultimately decided they had an ethical responsibility to report on government abuses — no matter what. Meduza spoke to Ukrainian officials, journalists, and media experts about how the authorities have worked to suppress this critical reporting and shape public opinion to suit their interests.

In January 2024, an anonymous Ukrainian Telegram channel called Office of Cards posted a video that showed several hooded men banging on the door of investigative journalist Yuriy Nikolov’s home and threatening to “send him to the front.” The clip was quickly shared by two other channels called Vertikal and Joker, with the latter adding that the “soldiers” were targeting Nikolov because he called Zelensky a “draft dodger” in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda.

Both Vertikal and Joker belong to a network of anonymous Telegram channels controlled by the Zelensky administration, a high-ranking Ukrainian source told Meduza. (The source said there are at least two other channels in the network, though Meduza was unable to find evidence linking Office of Cards to Zelensky’s team.)

According to this person, a “whole bunch of channels” were launched at the initiative of Ukrainian presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak. However, the source described the project as unsuccessful. “It was some whim of [Yermak’s],” he explained. “There was probably some sense in it: at one time, the president was actively reading Telegram channels.” But Zelensky didn’t know that some of the channels were linked to Yermak, which meant the chief of staff could use them to “promote” certain ideas, the source said.

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Over time, the official said, Yermak “abandoned this pursuit,” and things on Telegram are now “running themselves.” A leading expert on the Ukrainian media market, who spoke to Meduza on condition of anonymity, said that some anonymous channels are still “run by various people who belong to Yermak’s team or circle, but who have different interests and spheres of influence.”

The high-ranking official in Kyiv told Meduza that this “office network” (referring to the Zelensky’s office) is still “important within the elite,” since “all of the deputies, ministers, and other politicians” follow its channels. “If someone starts getting bullied there, it’s an inside signal for everybody: basically, they’re screwed,” he said.

The channel Vertikal, for example, was created in January 2021. According to one of Meduza’s sources in the Ukrainian media market, the channel is run by Yermak advisor Daria Zarivna’s team. (Zarivna did not respond to Meduza’s questions.) A Ukrainian independent journalist who spoke on condition of anonymity told Meduza that it’s “no secret that Vertikal is the president’s office.” She said reporters use the channel to “gauge the temperature” in Kyiv: “When I need to understand the office’s position on this or that statement or event, the first thing I do is open Vertikal.”

One of the co-owners of an independent Ukrainian media outlet, who also requested anonymity, confirmed this characterization, calling the situation a “well-known story” among journalists in Ukraine. Vertikal and similar anonymous channels, he said, are part of a “large-scale, state-controlled infrastructure that can influence [public opinion in the country].”

Other components of this “infrastructure,” which the government has built up since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, include the official and unofficial Telegram channels of Ukrainian politicians, as well as platforms and projects like the artists’ group Ukrainciaga, according to the independent journalist. These channels, she said, share legitimate news but they simultaneously help the authorities spread narratives that benefit the state:

As an example of how this process works, the journalist explained how the Ukrainian media as a whole covers missile strikes. First, she said, journalists cover an attack as a breaking news event. After that, the Zelensky administration’s “infrastructure” takes the information and “packages” it for various platforms and audiences, adding its own assessment of the incident. The result, according to the journalist, is that the government “controls the narrative” almost completely.

The media outlet co-owner who spoke to Meduza described this is part of a “social contract” that arose after the full-scale invasion. “We [the state and society] trust each other,” he said.

How ‘United News’ outlived its purpose

On the second day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, President Zelensky issued a decree creating a “United News telethon” to “counteract Russian propaganda.” Since then, six of the country’s major TV networks have taken part in a single, round-the-clock broadcast, each producing its own content and airing it during an allotted time slot.

In the full-scale war’s initial months, the telethon served its purpose, helping fight pro-Russian disinformation, according to the independent Ukrainian journalist who spoke to Meduza. Meanwhile, she said, as the joint broadcast helped Ukrainians adapt to wartime life, reporters adapted as well. “Gradually, we got used to the new reality,” she explained. “Alternative [information] channels started to develop, including YouTube channels, and by the time we were six months into the full-scale invasion, the telethon was definitely no longer needed.”

