05/09/2025 Culture, Science, Education and Media
“The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is also a war against truth, in which free media and journalists are treated as enemies by the aggressor state,” said the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media.
Adopting the draft resolution, based on the report by Yevheniia Kravchuk (Ukraine, ALDE), the committee expressed its deep concern that at least 26 Ukrainian journalists remain unlawfully detained by the Russian Federation or in temporarily occupied territories, facing fabricated charges, torture, enforced disappearance, and even death.
The committee deplored the “systematic abduction and mistreatment” of journalists since the illegal occupation of Crimea in 2014, stressing that some have now been in captivity for almost a decade. It recalled that international humanitarian law protects journalists as civilians and insisted that their immediate release must form part of any humanitarian component of a just and sustainable peace. The only means at present to ensure their release is “exerting every available political, economic and diplomatic pressure on the Russian Federation,” the committee underlined.
The committee calls on Russia to release immediately all unlawfully detained journalists, listing by name those having been arrested in Crimea, Russia and occupied regions, and to provide precise information on their health and whereabouts. It also demands unhindered access for the ICRC, the UN Monitoring Mission, and independent humanitarian organisations to detention sites.
Member states are urged to reinforce sanctions against those responsible for crimes against journalists, including not only senior military and security officials but also lower-ranking officials such as heads of detention facilities and guards involved in these violations, and to support Ukrainian media financially to survive wartime conditions. The committee further calls for accountability before international courts, support for the Council of Europe’s mechanisms addressing victims’ needs, and the establishment of an annual commemoration named “Victory for Victoria” in honour of Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna, who was tortured and killed after more than a year in Russian custody.