-by Eva Karene Bartlett
Just over two weeks after another Russian journalist was deliberately targeted and killed by Ukrainian forces, global media and most international journalist support groups remain unsurprisingly silent.
Nikita Tsitsagi, 29, a Russian photojournalist, was targeted by a Ukrainian drone on June 16 as he prepared to do another report from the St. Nicholas Monastery near Ugledar—a monastery, heavily-targeted by Ukrainian shelling over the years. Yet, civilians remain the region, and many have taken shelter in the monastery. These are often the focus of journalists who go there.
Just three days prior, Ukrainian forces targeted Russian NTV journalists filming in the extremely hard hit village of Golmovsky, east of the northern DPR city of Gorlovka. The Ukrainian drone strike killed cameraman Valery Kozhin and seriously injured Alexey Ivliyev, a war correspondent.
The targeting of journalists is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
In June, President Vladimir Putin spoke of Ukraine’s targeting of Russian journalists, noting, “At least 30 people died, our journalists died, and no one gives us the opportunity to investigate what happened to them.”
Russia’s Envoy to UNESCO in Paris called for UNESCO to condemn the killing of Russian journalists, saying:
“All these killings, they were not condemned. This is despite the fact that the Secretariat has all the information on their killings.” He noted the lack of condemnation shows double standards and a political bias.
It is sadly another case of only some journalists lives matter.
Remembering Nikita
Nikita’s murder is a personal for me, as I’d met him several times and gotten to know his gentle character: kind, humble, generous with his time, and professional.
We went together on two different occasions in November 2022 to interview people, one of which was to the Ukrainian-battered villages of Zaitsevo and Golmovsky in the Gorlovka region. Nikita kindly translated my questions to residents there, giving of his time and ensuring no nuance was lost.
He also was quick to reply the few times I messaged him regarding an event in the Donbass or a contact I asked to speak with.
His journalism covered military aspects, as well as humanitarian issues. One of his reports from July 2023 was from the same St. Nicholas Monastery where he was ultimately killed. I know the monastery, in June 2022, I went there with other Russian journalists. Ukrainian forces started shelling, apparently having spotted the van we arrived in. We sheltered, along with civilians living nearby, in the basement stairwell until the shelling subsided.
Nikita’s July 2023 report, showed people taking cover in the same stairwell from the Ukrainian shelling. Then, he and those he accompanied courageously went to the home of elderly nearby, to evacuate them. Even if you don’t understand Russian, watching his report you can see his focus is on the suffering of civilians.
Portuguese journalist Bruno Carvalho, who has reported extensively from the Donbass, knew Nikita. He told me:
“Ukrainian propaganda said he was a Russian propagandist. This is not true. He told me he came to Donbass to see with his own eyes what was happening. He came to find the truth, and to show the truth as journalist. Ukraine committed a war crime killing him and other journalists as well. They bombed hotels full of journalists.”
Hunting journalists
Bombing hotel housing journalists is definitely one of Ukraine’s tactics. In June, 2022, using 155 mm caliber NATO standard shells, Ukrainian forces targeted directly next to the central Donetsk hotel numerous journalists were in, including myself. As I wrote at the time, it was plausible that Ukraine deliberately targeted a hotel known to house journalists.
However, there were certainly many other very clear instances of Ukraine deliberately targeted journalists in hotels they were known to be staying in, most notably that of the Kherson hotel RT war correspondent Murad Gazdiev and his crew were in when in September 2022 Ukrainian armed forces hit it with an American HIMARS missile.
Miraculously, the crew emerged from the rubble relatively unscathed. But one civilian (the hotel was full of civilians), ex-Ukrainian Rada deputy Zhuravko, was killed, along with his guard.
Throughout the second half of 2022, there were many reports of Ukrainian targeting the three main hotels in Donetsk known to house journalists.
Likewise, there are many clear examples of journalists coming under fire while reporting who thankfully were not killed. Too many to list here, I’ll note just a fraction of these instances.
In December 2022, RT correspondent Maxim Toury and his colleagues were targeted by Ukrainian shelling. He wrote of the incident:
“They filmed the work of our units. We were traveling in a civilian car, but, apparently, this did not prevent the Armed Forces of Ukraine from opening fire on the exact place where we were. There were at least 15 arrivals. Thank God, our team was not injured, but, unfortunately, there are injured among the escorts who were with us.”
In August 2022, Izvestiya journalists filming a report near Ugledar, were deliberately targeted.
“Ukrainian armed forces observed the journalists from a drone and then began bombing. Two hours later, a video from the same drone appeared on the Ukrainian segment of TikTok. ‘Here are the correspondents. There are guys in civilian clothes,’ says the Ukrainian drone operator.”