By the spring of 2023, journalists and human rights advocates had begun saying publicly that the project had outlived its purpose, and that its editorial policy was opaque and subordinate to the president’s interests. A year later, in February 2024, Reporters Without Borders called on the Ukrainian authorities to end the telethon and allow the participating channels to begin competing with each other once again.

It’s not hard to find signs that the telethon has been damaging to Ukraine’s media pluralism. In 2024, for example, Suspilne was the only one of its six channels to invite members of the country’s second-largest parliamentary faction, European Solidarity, to come on air. According to the outlet Detector Media, an unofficial ban on the other five channels interviewing opposition politicians on air is a policy that could only have resulted from pressure from the Zelensky administration.

Meanwhile, members of the president’s Servant of the People faction were invited to appear on the telethon 505 times — twice as often as members of all other parliamentary factions combined (Servant of the People holds 233 of the 401 Verkhovna Rada seats, while the largest opposition party, European Solidarity, has 27).

“Against the backdrop of two years of full-scale war, the [telethon’s] parliamentary guest policy has degenerated into an information dictatorship by the authorities. And that’s no exaggeration,” Detector Media wrote. “This situation is outright scary.”

Both Ukrainian media and Meduza’s sources in Kyiv named former Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko as the individual responsible for overseeing the telethon’s programming, along with the president’s office, at the start of the full-scale war. According to Detector Media, it was Tkachenko who would call the heads of the participating channels and ask them to remove certain topics or speakers from their programming. Since Tkachenko’s resignation in the summer of 2023, according to one source from the Ukrainian media market, the marathon has been overseen by “various people from the president’s office.”

One of the journalists who spoke to Meduza on condition of anonymity emphasized that the telethon has begun to irritate many Ukrainians — “not only because the authorities are trying to usurp the media space,” but also because of “how much money is poured into it.” (Ukraine’s budget for 2024 allots 1.7 billion hryvnias, or $41.13 million, to the telethon.)

The same journalist recalled how the telethon covered the work of Oleksandr Trukhin, a Servant of the People lawmaker, after he was caught attempting to bribe a police officer at the scene of a car crash where he injured six people. Throughout the legal proceedings, which lasted for a year and a half, the telethon depicted the deputy in a positive light, emphasizing his achievements in parliament.

“Before New Year’s [2023, the telethon] talked about what a wonderful deputy he was and how he was giving out candy to children in his neighborhood. When we [journalists] asked deputies from Servant of the People how this [coverage] could be possible, they acknowledged that it was a problem but assured us that it was ‘probably just an oversight’ and refused to call it censorship,” the source said.

At the same time, an expert on Ukraine’s media market told Meduza that although there was laudatory coverage of Trukhin, it only appeared during the slot belonging to Rada, the parliament’s official channel.

‘Unacceptable for the Ukrainian journalism world of today’

In January 2024, ambassadors from the G7 countries met with Ukrainian journalists against the backdrop of several high-profile media stories about the Ukrainian authorities putting pressure on journalists. 

In addition to Yuriy Nikolov, the investigative journalist threatened in the video shared by the Office of Cards Telegram channel, the meeting included Bihus.info editor-in-chief Denys Bihus as well as Marina Singaevskaya, a former top executive from the state media outlet Ukrinform.

Singaevskaya was one of 45 Ukrinform employees who had been fired over disagreements with the agency’s new director following a change of leadership. According to a journalist from one of the outlets that sent representatives to the event, her story “shocked everyone at the meeting.”

Ukrinform began facing pressure from the Ukrainian authorities in November 2023, when journalist Oleksiy Matsuka was put in charge of the agency at the initiative of the president’s office, according to Ukrainska Pravda. The outlet described Matsuka’s management approach as follows: “Pressure on employees, coverage bias in favor of the government, dozens of journalists and editors fired, and then drastic attempts to cover everything up so the information wouldn’t come to light.”

The new director tried to impose so-called “temniki” — set guidelines for news coverage that include lists of recommended and undesirable speakers and topics, as well as instructions on how to write about them. (In all likelihood, “temniki” were first invented in Russia; the Kremlin has long used them to censor media coverage.) Among other things, Ukrinform’s new leadership asked journalists not to spread statements from former Ukrainian Armed Forces commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi on the outlet’s social media accounts. When the social media team ignored this request, several employees were fired.

