Oleksandr Makhov, a well-known journalist who became famous for his military reporting for Ukrainian television, announced a drastic career change on Facebook in February. Russian invasion He had written “I am going to war” in the caption of a photograph dressed as a soldier.
“The time has come for a liberation war! I will fight and kill as best I can. I serve the Ukrainian people”, continued the broadcast of the then journalist.
On May 4, DOM TV, the channel on which Makhov worked until shortly before the conflict, A bomb attack was carried out in Izyum, in the Kharkov region of Ukraine..
window.uolads.push({ id: "banner-300x250-3-area" });
Journalists saw volunteer soldiers fighting in Ukraine
Makhov was the eighth journalist killed in the conflict, but his death is not counted by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) as it was not related to his profession.
Like him, at least 10 media workers died in the war while exchanging microphones and notebooks for weapons in the Ukrainian army.
There are no official estimates of how many journalists from Ukraine have joined the army since February, when the war with Russia began.
However, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine lists media workers killed during the conflict and states that 10 of them joined the army and “died with guns in their hands”.
Unlike CPJ, the union counts the dead as soldiers because “we admire all our colleagues who contribute to the defense of the country,” the association’s president, Serhiy Tomilenko, told the committee. Each of our deceased colleagues is a hero for us,” he said.
CPJ believes that the decision to move from reporting to fighting conflict contradicts the norm of journalism’s impartiality, even in times of war.
For Stanyslav Aseyev, former Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) correspondent, making this choice was not difficult.
“Simple: the scale of the occupation [russa] It was such that the existence of Kiev and the country as a whole were at risk,” he said. “Journalism would be meaningless if Ukraine disappeared.”
Aseyev joined the Regional Defense Forces, a volunteer unit of the Ukrainian army, just two days after the start of the war. “We weren’t sure we could hold Kiev even with the forces we had. So defending the country became a priority,” he said.
Like Oleksandr Makhov, other Ukrainians from journalist to military also made public announcements about changing careers.
Artur Korniienko from the Kyiv Independent newspaper wrote on Twitter in May:
Hello Twitter! You may know me as a cultural writer. @KyivIndependent. I have joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces since the occupation of Russia and cannot write much. But readers keep asking questions about our wartime culture. So I will tweet about what inspires me and my comrades to keep fighting.
— Artur Korniienko (@ak2ki_) 2 May 2022
Valentyn Chernyavsky, a journalist in Cherkasy, central Ukraine, told a local website that CPJ consulted that he traded his camera and microphone for a machine gun because “Now was definitely not the time for the entertainment content I was shooting. ” ”.
On the Internet, many former journalists continue to report on the war with their social media posts. Mahov did just that when he shared images from the forefront of the conflict on Instagram.
Check out this photo on Instagram
Aseyev, a former correspondent for RFE/RL, told CPJ that he continues to write for the Swiss and Austrian media, but does not believe there is a conflict between voluntary military service and “because I do opinion journalism”.
He recently wrote in an editorial for the Swiss website NZZ am Sonntag that he now carries a gun because “writing alone is no longer enough to secure Ukraine’s future.”
Russian-backed separatists captured Aseyev in eastern Ukraine in 2017, where he was covering for RFE/RL and Ukrainian news sites.
He spent two and a half years in prison, and was then released in a prisoner exchange in late 2019 when he began work on a book called “Torture Camp on Paradise Street” about the constant beating and abuse he and other Ukrainians were subjected to. hands of separatists.
Since the beginning of the war, Russian forces have arbitrarily detained several journalists in Ukraine with reports of home kidnapping, persecution of relatives and torture.
Asked if he was afraid of being caught again by CPJ, Aseyev admits, “In this situation, “a slow and very painful death awaits me.”
read it too
Butts, clashes and mock executions: Ukrainian journalist reported 9 days of torture at the hands of Russian soldiers
Journalists also fought in WWII
Reporters and press freedom advocates who watched the news of the conflict said in an interview with CPJ that they could not remember another war in which a significant number of journalists left to join the military, or where as many died as fighters.
It is worth remembering that, according to the committee, the conflict in Eastern Europe drew volunteers from all over the world, including Brazil and Russia, including at least one former Russian journalist.
Sergei Loiko, 69, who worked for the Moscow branch of the Los Angeles Times for years, said he came to Ukraine in March “not as a journalist, but as a fighter in the Armageddon struggle between good and evil.”
Loiko’s description can be used by other Ukrainian journalists who choose to fight rather than write in the war.
“If you’re fighting for the survival of your country like the Ukrainians, I can understand why some people think they have a patriotic duty to quit journalism and go to war,” Ray Moseley told CPJ.
“War Journalism: Foreign Correspondents II. How Did He Risk Capture, Torture, and Death to Cover Up World War II?”
CPJ notes that while some WWII-era journalists left the profession to fight, work as military press officers, or join the Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of the CIA), hundreds went to war as reporters for the American media.
Allied Forces wore military uniforms with a matching large “C” on their sleeves. At that time, as now, international humanitarian law required journalists to be treated as civilians by warring parties unless they were carrying weapons and were not fighting.
However, II. In World War II, some ignored the rules and by doing so “compromised their position as journalists,” Moseley said in an interview with CPJ.
According to Moseley, Ernest Hemingway was “the most blatant violation of international law” in this regard. He told the expert committee that other reporters had complained to military officials that Hemingway was armed and sometimes acted as a combatant, but his military accreditation as a journalist to cover the war was never revoked.
read it too
source: Noticias
