Svitlana Zalizetska, a Ukrainian journalist from Melitopol, Zaporizhzhia region, has been writing about life in her city under Russian occupation for over two years. Even now, living in the part of Ukraine not under Russian occupation, she is under constant pressure from Russian aggressors who continue to threaten her, her family, and her colleagues. Despite this, she continues to share stories about life under Russian occupation. Svitlana says that if she were to stop, she would betray her colleagues, so she continues her work for them. We talked to Svitlana about her work during the occupation, the terror that the Russian occupiers spread, and the challenges that journalists in the occupied territories currently face.

Svitlana, you were an editor working for RIA-Melitopol before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Can you tell us more about the general situation in Melitopol before the invasion, and about your work back then?

At the time that we now know was a month before the outbreak of a full-scale assault, literally everybody in our newsroom was asking questions every day about if there would be a war or if we would be invaded. However, for us this was already ‘business as usual’. One of the alarming things that caught our eye was the many announcements and reports about real estate sales. While we reported on this development, we got even more worried. It was one example of how the local businesses reacted to the growing threats which were felt by everyone and discussed frequently. A week or two before the full-scale invasion, we started to experience many DDoS attacks [a type of cyberattack that tries to make a website or network resource unavailable by flooding it with malicious traffic] and in the very first days of the actual invasion, we saw endless systematic attacks against our website. Other websites were also experiencing DDoS attacks, as the invaders immediately tried to prevent us from working and reporting about what was happening.

How did you cope? 

When they started attacking us, we transferred almost all of our content to social media networks. In addition, in the first days of the occupation, the Russian invaders seized everything: a TV tower, internet providers, and telecommunications companies. There was a communication blackout, so to get at least something to our readers, we published everything in the Telegram channel of RIA Melitopol. By the time the occupiers hacked and took over our Telegram channel [in August 2023], we had 80,000 subscribers. This number was quite high for our region. At the time of the occupation, we closed only the advertising department, we worked from home, and I personally went to rallies. I remember coming to a sports playground, climbing up a ladder to catch internet reception, and sending content for publication after attending one of the rallies. We kept this up until the occupiers started arresting the protesters and taking them out of town in police trucks.

We also understood that dormant Russian propaganda Telegram channels had been prepared in the region well in advance of the occupation. They started working immediately after the invasion: we counted more than 100 of them in Melitopol alone. All of them are still active and engaged in the spread of very forceful propaganda. Now I can say that I underestimated the enemy. When Melitopol residents went to protest rallies, the occupiers were watching us. Snipers were on the roofs, even on the roof of the church. Then the Russian Guards were brought into the city, who were suddenly everywhere, and even then, we had no clue about how cruel the enemy actually was. People still went to rallies, shouting: ‘Melitopol is Ukraine!’ and this helped us all hold on.

Did you have any contact with other media outlets?

All major media outlets in Melitopol stopped working immediately after the occupation began. Some of them simply could not work because they were seized, for example, TV and radio companies. Newspapers, of course, stopped printing. There appeared to be minor Telegram channels that did continue to write. In fact, we were the only major media outlet in the city that continued to work.

You spoke out how you were forced to hand over your passwords and access to your media outlet’s website. Can you describe how this evolved?

This is a complicated story. In short, when the DDoS attacks against us began in the first days of the occupation, I turned to external Ukrainian specialists, to whom I gave the passwords and access to our website. Therefore, I had no control over the situation. Although when the occupiers took my father hostage, they demanded that I also give them access to our accounts.

I had already left the city but the occupiers were looking for me. My parents’ house alone was searched four times. My mother said that they went through all the photos, asked about my personal life, rummaged through my clothes, my dresses, and told my parents that they gave me – their daughter – a ‘bad upbringing’. They also took all the equipment and even furniture from our newsroom. The occupiers simply knocked down the door, entered and took everything. Then my 75-year-old father became the subject of blackmail. The Russian FSB called me and said: ‘We will release your father when you return’. I told them I would not come back. At the time I did not fully realise what kind of savages they actually were. I remember how an FSB officer pressured me with some lectures on history, asking me, ‘How could you abandon your father?’ They tried everything to make me return and meet all their conditions.

My father spent three days in a detention cell, without even a window. Because I refused to come, the occupiers eventually said that they would release my father if I would resign from my work at the RIA Melitopol website. I wrote a post on social media that I no longer worked for the RIA Melitopol website, but clarified that our site remained on the territory controlled by Ukraine. Eventually, they let my father go. He was later taken to hospital because he suffered from kidney inflammation. My parents still find the situation hard to cope with. Their health has suffered and they are often in need of medical care.

You escaped Melitopol during the occupation. What kind of challenges did you and your colleagues face?

