Russia keeps 25 journalists in captivity - Yurchyshyn

There are currently 25 journalists in Russian captivity who were doing their job. This was reported by MP Yaroslav Yurchyshyn during an online meeting "Committee on Freedom of Speech: Limits of Responsibility and Compliance," UNN reports.

They are not combatants, they are journalists who were doing their job and, according to civilized rules of warfare, should not have been captured in principle, but the fact is the fact. 

Details

Yurchyshyn added that it is necessary to involve the international community in the release of journalists, as well as "to prepare, together with monitoring organizations, together with journalistic associations, a component on liability in the International Criminal Court for crimes against freedom of speech, for crimes against journalists, and probably to strengthen such liability by clarifying a number of concepts in Ukrainian legislation.

In addition, the MP said that it is not only Russia that interferes with the quality of journalists' work.

"We have a drop in investigations of crimes against journalists by almost 80% in 2022 compared to 2021. You can explain everything by the war, but we, as a country that is joining the European community, for which the value of freedom of speech is one of the core values, should definitely not allow this to happen. That is why we have already communicated with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, we are planning to communicate with the National Police, the Prosecutor General's Office, and we will hold hearings in the committee to investigate cases of obstruction of journalistic activity. Now we are waiting for data for 2023 to talk about actual information," Yurchyshyn added.

Recall

Since the beginning of the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2022-2023 , 70 media workers have been killed. In total, Russia has committed 528 crimes against media and journalists.