At a certain point, according to a Ukrinform employee who spoke to Ukrainska Pravda, Matsuka ordered the outlet’s staff to “coordinate all blogs, articles, and interviews” with him. This sparked fierce backlash from employees, and Matsuka soon announced his resignation. He was replaced by Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty, a war journalist whom Ukrainska Pravda’s sources described as a “military man used to following orders.”

“The story with Ukrinform was met with great shock and condemnation in the Ukrainian media community because the issue of ‘temniki’ is something of a phantom pain — unacceptable for the Ukrainian journalism world of today,” said a reporter from one of the outlets represented at the meeting with diplomats. He emphasized that there was “no reaction at all from the authorities.”

Another case discussed at the meeting concerned the surveillance of journalists from the outlet Bihus.info. In mid-January 2024, a video surfaced online that appeared to show employees from the outlet using drugs at a holiday party. The same clip contained audio recordings of conversations and calls in which the journalists discussed purchasing the illicit substances.

The outlet’s founder, Denys Bihus, who had served as a volunteer in the Ukrainian Armed Forces since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, soon posted a YouTube video commenting on the leaked clip. “For two years, I sat in trenches along the entire front line, returning just for New Year’s. And the first thing I have to do is defend grown adults who decided in their free time to be, frankly speaking, boneheads,” he said.

Bihus noted that it was camera operators, not journalists, who brought the drugs to the party, and that the individuals responsible had already been fired. The outlet later found hidden cameras in the hotel where the holiday party was held; judging by the recorded conversations, the journalists had been surveilled for approximately six months.

The day after the video was posted, President Zelensky spoke publicly about the incident. “The Security Service of Ukraine has launched an investigation and will establish all of the circumstances. Any pressure on journalists is unacceptable,” he said.

Just a few weeks after the scandal, Bihus.info determined that it was in fact the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) — the very agency Zelensky had tasked with looking into the case — that was behind the surveillance. Several days before the outlet released this information, in late January 2024, the SBU fired Roman Semenchenko, the head of the department responsible. Another three employees from this department were sent to the front, the SBU told the journalists, though they remained officially employed at the agency. In the weeks that followed, Ukrainian journalists speculated about whether Semenchenko had really been fired for violating the law, or if his real offense was getting caught.

A high-ranking Ukrainian official familiar with the work of Zelensky’s office told Meduza that “these kinds of operations could very well be the product of the SBU’s creativity,” especially given that security officials are granted enormous power during wartime. “The people in the [president’s] office aren’t idiots — they’re not going to shoot themselves in the foot,” he insisted. “When they come up with an idea themselves, it goes fine. But something so cop-like has SBU written all over it.”

Nonetheless, many of the Ukrainian journalists who spoke to Meduza are certain that Zelensky’s team was behind the surveillance operation. “This case is 100 percent linked to the [president’s] office,” said a source familiar with the situation. According to him, the SBU was reacting to an investigation Bihus.info published about Artem Koliubaiev, a former business partner of Andriy Yermak. “After Bihus.info released several investigations about Koliubaiev, the command came down: Deal with them,” the source said. At the same time, he said the president’s office may not have known exactly what methods the SBU would use, though he maintained that he had “no doubts at all” that Zelensky’s team issued the order.

“All of this was done through [Zelensky’s Deputy Chief of Staff Oleh] Tatarov, who has full control over the law enforcement system and whose goal was to uncover [the journalists’] sources and discredit the publication,” the source added.

“This is a shameful case for Ukraine,” said journalist Kateryna Sergatskova, the director of the non-profit Daily Humanity. “There’s nobody who will say that what the SBU did to the Bihus.info team is right.”

In the Ukrainian media world, the “consensus regarding the surveillance of Bihus.info was unambiguous,” another independent Ukrainian journalist told Meduza. “We [the Ukrainian media] absolutely tore everyone apart, from the SBU to the president, in our reporting on this situation. Every time they do something like this, it comes back to bite them,” she said.

Mobilization as censorship

Another tool the Ukrainian authorities have used to influence journalists’ reporting has been forced mobilization.

Multiple sources from the Ukrainian media market told Meduza they were aware of cases in which draft orders were used to pressure journalists. “Women try to be the ones to write stories about uncomfortable topics — such as problems with mobilization itself — because we [in the newsroom] understand that there may be some complications [for men],” one source said.