I never thought I was in any danger until I went to see Galina Danylchenko [a representative of the occupation authorities in Melitopol]. I was taken to a meeting with her on 11 March 2022, the same day that the city mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, was detained. Danylchenko was friendly and told me she would soon be offered a job and that she would accept it. She advised me to do the same. She said everything would be fine, that I would get ‘fame all the way to Moscow’, that it would be very prestigious, I would be on special terms with them. I was not in a hurry to agree. In a couple of hours, they released me, but I was told to wait for a meeting with the commandant. I already knew that the commandant had detained the mayor, so I decided the same thing was most likely to happen to me. I called my husband, who was fighting, and he told me to leave the city immediately. I went undercover, posing as a doctor, with someone else’s ID, because my name was already on the ‘wanted list’ of people who would not be allowed to leave.

Now I carry on working as a journalist, but I live under constant threats from the Russian aggressors. The occupiers threaten me publicly and personally: my family, my colleagues, and me. They also think that the web administrators of RIA Melitopol are still in Melitopol, although this is not the case. Most importantly, they are conducting surveillance on journalists, even those who stopped working a long time ago. For this reason, many journalists have simply quit their jobs because it broke them professionally. They refuse to practice their profession under these circumstances, even after they fled to Ukraine-controlled territory.

Can you tell if and how Russian occupying forces try to manipulate journalists into working for them? Why do you think that they try?

At the start of the occupation, they had lists of journalists, activists, and well-known people. They needed opinion leaders who would say, ‘We are Russia, follow us’ – and people would be convinced.

The occupiers and collaborators started harassing journalists who declined to work for the Russians. They continued this until they realised that their efforts were pointless. Then they agreed to stop the harassment if the journalists stopped working. Those journalists who were called by the occupiers and collaborators declined to work for them. They were not harmed until a certain point, which was the condition that they simply not work. After I left, I kept saying, you have to leave, and I helped those who said yes. Unfortunately, not all of my colleagues agreed. They were not yet harassed, and they assumed that it would stay that way. Then the occupiers started taking prisoners and kidnapping everyone who even once worked as a journalist in the past. I think the very fact that you are a journalist is a direct threat to the occupiers, and that is why they persecute journalists. They also do this to intimidate people and deter them from fleeing, or rather to surrender and work for the Russian occupiers. The occupiers are still afraid of us.

The only way for journalists to escape this danger is to leave. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible for us to help the journalists who are in occupied territory because the occupiers are watching everything. However, the occupiers are still trying to persuade them with bribes: they continue to insist that they switch sides, promising them salaries. The occupiers keep putting pressure on journalists that the situation will get better for them if they collaborate.

There are many journalists in Russian custody now, some of whom are your colleagues. Do you have any idea about the situation of these journalists?  

For many months now, I have been trying to find out the whereabouts of the captured web administrator of the RIA Melitopol Telegram channel, Georgiy Levchenko. We only knew where Georgiy was a month after his capture. It was the same cell of the temporary detention centre where they kept my father. We identified this place from a video released by the occupiers. We do not know where he is now. Official requests from his lawyer only receive replies that ‘he has not vanished, he is held in custody,’ but we do not know where.

For almost nine months now, we have not known the whereabouts of Anastasia Glukhovskaya, a journalist who resigned from RIA Melitopol at the beginning of the invasion, but she was still kidnapped. I also do not know anything about the current whereabouts or health of Irina Levchenko, a retired journalist who was arrested by the occupiers in the middle of the street. 

How does the occupation of parts of Ukraine influence the work and the mission of journalists working in Ukraine? Do they still reach their audiences, also in occupied territory?

I never thought that journalism could be such a risky profession. That it would become so risky.  They started hunting us down, even before they occupied us. Reporting news about the occupied territories is a separate challenge. It is very difficult to find a journalist covering the occupation who is very well familiar with the context and is also able to handle this job. When you write about what goes on under the occupation, you seem to find yourself in an inverted reality. It is a mental burden every day and in addition, journalists also became psychologists. People living under the occupation who are longing for Ukraine need to talk with someone. However, in occupied territory it is dangerous. You do not always know whom you are talking to and where it might lead. It also became very clear that every word can kill now. It is also difficult to communicate with IDPs [internally displaced people] from the occupied territories. People are afraid to talk, they want to remain unknown, and they expect trouble.

Interviews with people who have been captured there are painful, and it is hard to live with it afterwards. However, if you stop doing this, you feel like you abandoned these people, betrayed them. Therefore, for their sake, you need to carry on. Even now that it has become very hard and dangerous to speak to your audience in occupied territory. After all, they banned Ukrainian content and the occupiers are checking mobile phones for banned content at checkpoints and during searches.

Thank you, Svitlana, for the interview. To conclude, one last question: what does press freedom mean to you?

It is the ability to write freely about what is happening without any risk of being imprisoned. It means you can tell the truth without being murdered or without your loved ones being jailed for it. When you can write in the Ukrainian language, which has the same effect on the occupiers as holy water on demons. When you can freely choose the yellow and blue colours that drive the aggressors nuts. All this is freedom.