Long time French-Russian war correspondent Christelle Néant and colleague Laurent Brayard came under intensive Ukrainian shelling while covering earlier shelling in a district of Petrovsky, western Donetsk in June 2022. Her car was destroyed.
Ukraine’s assassinations of Russian journalists
Of the at least 30 Russian journalists killed, the following are some of those recently murdered:
In November 2023, in the Zaporozhye region, Ukrainian forces targeted a group of Russian journalists with a drone. One of the journalists, Boris Maksudov, died as a result of his injuries.
In July 2023, Ukrainian shelling of a civilian vehicle killed RIA Novosti war correspondent Rostislav Zhuravlev, and injured four of his colleagues. The shelling was with US cluster munitions.
In October 2022, Ukrainian forces shelled a group of Tavria TV and radio company’s reporters, killing journalist Oleg Klokov.
In April 2023, in St. Petersburg, war correspondent Maxim Fomin (Vladlen Tatarsky) was murdered when a statuette he’d been handed, containing a bomb, exploded.
In August 2022, jounnalist Darya Dugina was killed in a car bombing in Moscow. Both the murders of Dugina and Fomin are believed to be the work of Kiev’s intelligence agents. Ukrainian intelligence also plotted assassination attempts against RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and journalist Ksenia Sobchak.
But it’s worth pointing out these targeted killings didn’t start in 2022. Back in 2014, Russian photojournalist Andrei Stenin was killed in a Ukrainian attack on, “a vehicle traveling in a convoy of escaping civilians when it came under heavy fire.”
Ghoulish celebration of murder of Russian journalists
By now, Ukraine’s “kill list”, Myrotvorets, is well known. It’s an extensive list of Ukrainian, Russian and foreign journalists, commentators, analysts, several hundred children (!!!), and other figures who have in some way offended Kiev’s terrorist regime. Whatever is known about the person in question is put on the list, including address when possible. If the person is killed, they are marked “liquidated” on Myrotvorets, as was the case with Daria Dugina.
There have been various renditions of this, black lists and graphics comprising people not in Kiev’s graces. The intent of which is intimidation, but also to discredit those listed as “Russian propagandists”.
Professor and author, Glenn Diesen pointed out on X, “NEXTA, referring to itself as “the largest Eastern European media”, celebrates the killing of a journalist. This reflects a much wider problem: Anyone challenging NATO’s war narrative can be labelled a “propagandist”, which legitimises censorship, cancellation and even violence.”
Indeed, recently George and Amal Clooney’s foundation announced their intention to seek arrest warrants for journalists from Russian state media, to be extradited to a country where a criminal case can be opened against them.
This is absurdity—seeking to arrest journalists for doing their job! And, I’d note, this nonsense comes from the same actors who whitewashed terrorism in Syria.
International Committees ignore Russian journalists
Unsurprisingly, Nikita’s murder, nor those of the tens of Russian journalists before him, will not be highlighted by agencies whose mandate is supposedly to protect journalists.
We’ve seen the same in Syria. In 2014, I wrote about the deliberate murders by Western-backed terrorists of Syrian and allied journalists in Syria, noting, “The murders of non-Westerners—whether in Syria, Palestine or elsewhere—doesn’t matter to the media and public, unless it serves an Imperialist or Zionist agenda.”
In Gaza, it is exponentially worse. RT journalists Mustafa al-Bayed reported on June 17 that, according to the Government Media Office, 151 Palestinian journalists in Gaza have been killed since October 2023.
Two weeks after Nikita Tsitsagi’s killing, there is still no entry on RSF, nor on CPJ. Somewhat surprisingly, The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the murders of Tsitsagi and also that of NTV’s Valery Kozhin (although not fully impartially, as in spite of the 2022 referendum for the DPR to join Russia, IFJ still inserts “Russia’s occupied Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine” in its entry).
Nor has UNESCO, although it has for decades condemned violence against journalists.
However, searching all of the above sites for any mention of the Ukrainian targeted assassinations of those I’ve mentioned earlier, only Rostislav Zhuravlev is mentioned, again only by the IFJ. RSF even apparently refused to comment on its exclusion of the murders of Rostislav Zhuravlev and Boris Maksudov.
They, being very partial organizations, serve NATO’s agenda; reporting on Ukraine’s slaughter of Russian journalists doesn’t.
The very tragic irony is that none of these journalists would have been killed if Kiev had not unleashed hell on its former citizens in the Donbass a decade ago. Journalists reporting from there courageously put their lives on the line to show the world how Ukraine has been slaughtering civilians, with Western backing and using Western weapons.
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