The authorities also used this tactic in reverse, offering some journalists exemptions from military service, the same source explained: “The journalists working at the telethon, for example, have exemptions — and this often serves as a motivation for them to work there.”

Journalists have also reported facing pressure when applying for military accreditation, without which they can’t report from the front. Ukrainian photographer Maxim Dondyuk, for example, told Meduza that after he spoke to the New Yorker about “threats” he received from the Ukrainian authorities, he had difficulty getting permission to return to the front line.

Dondyuk’s story is one of many such cases that have occurred in 2024, a co-owner of an independent Ukrainian news outlet told Meduza, adding that the journalists affected usually try not to talk publicly about their experiences. According to him, the authorities have become less likely to issue military accreditation without additional checks, and they simply refuse some journalists point blank. “The SBU talks to the people [applying], asking various questions like what topics they’re working on and what stories interest them. Some, they try to recruit for collaboration with intelligence services; others, they try to intimidate,” he said.

“That’s what intelligence services do: they try to recruit agents,” one leading Ukrainian media expert told Meduza with a laugh. “And journalists’ job is to turn down those offers.”

The expert noted that the SBU grew out of Ukraine’s Soviet-era KGB: “It never managed to fully remove its Soviet heritage. But in general, the SBU is concerned with different things — like sending Russian ships to the bottom of the sea, or catching Russian agents.” He also said he’s confident that “there’s no mass surveillance of journalists,” though he didn’t deny that the agency does “the bad stuff it gets criticized for, among other things.”

At the same time, a Suspilne employee told Meduza said that “the authorities really want to control independent journalists — and limit the work of the media”:

‘He doesn’t understand the values of civil society’

Amid the full-scale war and the resulting unprecedented centralization of power in Ukraine, independent investigative journalism has begun to “threaten the president’s office and hierarchy,” according to a source familiar with the work of Zelensky’s office. Journalists, he noted, receive foreign grants that allow them to act as watchdogs, not tailoring their reporting to suit government or business interests. “Without being politicians, they can have a strong influence on political processes — and ultimately [in the future, they may even be able to] influence election results. The political consequences of these investigations are what makes Ukraine different from Russia,” the source said.

The current friction between the Ukrainian authorities and the country’s independent media is a function of the fact that Zelensky and his office “don’t understand” the role of journalism as an institution, a source from an independent Ukrainian outlet told Meduza. “This is probably because Zelensky made his career on oligarch-funded [TV] channels, where you had to coordinate everything and take the owner’s views into account,” he said. “As a result, he thinks there’s somebody behind every [piece of reporting]: an outlet’s owner, the U.S. State Department, or someone else. They see journalists as pets that have owners. When they’re told to bark, they bark.”

At the same time, Meduza’s sources acknowledge that there’s a long history of the Ukrainian authorities having a negative attitude towards the press. This is partially because coming out of the 1990s, oligarchs controlled a considerable portion of the country’s media market and used the press as a tool in their political battles.

“These phantom pains still exist — and they get extrapolated to the media market as a whole, as if we never had the 2004 [Orange Revolution] or the Revolution of Dignity,” one independent journalist told Meduza. As a result, he said, the president sees every critical article as a political order or a piece of political intrigue: “[Zelensky] just doesn’t believe that journalists can criticize [someone] as part of their job — or because there’s demand for it in society. He doesn’t understand the values of civil society.”

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“I don’t want Russian audiences to think that Ukraine has total censorship and Russia doesn’t. That’s not the case. Obviously, the situation is much worse in Russia,” one independent Ukrainian journalist said. She continued:

“There’s one thing that should be said about Ukrainian media that’s not always obvious from abroad,” a Ukrainian media expert told Meduza. “It’s extremely diversified, decentralized, and competitive — not in the market sense, but in the sense of the competition of ideas, interests, and influence.” In his view, a truly effective state censorship system would be impossible in Ukraine: the country has thousands of media outlets, and a major portion of them are used to operating independently.

Ukraine does indeed have problems with freedom of speech, according to Kateryna Sergatskova, and “big, serious” ones at that. “But the most important thing is that they’re being solved,” she said.

“This isn’t a situation in which absolutely all journalists and media managers agree that censorship is fine, self-censorship is a necessity, and the unified telethon is great. There’s no such consensus,” she continued. “And this leads me to conclude that journalistic freedom is alive — despite everything that’s happening.”