Ukrainian Journalist Describes Media and War in Ukraine

Ukrainian Journalist Describes Media and War in Ukraine 

Tetiana Sylina discussed war reporting and life in Ukraine after Russia’s invasion.

(Tetiana Sylina, right, talks to students and community members, as Professor Anna Brodsky, left, translates. | SOURCE: Author)

“We are spies from the people in the power structure: journalists control the power,” said Tetiana Sylina, speaking to a room full of students and community members at Washington and Lee University’s Hillel House.

Sylina, a Ukrainian journalist, described the opportunities and challenges of reporting in a country with rampant war, misinformation, and corruption. Sylina, editor of the International Politics Department at the Kyiv-based Mirror of the Week, discussed these issues and more during her March 12 talk in Hillel House. 

She delivered the opening remarks in Ukrainian, but gave the rest of her speech in Russian to educate the students present who were learning the language. Professor Anna Brodsky, a professor of Russian at W&L, translated Sylina’s talk into English.

Sylina opened with a story about her friend who lost her mother due to the war-torn condition of Bucha, a Ukrainian city just northwest of Kyiv. Sylina explained that her friend’s mother was stricken with COVID when Russia invaded, and “could not call doctors to help her mother.” When another friend attempted to get water for Natasha’s mother, he was killed by Russian soldiers. A few days later, her friend’s mother passed away, and her body was placed in a plastic bag and put into a mass grave with hundreds of others.

Her newspaper highlighted the Bucha atrocities and even created an algorithm to help people find their disappeared relatives. Sylina made it clear, however, that stories like this were hardly limited to Bucha, saying that “every person in our newspaper has a story like this.”

Sylina emphasized how many journalists have experienced mental and emotional stress as a result of the ongoing war. “Most journalists have insomnia,” with a third experiencing “constant irritability,” she said. 

Sylina discussed issues in her newspaper, the Mirror of the Week, which faces a severe staff shortage. Psychologists have found that 80% of the newspaper’s staff have depression, with multiple showing suicidal ideation. 

Sylina criticized President Trump for his current position towards Ukraine, saying it has contributed to the issues the country’s newspapers face. “With the freezing of grants and USAID,” she asserted, “financing the press has become … the biggest issue.” She underscored the impact of the policy, saying that “this decision was a shock for us and threatens to be a catastrophe.” 

Sylina explained that USAID, the partially dismantled independent agency responsible for dispersing civilian foreign aid, was crucial to her publication.“85% of our [the newspaper’s] financing came from USAID,” she said, putting her newspaper at risk of shutting down. The dire financial situation forced her newspaper to withhold “salaries for the month of March.”

Sylina’s publication was not the only newspaper affected by this Trump administration policy. “332 newspapers have already been closed,” Sylina stated, adding that the “process will get much faster.” She continued, claiming that “90% of publications depended on foreign grants,” and “80% received [grants] from USAID.” 

Sylina expressed concerns for the future of Ukrainian journalism, predicting that half of the media would close within a year. She believes those who do not close outright will have to “reduce their content and fire the majority of their staff.”

Sylina argued that the potential death of many outlets would represent the end for independent media in Ukraine. “Those who didn’t have local oligarchs ... supporting them with their cash … are the best news outlets,” she said, arguing that aid reductions threaten the survival of such outlets.

“Hundreds and thousands of journalists will be left jobless,” Sylina projected, but “the biggest problem is that democratic institutions in Ukraine will be under threat.” “There is another danger in this,” she added, as “before the war, Ukrainian media was very much controlled by oligarchs.” She argued that these oligarchs “will try to regain their power and position” if much of Ukraine’s independent media dies. Russia also threatens the independence of Ukrainian media, as the country “used to dominate the information space of Ukraine.”

Sylina then shifted to discussing the freedom of the press. “We have issues with censorship, self-censorship, and problems that Russia creates,” she said. She admitted that “the war is not possible without censorship,” as Ukrainian and Western journalists being free to report on classified or strategic military matters could give Russia an advantage. 

Although journalists strive to expose the truth, this quest can create conflicts of interest, as revealing valuable intelligence could assist Russia's war effort against Ukraine. Sylina provided an example of a Reuters journalist who uncovered the location of a Ukrainian power station, leading to a Russian airstrike that destroyed it.

“We are thinking about our state, how not to harm our country and … our people,” Sylina explained. “It is painful to know something and not be able to convey this.” As a result, the “level of self-censorship during the war has grown enormously for the Ukrainian journalists.”

(Students and community members listen to the event. | SOURCE: Author)

At one point, Sylina’s publication discovered “a large corruption scheme that had to do with the defense ministry and their purchasing of food for the soldiers.” Several Ukrainian officials were taking advantage of the situation and “getting a lot of cash for themselves.” “We had to face the choice between our journalistic duty and telling the truth and not doing so,” Sylina explained. In the end, “we did publish the story.”

As a result, the “government has to make a choice, to punish the thieves or those who wrote the piece.” The government chose to punish the journalists who wrote the story. However, Sylina concluded the story positively, arguing, “Our civic society is actually very strong, and the thieves ended up being prosecuted.”

Sylina continued by relating a story about a journalist named Yevhen Shybalov, who Russian forces captured. Eventually escaping after enduring intense torture and mistreatment, Shybalov wrote a memoir of his experience entitled “In Russian captivity. Six circles of hell.” 

Sylina quoted several passages from his memoir, including descriptions of torture methods used by Russian interrogators. “During interrogations … they attach electrodes to the body and they crank up the electricity … they attach wires to the ears and then they send the electric shocks through the brain,” Shybalov described. He added, “Sooner or later, you are going to say anything they want.”

Shybalov also wrote about the horrific living conditions in Russian captivity. “In the cells where the prisoners are being kept, there are terrible bugs… The food is awful, there is no medical help, constant searches with beatings.” Russian prisoners live in “complete isolation, no news from the outside… no walks outside, just gray walls, gray rags on the body, gray bed, gray faces of fellow prisoners, grayness in one’s soul.”

Sylina closed by describing practical issues facing the Ukrainian media, naming Telegram, deepfakes, and artificial intelligence as “huge” problems. She pointed out that many Ukrainian news outlets do not have the same journalistic standards as Sylina’s publication. “A lot of anonymous channels, they don’t bother with fact-checking or standards of journalist ethics.” She explained how it was “very difficult to compete with them … because we need some time to verify the information,” while those publications that do not wait to verify breaking news “are just ahead of us.”

The presentation concluded with a chance for students to ask questions. Responding to a question asking what individual Americans can do to support the Ukrainian war effort, Sylvina stressed the importance of knowledge. “Explain to other Americans why America needs to help in Ukraine,” she pleaded, adding, "A lot of Americans do not understand why America should help Ukraine.”